Weeks of Ordinary Time

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Sunday, 6 October 2019 : Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday we listened to the words of God speaking to us into our hearts and minds, reminding us all that we must have that sincere and genuine faith in God, or else we will not be able to live our lives as how God wants us to live them. We must trust in the Lord in all things and put our lives before Him, dedicating ourselves to His cause and obeying His will at all times.

In our first reading today, taken from the Book of the prophet Habakkuk, we heard firstly of the supposed anger and distress of the people as voiced in conversation to God, to show how the people thought that God had not listened to their prayers and left them to endure suffering and bitterness in life. And this was made in the context of the prophet Habakkuk being active in his ministry during the early years of Babylonian Empire, which in a few decades would end up destroying Jerusalem and Judah, and brought the people into exile for many years.

At that time, the people of God were beset by many problems and were faced with many enemies, and they and their kingdom were already waning in power, far from the once glorious days of King David and King Solomon. The prophet Habakkuk as recorded throughout his book in fact spoke of the rise of the Babylonians, as a premonition for the ending days of the kingdom of Judah and the coming of the time of humiliation for God’s people, the destruction of their Temple and their enslavement once again in exile.

But this is where then God through the prophet Habakkuk wanted His people to know that it does not mean that if things did not go according to the plans of the people then it means that God does not care about His people or that He has forgotten about them. On the contrary, it means that everything is within God’s plan and will, and not how we want it to be. This is what God presented to us clearly today in that first reading passage, that if we have not received providence we need or grace we hope for, then we ought to be patient and remember that everything occurs in God’s time, not ours.

Impatience is caused by the desire in us that goes on unchecked and the temptation for us to get the right answers and things we want, which if we embrace then can lead to further impatience, unhappiness and sufferings. And why is this so? That is because we are never going to be satisfied by those things alone. They are mere distractions from the true happiness and treasure which we should see in our life, and which can be found in God alone.

It was the unbridled and uncontrolled desires of the people which led them to disobey God and to grumble against Him as mentioned in our Psalm today, where we heard that at the last part of the verses, the incident of Massah and Meribah was mentioned. At that time, the people of Israel were on their way from Egypt to the land promised by God to them. But as they continued to progress through the journey, they grumbled more and more, refusing to listen to God and even complaining that God was leading them to their deaths.

The people of Israel were impatient and they were also overcome by their own human desires, the greed and wants inside them. As a result, they sought for worldly satisfaction, wanting a good lifestyle that they could not wait to have. And instead of trusting God, they chose to turn to pagan gods and idols, and followed the words and desires of men rather than to listen to God and to the words that His servant Moses had spoken before them.

Just as their descendants at the era of the prophet Habakkuk would do, the people of God trusted more in their own human power, intelligence and strength rather than trusting in God as they should have. They wanted things to go their way and became angry and disillusioned when they could not get what they wanted. Yet in this, we can clearly see how they were imposing themselves on God and demanding things that they did not deserve in the first place.

In our Gospel passage today, the Lord Jesus put it bluntly before His disciples and the people whom He taught, that truly each and every one of us, no matter how powerful or great we are, ultimately we are merely the servants of God, His creatures and people, who are at His mercy at all times. But God’s love for us is so great that indeed, He wants to take care of us and provide for us in our respective lives. Nonetheless, God does this in the way He wills it and at the time of His own choosing.

And it is a reminder for us to avoid making excessive expectations in life, thinking that things will go our way or the way we wanted it to be. If we expect too much, in the end we will be left with nothing but disappointments, regrets and anger. This is exactly what the devil wants to lead us into, by tempting us with all those temptations and desires so that we will fall deeper and deeper into our wicked ways and disobey God through sin.

Yet it is also how our world today operates, in a society often obsessed with expectations, standards and ideals. We are often preoccupied so much on what we want that we forget what life truly is all about. Our life in truth is not about trying to accumulate as much wealth, fame or other good things in life, and neither it is a way for us to indulge ourselves in the many tempting things surrounding us, the temptations of money, fame, glory and other sorts of worldly pleasures.

Instead, our life should be enriched in faith and it should be holy just as Our Lord is holy. We should make best use of our life’s existence to bear witness to the truth of God by our every actions and deeds, by our words and dedication even in small and little things in our lives. We should grow lesser in our pride and in ego, in our ambition and desires and instead, we ought to grow stronger and firmer in our humility and in our love for God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are called to reflect on our lives and discern how we should live our lives from now on. We are called to turn ourselves from trusting only in our own human strengths and capabilities into trust in God with all of our hearts and with all of our strength. We have to realise that ultimately, there is no way that we can survive just with our own capabilities without God.

And we also have to understand that in the end, God’s will shall be done and not ours. God is the beginning and the end for everything that we are, and everything that we are belong to God and God alone. Brothers and sisters in Christ, are we able to live our lives from now on with greater humility and with greater commitment, turning towards Him with all of our hearts and minds? Are we able to follow Him and trust Him wholeheartedly, now and always?

May the Lord continue to guide us all in this journey, and may He strengthen us in our resolve to live a good and virtuous life from now on as faithful Christians, as those whom God considers to be His own beloved children and as those whom He will bless forever with eternal glory and blissful life in perfect grace and love. May God be with us always, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Sunday, 6 October 2019 : Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 17 : 5-10

At that time, the Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” And the Lord said, “If you have faith, even the size of a mustard seed, you may say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted, and plant yourself in the sea!’ and it will obey you.”

“Who among you would say to your servant, coming in from the fields after plowing or tending sheep, ‘Go ahead and have your dinner?’ No, you tell him, ‘Prepare my dinner. Put on your apron, and wait on me while I eat and drink. You can eat and drink afterward.’”

“Do you thank this servant for doing what you told him to do? I do not think so. And therefore, when you have done all that you have been told to do, you should say, ‘We are no more than servants; we have only done our duty.’”

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Sunday, 6 October 2019 : Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

2 Timothy 1 : 6-8, 13-14

For this reason, I invite you to fan into a flame, the gift of God you received, through the laying on of my hands. For God did not confer on us a spirit of fearfulness, but of strength, love and good judgment. Do not be ashamed of testifying to our Lord, nor of seeing me in chains. On the contrary, do your share in labouring for the Gospel, with the strength of God.

Follow the pattern of the sound doctrine which you have heard from me, concerning faith, and love in Christ Jesus. Keep this precious deposit, with the help of the Holy Spirit, Who lives within us.

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Sunday, 6 October 2019 : Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 94 : 1-2, 6-7, 8-9

Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful sound to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him giving thanks, with music and songs of praise.

Come and worship; let us bow down, kneel before the Lord, our Maker. He is our God, and we His people; the flock He leads and pastures. Would that today you heard His voice!

Do not be stubborn, as at Meribah, in the desert, on that day at Massah, when your ancestors challenged Me, and they put Me to the test.

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Sunday, 6 October 2019 : Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Habakkuk 1 : 2-3 and Habakkuk 2 : 2-4

YHVH, how long will I cry for help while You pay no attention to me? I denounce the oppression and You do not save. Why do You make me see injustice? Are You pleased to look on tyranny? All I see is outrage, violence and quarrels.

Then YHVH answered me and said, “Write down the vision, inscribe it on tablets so it can be easily read, since this is a vision for an appointed time; it will not fail but will be fulfilled in due time. If it delays, wait for it, for it will come, and will not be deterred. Look : I do not look with favour on the one who gives way; the upright, on the other hand, will live by his faithfulness.”

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Saturday, 5 October 2019 : 26th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of God speaking to us about the love which He has for us all His people, and the assurance which He has given to His people that He will bless them and protect them, even if they had fallen into sin and disobeyed Him and suffered because of all of that. God is ever loving, merciful and compassionate, but then at the same time, we should not take this generosity and love for granted.

He has always taken care of us, but we are often too busy and distracted from being able to understand and appreciate this generous love God has given us. Instead, we tried to find our happiness, joy and satisfaction in the many other things in this world, following the temptations and falsehoods spread by the evil one instead of looking for the truth. But we must realise that following the path of the devil will not bring us any good things in the end, only destruction and eternal regret.

In our Gospel passage today, the Lord Himself confidently proclaimed before all of His disciples, that He has seen the downfall of Satan, struck down in defeat, falling from Heaven into his downfall. And this is spoken because first of all, the Lord Himself had struck down Satan at the beginning for his prideful rebellion against Him, as mentioned in the Book of Revelations, how he even convinced a third of the Heavenly Hosts in his rebellion, those who would become the fallen angels and demons.

At that time, Satan was unable to achieve his goals and was defeated together with his forces, and were thrown out of Heaven. Knowing that he had no way to defeat God Who is Almighty and All-Powerful, he instead targeted us, the ones whom God loves, by tempting us and trying to pull us away from God and into the damnation and annihilation that Satan and the fallen angels themselves had been sentenced to.

We see just how much his temptations and efforts had led to many souls, throughout the ages, to fall into those temptations and therefore sinned against God. He tempted them with many pleasures of this world, the joy of having many worldly possessions and things, wealth and money, fame and glory, status and standing within the community, among many others. And all these distracted us from being able to find the path towards God.

And we also have certainly heard how the devil even tried to tempt the Lord Jesus, when He came into the world to be our Saviour. The devil likely did not know the full purpose and intention of the Lord’s coming, but he still tried nonetheless, tempting the Lord Jesus with satisfaction of food for the stomach, when he asked Jesus to turn the stone into bread, pandering to the greed in us, and then also with pride and our desire for attention when he brought Jesus up to the Temple’s parapets and asked Him to jump from there, and also when he showed the whole glory and power of the earth’s kingdoms that he would give if only the Lord Jesus worshipped him as god.

We need to see how the Lord Jesus rebuked Satan for his efforts in tempting Him, resisting and rejecting his efforts and advances, staying completely faithful to the mission which His Father has entrusted to Him. The Lord said that God alone should be worshipped as the one and only true God, and we must have trust in His words and obey His will. Ultimately, we have to realise that for all the good things that the devil presents to us, just as he did to the Lord Jesus, all of those things are temporary and illusory.

It means that all those good things of this world, which the world has often tempt us with, in our society obsessed with excessive consumerism and hedonistic lifestyles, they are all distractions that we need to learn to control and resist, to refuse the distractions of the devil, who made his path to look more appealing and good for us, even though the end is nothing less than eternal darkness and despair of damnation.

Instead, let us all spend this day reflecting on our own way of life, and how we can be more committed and faithful to the Lord despite the challenges we may face in this journey of faith, so that we may choose the right course of action in each and every moments of our lives, by choosing the side of the truth and by accepting the cross of Christ as we walk down this journey of faith. Let us all grow ever more faithful and be closer to the Lord and be good inspirations for one another, in strengthening our faith in God and in resisting the temptations and the efforts of the devil to destroy us.

May the Lord continue to guide us in our journey, and may He grant us the strength and commitment to be able to walk courageously and faithfully from now on, to devote our time, effort and attention to serve God with all of our hearts, with all of our minds and all of our strength. Amen.

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Saturday, 5 October 2019 : 26th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

Luke 10 : 17-24

At that time, the seventy-two disciples returned full of joy. They said, “Lord, even the demons obeyed us when we called on Your Name.” Then Jesus replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. You see, I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the Enemy, so that nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the evil spirits submit to you; rejoice, rather, than your names are written in heaven.”

At that time, Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and made them known to little ones. Yes, Father, such has been Your gracious will. I have been given all things by My Father, so that no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

Then Jesus turned to His disciples and said to them privately, “Fortunate are you to see what you see, for I tell you, that many prophets and kings would have liked to see what you see, but did not see it; and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

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Saturday, 5 October 2019 : 26th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

Psalm 68 : 33-35, 36-37

Let the lowly witness this, and be glad. You who seek God, may your hearts be revived. For YHVH hears the needy; and does not despise those in captivity. Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and whatever moves in them.

For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. His people shall dwell in the land and possess it; the children of His servants shall inherit it, and those who love His Name will dwell in it.

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Saturday, 5 October 2019 : 26th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

Baruch 4 : 5-12, 27-29

Take courage, my people, you who preserve the memory of Israel. You have been sold to the nations but not for your destruction; because you had aroused the anger of God, you were delivered to your enemies. For you displeased your Creator in sacrificing to demons and not to God. You have forgotten the Eternal God, the One Who nourished you.

You have filled Jerusalem with sadness, she who brought you up. For she saw the anger of God fall on you and she said, “Listen, you neighbouring cities of Zion, God has sent me a great sorrow. I have seen the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Eternal One brought on them. I had nurtured them in joy; with tears and sadness I saw them leave. Let no one rejoice on seeing me a widow and abandoned by all. Because of the sins of my children I am now alone, because they have turned away from the Law of God.”

Take courage, my children, cry out to God, for He Who sent you into exile will remember you. Thus, as you distanced yourself from God, return to Him and seek Him ten times more earnestly. For He Who caused these evils to fall on you will bring you salvation and eternal joy.

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Friday, 4 October 2019 : 26th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us through the Scripture passages which we have heard today are reminded of what it means for us to be Christians, in that each and every one of us ought to obey the Lord and follow His path, and not to fall into the temptations present in this world and end up therefore falling into sin as what the Scripture passages had presented to us this day.

In our first reading today, we heard the lamentations of the people of God as represented by the prophet Baruch, in which he spoke of the sins which the people of Israel had committed all the many years after God had shown so much love, care and concern for them, after He had brought them out of their slavery and suffering in Egypt into a land overflowing with milk and honey and full of prosperity, making them into a powerful and glorious nation.

And yet, those people rejected God and went to seek the pagan idols and gods instead, abandoning the Law and the commandments God had given them for the wicked ways of the world. They disobeyed God and committed sinful acts and deeds before Him for many, many years, and yet, God still patiently tried to bring them back to Him and to reconcile them to Him through His messengers and prophets.

The lamentations and the words spoken by the prophet Baruch were yet another reminder to the people of God just how much they have erred and lived in a state of sin for all those years. And this is what is also echoed in our Gospel passage today, in which the Lord Jesus spoke up against the cities of Galilee, of Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida, when He rebuked those cities for their lack of faith.

And this rebuke was made in the context of how those cities, which were the ones mainly occupied by the Jewish people in Galilee, had not welcomed the Lord and accepted Him as they should have, and even as the Lord performed miraculous deeds and taught among the people there, they still doubted Him, unlike that of the other places in Galilee and even in Samaria where the Lord were welcomed and the people there listened to His message of truth and believed.

The Lord put it very clearly and bluntly that those who reject Him will only have condemnation in the end for them, and they will suffer because of their conscious abandonment of God’s love and grace. God has done so much, again and again to help them and to provide for them from time to time, because of His enduring love for us that remain strong even when we have disappointed Him so much, because He does not want us to be destroyed.

As we can see, all of us should appreciate just how much God has loved us all, and we should therefore do our best to love Him and to serve Him wholeheartedly by having a conversion of heart, mind, body and soul, so that while once we were deeply rooted in sin and wickedness, now we may turn ourselves into the true and faithful children of God. And today, we should therefore be inspired by the examples and the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the renowned saint and founder of the Franciscan order whose feast we are celebrating today.

St. Francis of Assisi was born as Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, the son of a wealthy merchant Pietro di Bernardone in Middle Ages Italy. At that time, the father of St. Francis wanted him to be the successor of his career and business as a rich silk merchant, and therefore provided the young St. Francis with plenty of good education and excellent worldly upbringing intended to prepare him for the role.

He lived a high life and a life filled with all sorts of luxury, but gradually he became disillusioned with all the wealth, glory and privileges he had, as told by the few encounters he had with the poor, which began to affect St. Francis’ outlook on the world and his own life’s calling. Eventually, he received God’s calling through several occurrences as he began to withdraw himself from the usual worldly indulgences, and began to turn towards the Lord with faith.

It was told that as he passed through an abandoned chapel of San Damiano, he heard God’s calling to restore His church, which the young St. Francis took literally as a calling to repair the abandoned and ruined chapel. St. Francis quietly took some of his father’s wares and sold them to get the necessary funds to repair the chapel, but the priest in charge of the chapel refused to accept the ill-gotten money.

Nonetheless, St. Francis had to hide from his father’s anger and sought protection from the local bishop. When the father of St. Francis demanded that St. Francis returned what he had cost him, and even wanted to make him to renounce his rights to his inheritance, St. Francis surprisingly took off all the garments from his body and returned them back to his father, naked and empty as he was on the day of his birth.

From then on, St. Francis of Assisi embraced fully his faith in God and lived his life as a penitent in Assisi, eventually gathering like-minded men to begin the foundations of what would eventually known as the Order of the Friars Minor or better known after its founder as the Franciscan Order. Through his efforts in founding the Franciscan Order, St. Francis of Assisi inspired countless others to follow the Lord with a renewed zeal and commitment.

St. Francis showed all of us what it means for us to focus our lives’ attention and effort on the Lord, in order for us to become His true disciples. He resisted the temptations of worldly glory, for money and possessions, for fame and for wealth, for glory and for the pleasures of the body, and instead sought for the greatest treasure that can be found in God alone. Are we able to do the same with our own lives, brothers and sisters in Christ?

It does not mean that we should abandon everything we have or sell everything we have and give them to the poor, but rather, we must resist the urge, desire and temptation to focus our lives on the wrong pursuit for more money, glory, fame and worldly things, and instead, make good use of those blessings we have received for the good of others and for the greater glory of God. Let us all reflect on this, and discern how we can better serve God through our lives from now on.

May the Lord continue to bless us all and guide us, and may He empower each and every one of us to become true Christians in the mould of St. Francis of Assisi, our role model in faith. May the Lord be with us always, now and forevermore. Amen.