The "blindness" of relativism - Love of God is certain and undeniable

Today's Gospel Reading (Luke 6:39-42)

He also told them a parable, 'Can one blind person guide another? 
Surely both will fall into a pit? Disciple is not superior to teacher; 
but fully trained disciple will be like teacher. 
Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and 
never notice the great log in your own? 
How can you say to your brother, "Brother, let me take out that 
splinter in your eye," when you cannot see the great log in 
your own? Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first,
and then you will see clearly enough to take out the splinter in 
your brother's eyes

The "blindness" of relativism

Today, it turns out to be very much in progress the description
made by St. Paul about "nonage" in the faith: to be tossed back
and forth by the waves and being blown here and there by every
wind of teaching. How many "winds" of doctrine have we known
these recent decades! From Marxism to Liberalism, even to
Libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from
atheism to a vague religious mysticism... and so forth. This is the
worst blindness, because one does not know to which place one is
going or where should one go.

Having a clear Faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often
labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism —the
"blindness" of thinking according to "what is in fashion"— looks
like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards. We are
moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not
recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s
own ego and one’s own desires.

—Our friendship with you, O Jesus, is our "measure": the measure
of true humanism. Your friendship gives us the criterion to discern
between veracity and falsehood, between deception and truth...

Birth of Mary - God's work in secret

Today's Gospel Reading (Matthew 1: 1-16.18-23)

Roll of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham: Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers, Judah fathered Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, Salmon fathered Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz fathered Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed fathered Jesse; and Jesse fathered King David. David fathered Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, Solomon fathered Rehoboam, Rehoboam fathered Abijah, Abijah fathered Asa, Asa fathered Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat fathered Joram, Joram fathered Uzziah, Uzziah fathered Jotham, Jotham fathered Ahaz, Ahaz fathered Hezekiah, Hezekiah fathered Manasseh, Manasseh fathered Amon, Amon fathered Josiah;and Josiah fathered Jechoniah and his brothers. Then the deportation to Babylon took place. 

After the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah fathered Shealtiel, Shealtiel fathered Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel fathered Abiud, Abiud fathered Eliakim, Eliakim fathered Azor, Azor fathered Zadok, Zadok fathered Achim, Achim fathered Eliud, Eliud fathered Eleazar, Eleazar fathered Matthan, Matthan fathered Jacob; and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary; of her was born Jesus who is called Christ. 

This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being an upright man and wanting to spare her disgrace, decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.' Now all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: Look! the virgin is with child and will give birth to a son whom they will call Immanuel, a name which means 'God-is-with-us'.

Birth of Mary

Today, Jesus' genealogy, the Saviour that had to come and be born
of Mary, shows us how the work of God is interwoven into human
history, and how God acts in the secret and silence of every single day.
At the same time, we can see his reliability to accomplish his promises.

The Holy Spirit, that mysteriously had to incarnate the Son in Mary,
entered, therefore, in our history since a long time before, and traced
a path leading to the Virgin Mary of Nazareth and, through her,
to her Son Jesus. In this work, everything bring us to contemplate,
 admire and worship, through prayer, the greatness, the generosity
and the simplicity of the divine action, that will extol and rescue
our human lineage through our Lord’s personal involvement.

—This girl, virgin and Jesus' mother, had to be also our mother.
Who could ever imagine God to be so great and so simple as to so
intimately bind himself to us?

The "Beatitudes", the Christian’s paradoxes - Christ set of values rather than of the world.

Today's Gospel Reading (Luke 6,20-26)

Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said:  How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is yours  Blessed are you who are hungry now: you shall have your fill.  Blessed are you who are weeping now: you shall laugh.  'Blessed are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you,  denounce your name as criminal, on account of the Son of man.  Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, look! -your reward will be great in heaven.  This was the way their ancestors treated the prophets  But alas for you who are rich: you are having your consolation now.  Alas for you who have plenty to eat now: you shall go hungry.  Alas for you who are laughing now: you shall mourn and weep. ' Alas for you when everyone speaks well of you!  This was the way their ancestors treated the false prophets.

The "Beatitudes", the Christian’s paradoxes

Today, Jesus repeatedly calls "blessed" to his disciples.
The "Beatitudes" are words of promise that work at
the same time as moral guidance.
Each "beatitude" describes, so to speak,
the realistic condition of the disciples of Christ:
they are poor, they are hungry, they cry, they are hated,
 persecuted... The beatitudes are like practical "qualifications",
but also like theological-moral indications.

Despite the threatening situation in which Jesus considers
his disciples, this situation becomes a promise when
regarded in the light coming from the Father.
For the disciple, the "Beatitudes" are a paradox:
the standards of the world are turned upside down
when you just look at things from God’s scale of values.
The "Beatitudes" are promises resplendent with the
new image of the world and of the man inaugurated by Jesus,
His "transformation of values ".

—When I "look" through you, O Lord, then,
I live with new standards, I begin to "feel" something of what is
yet to come (Heaven) and joy enters in my tribulation.

The Church: the ministerial priesthood and the Hierarchy - Even Christ seek counsel from the Father, what more we the mere mortal

Today's Gospel Reading (Luke 6,6-11)

Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and he spent the whole night
in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and
picked out twelve of them; he called them ‘apostles’
: Simon whom he called Peter, and his brother Andrew;
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas,
 James son of Alphaeus, Simon called the Zealot,
Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.

  He then came down with them and stopped at a piece of level ground 

where there was a large gathering of his disciples with a great crowd 

of people from all parts of Judaea and from Jerusalem and from the 

coastal region of Tyre and Sidon who had come to hear him and 

to be cured of their diseases. 

People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured, and everyone 

in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him 

that cured them all.

The Church: the ministerial priesthood and the Hierarchy

Today, we remember Christ while praying all night before choosing
—from his disciples— the twelve Apostles.
They —who never cease to be the people of God—
will have a "mission within the mission" of the Church:
to nurture, to encourage and to sustain the sanctity of all the faithful.

Some are called by God to the "ministerial priesthood":
they are the "ordained faithful".
A power has been bestowed upon them;
but this is a "sacred power" to dispense the Bread
and to preach the Word: a power to serve.
They form the "Hierarchy", something which today sounds badly
because it is seen with worldly eyes.
In the Church the hierarchical element is not a privileged "status"
but a "functional element", whose radical aim is to serve our brothers.
"Ministry" exactly means service. The Pope’s title, precisely, is
"The Servant of the Servants of God".

—O Jesus, we request from You pastors with a heart like Yours.
You, Who came not to be served but to serve.

Without Jesus the Redeemer it is inevitable to "harden the heart" - Without Christ, we are nothing

Today's Gospel Reading (Luke 6,6-11)
On the sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach, 
and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 
The scribes and the Pharisees were watching him to see if he would cure a man 
on the sabbath, hoping to find something to use against him. 
But he knew their thoughts; and he said to the man with the withered hand, 
‘Stand up! Come out into the middle.’ And he came out and stood there. 
Then Jesus said to them, ‘I put it to you: is it against the law on the sabbath 
to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to destroy it?’ 
Then he looked round at them all and said to the man, 
‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so, and his hand was better. 
But they were furious, and began to discuss the best way of dealing with Jesus.


Without Jesus the Redeemer it is inevitable to 

"harden the heart"

Today, we all —Jews and non-Jews— must make a firm resolution:
we have to "die to ourselves" and recognize Jesus the Redeemer.
Without God man does not explain himself and falls into absurdity
and contradictions. It is then inevitable to "harden the heart",
rejecting any self-knowledge and denying our own guilt,
unless there is "Someone" who also carries this guilt, who "develops" it
and who forgives it.

There occurs a reciprocity here: without the idea of the Redeemer —
who does not conceal His guilt, but suffers it— we cannot bear the truth
of our own guilt and we appeal to the first deception:
our blind obstinacy in front of this guilt, from which all other deceptions
are born, to end up with our total incapacity to face the truth.
And conversely: it is not possible to know the Redeemer and
believe in Him without the courage to be honest with ourselves.

—O Lord, I ask you the grace of the "confession" to recognize the truth:
yours (I need You!) and mine (I am not "God", but a weak creature!).

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading         Ez     33:7-9
Psalm                       Ps     95 : 1-2. 6-7 . 8-9(8)
Second Reading    Rom 13:8-10
Gospel                      Mt    18:15-20

In today's first reading is a reminder of God's call to all His people, a most profound and yet challenging ones - to be a prophet to the sinful and ignorant.

In second reading, the most important God has for us is to LOVE one another like yourself. It is further connected into the gospel where we have to constantly remind and bring those who did something wrong back to the arm fold of God. It is easy to be said than done. The nature of human kind is individualism, we can not see out of our own perspective and often reject others.

God asked us to go private for the first approach to them and try to point out and assist them out of their blind spot. If this don't work out, do not give up on him. Bring the community along to counsel them to repent and conversion of heart. The last resort if the matters is too serious and could be detrimental to the Church only shall we bring this to her hierarchy.

We are hold accountable for any soul that is lost knowing that they are swaying away from the path set by God. If we do our best to guide them back to the right track and yet unsuccessful, we are righteously His sons and daughters. He'll take care of the rest.

Commentary and excerpt from Fr. Edmund Woon's homily on 04/09/11

New Covenant - The underlying meaning is more important than the act.

Today's Gospel Reading (Luke 5,33-39)


³³ They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”
 ³⁴ Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”
 ³⁶ He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. ³⁷And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. ³⁸ No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. ³⁹And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

The "New Covenant"

Today, facing the Pharisaic ritualism, the "new wine" brings us
to the panorama of the "renewed" Covenant of God with men.
Before Israel’s disloyalty, God reiterated the "Covenant", and finally,
Christ sealed it in its "new" and "definitive" form.
The Sinai Covenant was centered on two elements:
1. the "Blood Covenant" (the sacrificial blood from animals
was sprinkled on the altar —God’s symbol— and on the people);
2. God’s word and the promise of Israel’s obedience.

This promise was broken by Israel’s "idolatry" and a number of
repeated noncompliances, as shown in the Old Testament.
The rupture seemed unavoidable when God sent His people i
nto exile and the Temple was thrown open for destruction.
But then, the hope of the "New Covenant" emerged,
not based on the always fragile human loyalty,
but on an inviolable obedience: that of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

—O Jesus, as a servant, You assume my disobedience in your
"obedience unto death". Give me a "new" heart!