MARY … BY MANY NAMES BUT STILL OUR MOTHER

Many of us have been for pilgrimages around the world visiting various Shrines of our Lady either locally or abroad. Our pilgrimages and our honour to Our Lady have inspired our devotion to Her and have led us to conversion and confession. Mother Mary has inspired me very much since my seminary days and She is still inspiring and stirring me in my own priestly ministry till today. She has always echoed in me to not be afraid. Most of the nights before I go up to my room I used to visit our St Joseph’s Shrine and Our Lady at the Grotto. I just ask them to accompany all of our parishioners in all things that we undertake here in our parish. I am sure many of you also make personal requests to St Joseph and Mother Mary. Some of us have really forgotten their accompaniments and their real presence in our lives. This year we reflect very much on Our Lady of Fatima as the Church celebrates Her 100 years apparition in Fatima, Portugal.

Mother Mary has many names or titles. In the Litany of Our Lady we can refer to many different titles of Mary.  Some of her titles refer to a city or town name corresponding to an apparition location, for instance, Our Lady of Lourdes or Our Lady of Fatima or Our Lady of Guadalupe. There are also devotional titles of Our Lady, e.g. Our Lady of Perpetual Help or Our Lady of Sorrows, etc. There are other titles, which associated with a unique history. One such devotion is to Mary under the title of Our Lady Help of Christians. There are some churches which have dedicated titles of Mary. Each title of Mary is unique, and has its own origin and history and the devotions are more or less are the same calling us to pray the Rosary. Each time when we pray the Rosary, it draws us closer to Jesus and helps us to grow in our spiritual life.

Most of our Catholics have great devotions to Our Blessed Virgin Mary because of her role in salvation history. The Catholic Church is trying her best to teach us in various forms to equip our knowledge about Her through homilies, readings and viewings or hearings from various audio-visual. Many of us are taught from childhood to honour Mary and to have devotions to Her by praying the Rosary and we are still faithful to it. We have our personal experiences when we were wandered from our Catholic faith. She has interceded for us endlessly and brought us back to Jesus and Catholic Church. The Rosary is central for our individual’s faith and in the faith of our Church. She has been real in our life right?

Do not give up saying the Rosary daily. You may feel nothing is happening in your life and things are not going well right now. Just remain faithful to Her and Her husband, St Joseph. They will bring all your prayers and desires into reality. They will bring you much closer to their Son, Jesus Christ when you surrender to the will of God. Jesus will do everything according to His plan and bring all things possible.

As we know 13^th October 1917 is known as the sixth and last Apparition of Our Lady to three peasant children in Fatima and the Church celebrates the 100^th year anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima’s apparition. To commemorate this day, on 13 October 2017 (Friday), the regular weekly morning Mass comers had Rosary immediately after the Morning Mass at 7.15. In the evening at 7.30, the Prayer group and Legion of Mary of our parish conducted the Rosary in the Church. Our Lady of Rosary has given a message to the world to continue to say the Rosary daily. Let’s not give up reciting the Rosary daily in our lives. She will stand by us in all things that we do and obtain for us whatever we ask.

OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY PRAY FOR US!

"YES" to GOD'S INVITATION

The parable of the royal wedding banquet (MT 22:1-14), Christ is giving us a sense of the heaven that He is preparing for us. The story begins with a party. There was a king who wanted to celebrate the wedding of his son. The king invited some of the people for the party but they refused. Then the king expanded the invitation to everyone both good and bad. The story ends with the king discovering a guest who is not wearing a wedding garment. The king ordered him to throw him out into the darkness. The final words, “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Heaven is compared to a party, a celebration. Even when we turn the invitation, God still invites us. Entrance to heaven and the party is not determined by our goodness, but by God’s abundant grace. Saying “No,” to an invitation would be an insult. It would bring shame and force the king to act in order to reclaim his honour. If we strive every day to please our Lord and to live in his grace, we will have our wedding gown ready for the banquet.

Many times we refuse God’s invitations to celebrate and live our discipleships. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ involves saying, “Yes,” to God’s invitation. All we need to do is to accept God’s invitation.

MONTH OF OCTOBER: SAY THE ROSARY EVERY DAY

This year is the 100th anniversary of the visions at Fatima. This month of October is a good time to pray the Rosary as BECs, families or individuals to honour Our Lady of Fatima. On this centenarian celebration the Church invites us to focus on “conversion of sinners.” It also calls all Catholics to say the Rosary daily.

The practice of praying the Rosary has gradually been abandoned by many families and individuals because of distractions and busyness.  Many Catholic parents and adults are so occupied they do not have time to pray by themselves or with their families.

Praying the Rosary is not easy. Finding a moment to recite the Rosary during our busy day can be a challenge. At times we do partial rosaries. We just say a decade or two a day.  At times we may say hurried rosaries because of our busyness.  We may also say the rosary while driving to work and returning from work. Perhaps we ‘pray-on-the-go’.  All these activities could detract from the merits of praying the rosary.  A common excuse for not saying the rosary is that it’s boring to recite it.  

Why do we need to pray the Rosary? It doesn't matter how busy our day is but the important thing is that we should take every effort to pray as a family in all our busyness. The moment we pray the Rosary in the midst of our hectic schedule, we give an opportunity to let Mother Mary come into our lives.

When we pray the Rosary, we grow stronger as a family.  Praying the Rosary daily gives us a spiritual power to battle with sin. We must always remind ourselves that whenever temptations are high, not to forget to pull out our rosaries from our pockets or hand bags and say at least one or two decades of the Rosary at once. It may give you sufficient strength and spiritual power to defeat evil.  We need regularly to focus and reconnect ourselves with our heavenly Mother to gain strength from Her Son, Jesus Christ.

 

One of the reasons why people lose their faith is that they drop the practice of praying the Rosary, either as a family or individually.  We need the Rosary. We should pray the Rosary without fear or doubt. God will answer your prayers when you pray sincerely and with faith. Many parents are very worried about their children. With the rosary in our hands and with the assistance of our Blessed Mother Mary, we have a place to send our worries and anxieties for our children to come back to our Lord Jesus. The Rosary will save our children when they divert themselves from the way towards God.  When we say the Rosary daily it will stop them from ever leaving their faith in Christ.

May we be resolute in setting aside a special time just to pray the Rosary. We see around us much disunity within church communities and families today. The Church believes that the Rosary unites and brings peace. Many families and communities faithfully dedicate themselves to the daily recitation of the Rosary for peace, harmony, selflessness and love.

At Fatima, Our Lady said this directly: “Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and to save the world.”

GOD IS THE OWNER

In today’s parable  (MATT 21: 33-43), a landowner plants a vineyard and does all that is necessary to ensure that the land bears fruit and produces a harvest. The landowner satisfied with his preparations, rents the vineyard to tenant farmers. When the landowner sent his servants to collect his rightful share of the fruit, the farmers mistreated some, beat up others and even killed some of them.

The landowner in this parable is a reference to God, the vineyard is the Israel, the tenants is the Jewish religious leaders, the landowner’s servants are the prophets, the son represents Jesus Christ.

We seem to be repeating the same mistake today. We fail to see God as the owner of everything we have and refuse to give Him His just demands. We deny ourselves His blessings. We are still rejecting God’s love today and instead of righteous living have become self-righteous. Our disobedience has resulted in hate, envy and greed. The desire to be in control of our own lives is the main reason behind the rejection of God’s love.


So many times, instead of seeking the Lord, we seek ourselves. We try to influence everything so that what is good and true is defined according to our will rather than His will. Let us produce the fruits of the kingdom to the praise and glorift the Lord.

MY ENCOUNTERS WITH MONSIGNOR ANTHONY THOMAS

The demise of Monsignor Anthony Thomas on 24 September 2017 has brought great sadness and grieving to those who have known him personally and to those who have worked with him closely in various parishes in the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur.

I have very little experience working with the late Monsignor Anthony Thomas. In January 2002 I was assigned to do pastoral work for a month at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Peel Road, Kuala Lumpur. It was an assignment just before my final year in the seminary. I stayed with him and I worked with the youth ministry and altar servers. He hardly spoke to me and he seldom invited me to have meals together. I noticed he was a poor eater and he always skipped his meals. He was a very observant man. On my last day of my mission in his parish, he commented on some of my good qualities and appreciated very much the enthusiasm that I had in carrying out my task with the youths and altar servers and his congregation.

During my early years priesthood, I didn’t interact and converse much with him. When I was posted to Seremban, I had an opportunity to work with him at the Negeri Sembilan district level. He was then Parish Priest of Church of St Aloysius, Mantin (2008-2013). During that time his memory was slowly declining. We used to hold our priests’ district meetings in Seremban. However, on two occasions he lost his way to the Church of Visitation, Seremban. Once he drove around Seremban town for almost 2 hours before getting to the Church. The second time he ended up in Port Dickson. From then on I decided to send someone to fetch him from his parish.

During one of our district meetings he shared with our district priests about his joy of ministering in his parish. He told us that he had only 70 families and majority of them are Chinese. He expressed his wonderful time visiting all the families in Mantin. It was a very small community but he brought life to his parish. He too shared with us about his intention to refurbish the Carmelite Monastery, which was situated at the back of his Church. The monastery was abandoned for few years after the Carmelite Sisters moved to their new premise at Seremban. He wanted to turn it into a pastoral center for the state of Negeri Sembilan. I was so impressed with his ideas and his visions for the churches in Negeri Sembilan even though his mental health was gradually deteriorating.

I was able to work together with the late Monsignor Thomas for two years in the same district before pursuing my post-graduate studies in overseas from 2010 to 2012. In 2013, I went to pay him a courtesy visit as well as made my confession with him at Mantin. After that we sat together but we hardly spoke to each other. Each time when I said something he just ignored me. For almost an hour he just didn't pay attention to me. That made me bored. Finally, I asked him, “Father, shall we go for a drive?” He was so agreeable and I took him for a drive towards Nilai town and we visited Church of St Theresa, Nilai. He was so high-spirited after that. I realised he liked driving around by car.

Lately, a few months before his passing, Cardinal Soter Fernandez insisted that I come and visit Monsignor Thomas at the Little Sister of the Poor, Cheras so that we could take him for a drive in the town. Today, I felt sad that I didn’t make an attempt to take him for a drive together with Cardinal Soter.

The late Monsignor Thomas was a man of prayer and a very good priest and counselor. He built beautiful Church community centers and grew faithful communities in all the parishes that he was sent to. He left a very significant legacy in each parish that he served and ministered to. Today, these parishioners really miss him dearly and expressed their sympathy that comes from their hearts. “Monsignor Thomas, our thoughts and prayers are with you!”