Renewal Is A Natural Necessity
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
After Consecration Sunday of the Church, we celebrate today the Renewal of the Church. With Renewal Sunday, our Church continues her journey, through our Liturgical Year, towards her Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ. On this Sunday, our Mother Church calls us to reflect on readings from John’s Gospel and the epistle to the Hebrews.
Today’s readings remind us of our identity! We are the sheep of Christ. This is our character and our hope that we aspire to renew. Only his sheep believe in him, as our Lord Jesus said to the Jews who were arguing with him in the temple while he was walking up and down in the Portico of Solomon. As usual, Jesus puts his teaching in the relevant temporal and spatial context to make it easy to understand. From the temple of Jerusalem and on the very day of the Renewal Feast, Jesus revealed that he was the Son of God and the Master of the sheep. The Renewal Feast was celebrated to remember the purification of the temple by Judah Maccabee in 164 BC, after it was profaned by the King of the Seleucid Antiochus Epiphanes who had placed a statue of Zeus, the greatest of the Greek gods, in the Holy of the Holies. In this context, Jesus was talking to the Jews who believed that they were doing the right thing in worshiping the true God while they were in fact closing their ears to his voice, even seeking to kill him to silence his voice.
Jesus confirmed to the Jews that he was the Son of God, yet they wanted to stone him. “You do not believe,” Jesus said to them,
“because you are no sheep of mine. The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.” The epistle
confirms this revelation, as we understand from it that the Lord is the Good Shepherd who dies for his sheep and redeems them with his blood so that “those who have been called to an eternal inheritance may receive the promise.” This calling which is directed to each one of us as we are his sheep compels us to renew ourselves on the Renewal Sunday of the Church since we are his Church and every one of us is a living member in her and a stone in her structure. Without this renewal, we cannot be worthy to be really among those called to the eternal inheritance.
Renewal is one of the life’s rules, a natural necessity. Every living being renews its cells to continue to live, and every society that does not renew its ways of life and traditions, ages and dies out. It is the same with the Church. She has to renew herself so her faith in the Son of God remains a living faith that develops with the society without change or decrease.
God has blessed us with a perpetual renewal in our parish through its priests and committees. On Monday, all members of the Parish Council held a meeting to discuss the preparations for the Season of the Glorious Birth of Our Lord. Once more, we renew our spiritual and temporal preparations for this sacred season. The Parish Council is a sign of blessing from the Lord to our parish. Last Saturday, the Elderly Committee organised a trip for the elderly in our parish. We are grateful to this committee which is another blessing that the Lord has bestowed upon us. And from our elderly to our children, the future of our parish. Today we are witnessing the great commitment by the Fersen who are renewing their promise, with a new group making their commitment for the first time.
Furthermore, the Word is alive in our parish and is in perpetual renewal. For many years, the bible study evenings are continuing with the Family of Divine Word without interruption. This too is a sign of blessing. Participate in those evenings and give the Lord of Harvest some of your time. It is indeed a blessed parish, in which the Lord is constantly present with the intercession of our mother Mary and the commitment of its parishioners, the sheep who know his voice and whom he knows, they follow him and renew themselves in him.
Extra Oil
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
During the Season of the Glorious Cross, the overarching theme and question that the Lord asks us through the scripture passages is “are you ready?” We are always confronted with the comparison between the wise and the foolish and this Sunday is no exception. The ten bridesmaids in this week’s parable are split between the five that are labelled as foolish and the five that are labelled as wise. On face value, all ten of them appear to be the same. All of them had appeared to be prepared for the coming of the bridegroom except for one small detail, one crucial difference, the extra oil! The five wise bridesmaids were well prepared and carried with them extra oil in the case that the bridegroom arrived late and thus were well prepared when he finally showed up. Like the wise bridesmaids, the foolish ones had everything that they needed to know. They were not disadvantaged in any way; however, they were still not ready.
This parable reminds me of us. We, the people who regularly come to church and participate in the life of the church. We, who are equipped with everything that we need to know about Christ and profess all righteousness. Are we truly ready for Him to open the door for us? Are we ready to listen to the greeting that He may have for us? Are we ready for the reality that He may shut the door in our face because we have no oil in our lamps? Brothers and sisters, many of us carry the lamp but unfortunately, we run out of oil or are not prepared enough to bring extra oil with us. This oil represents the inward preparation of the heart for the return of the Lord. Do we really know Jesus? Most of us would claim that we do, but do we really know Him? Are we ready to love like He loves? Are we ready to be merciful like Him? Are we ready to forgive, like He forgives? Are we ready to sacrifice ourselves, like He sacrificed Himself for us? Like the parable, these questions are very confronting but are crucial for us to understand the crucial difference, the extra oil. Therefore, when the hour comes and we can hear the sound of the squeaking door that is being opened, will we have enough oil to enter into the banquet or will our fate be that of the foolish bridesmaids.
Are You Ready?
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In order to fully understand this parable that our Lord equips us with this week, we need to look back to the three verses that come before it. In Matthew 24:42, our Lord tells his disciples to “stay awake” because you do not know the day when your master is coming. Before he proceeds with the parable of the faithful and wise slave, he goes on to tell them “to stand ready because the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” As with all the readings during this Glorious Season of the Cross, today’s Gospel also points to the eschatological dimension of our faith, the end of the world and the second coming of the Lord.
Today, many people think that the end of the world is close and at hand. They live their lives concerned about the end of the world. Every time something tragic takes place, such as wars, famines, terrorist attacks, they say “this is the end of the world”. Every time something takes place in society which is contrary to their ideals and beliefs, they say “the end of the world has come.” The truth of the matter is that regardless of what is taking place in the world, nobody knows when the end will come except for the Father. In fact, Saint Mark in his Gospel tells us “But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, no one but the Father!” (Mk 13, 32). The question at hand shouldn’t be when or how. The question should be “are you ready?” for the when and for the how. The example of the master and the slave is very important in this context. Each one of us has a responsibility to be good stewards of the gifts that God has given us. How we behave and the choices that we make in life truly matter and reflect on our character and level of growth. Regardless of whether our “Master” is present or not, we should act with responsibility and be trustworthy “servants”.
Further to this, our work in the Church should not be dependent on the person of the priest. For example, if I get on well with a particular priest, this doesn’t mean that when that priest is away I stop working and carrying out my duties in the service of the Church. Here, the question arises, am I serving the Church, the body of Christ or the person of the priest?
I need to be faithful and responsible to the Church at all times, in the presence and in the absence of the priest! Let us prepare ourselves brothers and sisters for the day on which we will stand before the throne of God hoping that we will not be counted among the hypocrites and hear His voice inviting us to the eternal life.
