Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs) or White (Mass of our Lady)
Beloved brother and sisters in Christ, today we continue to listen to the reality of the Lord’s mission in this world, that is to be betrayed by His beloved, to be forsaken, rejected, and finally to suffer death although He is innocent, that through His death, all may gain eternal life in Him.
The Lord had come to be the Saviour of all, the One who bring forth the light of God into the darkened world, and into the darkened hearts of men. Through His coming and saving works, He had brought the hopelessness of mankind in the face of death and sin, into a new dawn of hope, the hope in He who died for all that they may live.
Dear brethren, as the Lord Himself had said, He came into the world to ransom His people, to deliver them from the fate they were to suffer for eternity, all for following the devil and listening to his lies instead of the truths of God. He ransomed all of us, from the hands of the devil, our slavemaster, not through gold, silver, or any form of material possessions and money, but through His own Most Precious Blood, the Blood of the Lamb.
That Blood is blood that saves and purifies, and which washes us clean from the filth of our sins and faults, making us perfect again in the eyes of God. That once we who were unworthy of God and His kingdom, now be made worthy and ready to be accepted again. The Blood shed from the innocent and purest lamb of all, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.
He did not resist at all when the chief priests and the Pharisees captured Him and tortured Him. He was indeed like a lamb being led to the slaughter, never complaining and in complete obedience to the will of God, the Father of all. Jesus is our Paschal Lamb, the One who offered Himself as the perfect and acceptable sacrifice to the throne of God.
That He was willing to suffer in place of us for the punishments intended to us, to bear that cross for our sake, and to bear all the humiliations imaginable, just that we may have hope and be saved, should have awakened us from our slumber, from our ignorance, yes, ignorance from the love of God most kind and forgiving,
Without Him, there can be no hope, and without His suffering, all of us will suffer, suffer from the consequences of our sins and of our wayward ways, away from the Lord our God. It is in the suffering of Christ that He shared our sufferings and bore it upon Himself, that we are freed from the weight of that yoke, the yoke of sin. And in His glorious resurrection, He lifted us all up from our old ways, from our old slavery to death, into a new life that He guaranteed through His own resurrection, as One who had conquered death.
Today, we celebrate the feast of several saints, first of which is St. Wenceslas or Wenceslaus, one of the first kings of Bohemia in the early Medieval era Germany, one of the first converts to the faith in that nation, which just a generation before was the nation of pagans and barbarians who ransacked many of Christendom’s countries. Even at the time of St. Wenceslaus, there were still strong pagan elements in the country, opposed to him and his rule as a Christian ruler.
Nevertheless, St. Wenceslaus remained faithful and committed to the cause of the Lord, and was known to be a good and caring ruler, who cared especially for the poor and the oppressed among his people, and worked hard to help spread the faith in the country where he ruled. This of course resulted in opposition to build up from the pagan elements in the society and among the nobles.
St. Wenceslaus was martyred for the faith, when he was murdered on his way to the church by his brother and his noble supporters. While his brother was a Christian himself, but many of the nobles who supported him were not, and they resented St. Wenceslaus’ attempts to bring the faith to them. Therefore, in the defense of his faith, St. Wenceslaus had given his life, and his blood, for the sake of the Lord, for the spreading of the Gospel and the salvation of his people.
St. Lawrence Ruiz or Lorenzo Ruiz and his companions are the other saints whom we commemorate on this day, also as martyrs of the faith, shedding their blood for the sake of the Lord. St. Lawrence Ruiz is the first saint of the Philippines, who was martyred with several others in Japan. He was born in the Philippines during the early seventeenth century, when Spain owned the Philippines. He lived a relatively normal life until he was falsely accused of a crime, which prompted him to hide in exile, which happened to be in a ship bound for Japan.
St. Lawrence Ruiz arrived in Japan at a time of very great difficulty for any of the faithful of the Lord. Although just decades before Japan was truly a ripe ground for evangelisation, which saw hundreds of thousands converted into the faith, during the time of St. Lawrence Ruiz in Japan, the new Tokugawa shogunate government had changed their policy against Christians from tolerance and warmth into an open and vicious persecution.
Christians everywhere in Japan were threatened to abandon their faith or lose their lives through harsh torture and pain. Many recanted their faith following these threats, but equally many persevered in their faith and ended up being martyred, through various methods like crucifixion, beheading, and burning, many of them cruel and painful in nature.
St. Lawrence Ruiz and his companions were also captured and subjected to these torturous methods, and were asked to abandon their faith in God. They resisted and remained staunch in their undying faith to God. They forsake their earthly life in order to obtain the life in heaven, which is eternal, from the Lord.
Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, after listening to the life stories of these courageous and faithful martyrs of the Lord, who did not shy from even risking their lives for the true faith, and recalling the very sacrifice Jesus had endured on the cross for our salvation, let us then, brethren, be proactive in our faith, no longer sitting down and let what God has given us go to waste, and instead, let us bravely take up our crosses, as the martyrs and saints had done, and go to proclaim to the whole world, the salvation of our Lord, offered to all those who believe in Him.
May the Lord continue to empower and strengthen us, in our mind, body, and speech, that we will be able to be strong and courageous bearers of His holy Gospels, the bearer of the Good News of salvation, inspired by the examples of the holy saints and martyrs, St. Wenceslaus, St. Lawrence Ruiz and his companions. God bless us all. Amen.
