Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Intro­duc­tion         Happy new month and wel­come to the month of Decem­ber, the month of the inaug­ur­a­tion of sal­va­tion! The gen­er­al mes­sage of the First Sunday of Advent was Jesus’ invit­a­tion to his dis­ciples and to all believ­ers to stay awake, to avoid being taken by sur­prise as in the day of Noah. In the reflec­tion of Last Sunday, I did say that “in the Scrip­tur­al under­stand­ing, being watch­ful implies not just mere care­ful­ness and alert­ness, but being just and right­eous. It is equi­val­ent to the…

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Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion Ety­mo­lo­gic­ally, the term advent derives from the Lat­in advÄ•ntum, arrival and advenÄ«re to arrive. Hence, it is a peri­od or moment of expect­a­tion for some­thing moment­ous. In our con­text, that is, in the reli­gious or Chris­ti­an con­text, Advent is a pre-Christ­mas peri­od. It is the peri­od includ­ing the four Sundays before the feast of Christ­mas. In its ori­gin­al mean­ing, the word advent means arrival, com­ing of a thing, an event or of an import­ant per­son­al­ity. Major­ity of Chris­ti­an denom­in­a­tions observe these weeks as time…

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Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Pre­amble The Solem­nityof Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Uni­verse, pop­ularly called the Feast of Christ the King, was insti­tuted by Pope Pius XI in 1925. For the Roman Cath­ol­ic Church, it was moved to the last Sunday in Ordin­ary Time in 1970. Tra­di­tion­ally, the feast can­not take place before 20^th or after 27^th of Novem­ber. That means, it must be cel­eb­rated between 20^th-27^th Novem­ber each year. The feast marks the end of the Ordin­ary Time and the Church’s Litur­gic­al Year. It is fol­lowed by…

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Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion Jesus will nev­er cease to amaze us. Every occa­sion was an oppor­tun­ity to teach some­thing new. Even the dis­cus­sion on the archi­tec­tur­al dec­or­a­tions of the Temple was used as an occa­sion to instruct, teach and edu­cate his listen­ers on the true nature of the king­dom of God, and the cost of wit­ness­ing to the Good News. Both the litur­gic­al year of the Church and the civil year are gradu­ally com­ing to a con­clu­sion. The Church in her wis­dom, organ­izes the weekly and Sunday readings…

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Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Plot­ting to trap Jesus Fol­low­ing Luke’s present­a­tion, Jesus has made his ingress into the of Jer­u­s­alem. And in Luke 19:45–48, Jesus per­formed his first activ­ity in Jer­u­s­alem. Luke notes that as soon as Jesus entered the Temple courts, he drove out those who turned the house of God into a mar­ket arena. After that, he taught the people in the Temple on daily basis. Instead of listen­ing to his teach­ings, the chief priests, the teach­ers of law and the lead­ers of the people were ser­i­ous looking…

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