Psalm 100:2-4
Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. Worship is at the centre of church life and the individual life of each believer. The practice of worship demonstrates an active spiritual life. Without worship, there is no spiritual life. Worship is everything we do with God, it is prayer, it is singing to God, it is meditation, it is confession, it is adoration, it is reflection of God's words, it is work of charity. For Catholics, the mass is the centre of our worship life. It is source and summit of our faith. It is initiated by Jesus at the last supper with his apostles with instructed to do it in remembrance of him. This is the greatest sacrament because Christ himself is present in the consecrated bread and wine. Jesus died more than 2,000 years ago. Through his death, man receives forgiveness and healing of our soul. Every time we celebrate mass we receives the grace of forgiveness and healing and increases our capacity to love, to be a better person, to be wise and to be joyful and peaceful. Let us thanks God for the gift of worship and let us worship together with this beautiful and spirit-filled song. Psalm 145 1
I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. David teaches us how to praise God and truly speak to the Lord with words which do not plead for earthly needs, for physical comforts, for any of those usual requests by man, who asks the Most High for very earthly things. It is not a sin to ask for them. The Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ has taught men to ask for their daily bread. But, if one were to properly meditate on it, He placed this request-for an entirely human need-after the three sublime requests:
These are words from the Our Father. The prayer that Jesus teaches us. The perfect prayer, because it is taught by the Word. After the 3 sublime words of prayer, only we ask God for our earthy needs when we say 'Give us this day our daily bread'. After this, the prayer rises up again from the human need for food to the spiritual needs of the soul when we say "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,' We finish by asking our Father to depend us from temptation, thus concluding the prayer at the spiritual level. This prayer, without any gap or defect, teaches man how, why, and for what he should pray. But man generally does nothing but pray for earthly and material needs. And if it were only for the need of bread! The ones who prays only for spiritual things and for the glory of God and the welfare of his brothers are like a star set aflame. Heaven sees these solitary people at prayer, and their prayers reach heaven like a song amidst the poor and earthy requests of ninety percent of creatures. Blessed are those who are able to pray for the spirit and for spiritual things. More blessed are those who are able to pray not even to ask for holy things, but to say, 'You, that know what is best for me, give me what's best.' Most blessed are those who come to forget about themselves and asking God to do what is best, but say only, 'I pray that what is for your glory and what may serve to sanctify my brothers and sisters may be accomplished.' "Then the one at prayer rises to perfect prayer, to that which forgets one's own martyrdoms, but entreats for others. The prayer of Most Holy Jesus on the Cross, even loftier than the prayer of obedience in Gethsemane. Loftier because it is perfect charity: 'Father, forgive them.' David has instructed us to the sing a new song to the Lord, so we obey, we sing, we make singing to God part of our life. We believe that it glorifies God when we sing to him. We believe that when we sing we show our love for God, we demonstrate our spirituality, our religiosity, our commitment. We sing because we are charismatic, we are spirit-filled.
But David gave the reason for the singing, and that is sing a new song for God has done marvelous things; or great things, or wonderful things, or extraordinary things. Our singing is driven by seeing God's marvelous things. Without the seeing, we can't sign the way David wants us to sing. We sing because God has done marvelous thing in our life. Do we see God's marvelous work in our life? We need to see because it is an important pre-condition to singing. Yes, we do have the God-given ability to see. Through the gift of faith, we see that God has provided for all our needs, for example. To make it more concrete and real, we have seen God's marvelous work when Jojoy got his working permit in the most unexpected manner, when Patrick and Anne got new jobs back at the right time, when Sonny got a renewal of his job, when Moonyeen and I got special arrangement to visit and care for our ageing parents; and John and Princess are blessed with wonderful boys. Even is difficult and challenging times, we have seen His protection, provision and guidance. If we go deeper, we can also see God's mercy. He did not only forgive our sins but also healed our soul and renewed our spirit, allowing us to take part in His work through CFC. In our community we often hear stories of repentance, conversion and transformation, These are the marvelous works of God happening in our own community. One must see the marvelous works of God. This is vital when we sing a new song to God as David calls us. Praised be to God. Amen |
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March 2024
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