The Filipino Catholic Community of Gouda and its Surroundings (FCC-Gouda) turned over a new leaf in February, 2021, by having their monthly 4th Sunday mass in the H.- Josephkerk in Gouda. The transfer from the OLV Hemelvaartkerk to the much bigger H.-Josephkerk is marked by the enthusiasm of volunteers to make the Mass Service more meaningful for the whole community.
Elpidia Gutierrez, Irene Hameete, Marlyn Rontal, Rena van Kleunen and Jenny Luna volunteered to train as flexible sexton ( koster) and acolyte. Their training was guided by no less than Fr. Dick van Klaveren, (Sint Jan de Doper Parish Priest) and Ms. José Ligthart. The volunteers spent two Saturdays to get acquainted with the Do’s and Don’ts of the church protocols. They also learned how to properly serve and assist the priest during the mass. The orientation, lessons and actual practices and procedures of being Kosters and Acolytes were eagerly met by both parties. Meanwhile, Mr. Hans Oosterwijk spent time learning the mechanics of doing Live Broadcast under the tutelage of Mr. Cees Ligthart.
FCC Gouda volunteers with Ms. José Ligthart
FCC Gouda volunteers with Fr. Dick van Klaveren
On February 28, 2021, the new Kosters/Acolytes were presented and inducted during the 4th Sunday mass by the FCC Gouda Chaplain, Marcel Uzoigwe, CSSp. They took an oath to acknowledge themselves as members of the Catholic Church, living according to the Catholic profession of faith, to devote themselves with love and peace to the service of God in the community, to render service for worthy celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and to do all the responsibilities and tasks where they are chosen for to do.
Oath Taking of new acolytes by Fr, Marcel Uzoigwe, CSSp with Ms. José Ligthart. L-R: José Ligthart, Rena van Kleunen, Jenny Luna, Elpidia Gutierrez, Irene Hameete. Marlyn Rontal is also one of the newly trained acolytes but not on the photo.
Fr. Marcel Uzoigwe thanked all volunteers, blessed and praised them for answering and accepting the call of God to serve the community. He challenged them to offer their best to the Lord, to the Filipino Community and all the church communities which may require their services. Finally, he asked them to live a life in Christ and make Him known to all through witness, service and work.
Two women stood before the 12th century Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. One asked, “Why can’t we build structures like this anymore?” Her friend answered, “The people who built this had faith. Today we have opinions. And you can’t build a cathedral with opinions.” Great faith does mighty works. Whoever has faith in God must be willing to listen to God and serve him in obedience otherwise the faith is just sterile and empty. Your belief determines your action and your action determines your result, but first you have to listen to know what God is saying to you.
In our first reading this Sunday Gen.22:-18, God puts Abraham to the test and demands that he sacrifices his only son, Isaac. Abraham being a man of great faith, did not hesitate to obey, not minding that he and his wife, Sarah were already advanced in years to beget another child through whom God would fulfill his earlier promise that Abraham would be the father of many nations.
In this narrative, Abraham is presented as a sublime model of self-sacrificing and obedient faith. Just when Abraham thinks that God’s promises of making him the father of many nations, had been realized in the person of Isaac, the son of his old age, God makes what looks like the most incomprehensible demand on him. However, when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God intervened, sending an angel to stop Abraham. The Angel commends Abraham for his obedient faith and then asked him to use the ram hooked by its horns in the bush for the sacrifice in place of his son, Isaac. In rewards for his obedient faith, God appeared again to Abraham and said, “because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.” By willing to offer his only Son, Isaac, Abraham wins God’s approval and even greater blessings. He emerged with a stronger faith in God.
The Gospel reading presents the transfiguration of Jesus in the presence of three of his disciples. The scene described a very remarkable event of Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah, the two great men symbolizing the Law and the Prophets. Caught up in this marvelous scene, Peter asked to build three tents for Jesus and the two men. The glory was so powerful that Peter wouldn’t want to return. But then came the voice of the Father who, confirming Jesus as His beloved Son, commanded the disciples to listen to Him. Like Abraham who did not hold back his son Isaac, God is not holding back Jesus, but offering Him up for the salvation of all people. What is required on our part is obedient fellowship in doing all that Jesus would ask of us. Thus, the command, “listen to Him”.
The event of the first reading forshadows the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets who leads us into the new era of God’s salvific plan. What God demands of us is to render him obedient fellowship. Like the disciples of Jesus, we have to learn to listen to Him, to believe in His Word, and to live it out. Abraham did not just have Faith in God, he matched it with obedience. The world does not like the word “obedience”, because it sounds like someone telling you what to do. But how can we grow in Godliness without God telling us how to go about it? Why do we send our children to school if not to learn. Without listening to parents and teachers, children would hardly learn the right things. If God is our Father, then we have to listen to Him and obey His commands, even when it seems difficult.
St. Paul assures us in the second reading that God has our back. We don’t have to be afraid to commit ourselves in carrying out everything he might requires of us. He said, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” God’s assurance is evidenced in the gift of His own Son, Jesus. What else can be more than that? What other assurance do we need to beleive that God is to be trusted, that His commands are perfect and represent our best interest? The foundation for the obedient faith required of us is rooted in God’s faithful and unconditional love shown in the gift of His Son Jesus Christ. That shows the commitment of God to our welfare.
This lenten season is a period to reflect on the events of our salvation. The passion and death of Jesus end with the resurrection, which is a sign of hope. That hope is contained in the glory that was revealed to the disciples during the Transfiguration. Jesus instructed the disciples to keep the event of the Transfiguration secret until he is raised from the dead. We have the benefit of hindsight, helping us to know that pains of death and sacrifice in which we participate in this Lenten period definitely ends in something glorious. That knowledge should inspire us not to withhold anything capable of bringing us closer to God.
Let the sacrifice of Abraham and the passion of Jesus encourage us to render sacrificing services for the good of our brothers and sisters in need, remembering the words of Jesus that, “ whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”.
Exploring the need to be prepared to wait for the right opportunity for success. Visionless life is a worthless way of living. The person is driven by anything that comes around.
Today we celebrate the Sunday of the word of God. The Holy Father, Pope Francis, announced on September 30, 2019, which was the liturgical memorial of St. Jerome, that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time would be celebrated as the Sunday of the Word of God. His Apostolic Letter, “Aperuit illis: Instituting the Sunday of the Word of God” reads in part, “It is fitting, then that the life of our people be constantly marked by this decisive relationship with the living word that the Lord never tires of speaking to his Bride, that she may grow in love and faithful witness. Consequently, I hereby declare that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time is to be devoted to the celebration, study, and dissemination of the word of God.” This apostolic letter emphasized the importance of the word of God in the life of the Church, detailing its richness. It went on to recommend the various ways the word of God can be brought to life, celebrated, and deepened in the life of the faithful. The Scripture is, indeed, central to the life of the church. The readings of today concentrate on the power of the word of God to bring a change to our lifestyle.
The first reading deals with the call of Jonah to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. It begins as follows: The word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying: “Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you.” This implies that the command to preach to the Ninevites is a command from the Lord communicated to Jonah through the word of the Lord. More importantly, Jonah is to announce only the message that the Lord gave, and not his own message. What is to be preached must emanate from the Lord, who commands. Preachers are not to preach their own ideology, but the truth that sets free. The power of the word of God is greater and above the idiosyncrasies of the preacher. This fact is seen in both the refusal of Jonah to go and in the immediate repentance of the people of Nineveh at the preaching of Jonah.
Ordinarily, one expects that Jonah would be happy to see the people he preached to repent. But the converse was the case, simply because the people of Nineveh were considered enemies of Israel. The human desire for vengeance created an obstacle to Jonah accepting the call of God to take his word to them. When he was eventually forced to go, he did, hoping that they would reject his preaching. That explains why he was expecting to see the country destroyed, even after delivering the message of repentance, and becoming angry when God decided to forgive the people of Nineveh (cf. Jonah 3:10; 4:1, 10 -11).
The word of God embodies the very wish of God for his people to repent and return to Him. It is never the will of the Father that any of his little children get lost (cf. Matthew 18:14). The failure of Jonah to rejoice in the conversion of the Ninevites is contrasted with the genuine preaching of repentance that ushered in the ministry of Jesus. It is a call to repentance and to believe in the Good News. The themes of repentance and believing in the Good News summarise the demand of God on the part of his people. God expects us to accept his word like the people of Nineveh and allow it to transform us, aligning our lifestyle to its principles. This is so important that Jesus had to recruit and train his disciples to carry on with this divine project in every generation. We see the call of the first disciples in the Gospel reading; a call that resulted in their change of profession. One striking characteristic of those called is their readiness to “leave everything” to follow Jesus. It is a sign that they considered the message of Jesus as overriding every other thing. Otherwise, they would not give up their livelihood to follow Jesus, especially at such a time that he was considered a poor itinerant preacher by many of his contemporaries.
The word of God calls us to repentance and to believe the Gospel. Repentance is about letting go of whatever is holding us back and pulling us down. Things that are keeping us away from God. The Bible calls them sin because they are offensive to God, but more importantly because they constitute an obstacle to our being united with God. Letting go is a means of growth and advancement toward our real self: the image, and the glory of God. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia (μετάνοια), meaning “after-thought or beyond-thought”, is commonly understood as “a transformative change of heart; especially as a spiritual conversion”. Repentance is the first step to action to which the word of God calls us. The urgency of repentance is echoed in the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor 7:29-31) that forms the second reading. He was direct in pointing out that “the time is running out.” It is vital that we put our priorities right because the world in its present form is passing away.
Repentance is not just for its own sake. Otherwise, we would constantly relapse to the very things from which we repent. Repentance serves to turn us away from the direction of death and destruction so that we can walk toward life and joy in God; to turn away from darkness to light. The component of repentance is acceptance of the Good News of salvation. The Good News is God’s divine plan for humanity and the very reason for the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By accepting the Gospel, we commit ourselves to live according to its principles.
As we celebrate the Sunday of the word of God, it is important to reflect on what role the word of God plays in our daily lives as Christians. This celebration is meant to revive the attention we should pay to the daily devotion of reading and reflecting on the word of God in the Bible. God speaks to us in his word. As St. Jerome is quoted to have said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” I pray that we make the word of God the center of our Christian inspiration and the reference point of our lifestyle.
Planning your life gives you control, gets you to make the right choices and decisions, rather than leaving things up to chance. If you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail.
