KOTA KINABALU: The St Simon Catholic Church Likas rector Fr Cosmas Lee waxed lyrical, in his Mother’s Day homily recently, when he described how the Moon reflects light from the Sun, of which without the latter the Moon won’t be visible from Earth.
“Many fathers, saints and theologians of the Church often use this allegory, this comparison, between the beautiful things on Earth,” Fr Cosmas told the packed Church. “It would not be beautiful if God, the source of all goodness, is not there.”
“Today when we listen to St Peter in the second reading, this incredible pronouncement as to who we are, we must first remember we are who we are because of God whose light, love, care had been made visible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have become who we are because of God, through Jesus, the Risen One.
“Three times St Peter used the word ‘precious’. We are precious. Our mother is precious,” he said, adding that for first-time parents, the wonder of the mystery of fatherhood and motherhood must have struck them.
“God is always the author of life,” he said. “We are but the privileged guardians, stewards. If you remember that the child actually belongs to God, then we love like God first loved us. The child is precious to us not because of the merits, not because of the performance of the child.
“You will shudder if you think of what the child would be one day, as (Mother) Mary was shattered when (the prophet) Simeon told her at the presentation of the temple that her child would be like a sword that would pierce her heart,” Fr Cosmas said.
“We love the child because the child is a visible sign of God’s love. In the same way, when St Peter pronounced that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called us out of the darkness into His own wonderful light, when we hear that we know that God loves us because we resemble Him, we resemble Jesus Christ.
“For the sake of Jesus, God will never ever stop loving us. The whole of humanity will be precious to God because the Word has taken flesh upon Himself until the end of time.
“We are precious not because we are good, we have performed well, we have not betrayed God – no. Completely unrelated to our performance, God considers us precious, something we must really understand in this time of Easter. We are precious to God, we are a chosen race.
“We are precious because, like His Son, we bring people to God. That’s what He does – He brings people to God, make God present in their life. And like Jesus, this is where the challenge comes: we will be stones rejected by the builders. The builders of the buildings of the world today are very powerful. We’re rejected because they say, ‘there’s no God, no truth – it’s up to you to define what is truth’.
“Jesus in today’s Gospel reveals how He loves us. He says, ‘Don’t be troubled, trust in Me still’. He tells us today that despite the rejection by the builders, we must trust in Him still. There are many rooms in His Father’s house. He will prepare one for each of us and then He will return and He will take us back to Him so that where He is, we will also be forever,” Fr Cosmas said, concluding his sermon.
Before the final blessing, the rector called upon all the mothers present to go around the altar for the Mother’s Day blessing (as seen in featured photo at top). Following is the prayer:
Let us pray: God our Father and Mother, we thank You because all that have life have come from You. And in Your wisdom and design, You created woman, that she may be the mother of all those who live in this world. We thank You for the mothers in our presence today as we respect and we honour them, we ask that You may bless them.
Give them the love, the tenderness, the faithfulness and the unconditional love You have for us that they may always love the children that You have given them. So bless them today, may You rejoice over motherhood. May they thank You for the gift of being mother to children.
Bless their families and children, too, and may the whole world see Your glory because the world sees good mothers. We ask this through Christ our Lord. AMEN.
After the morning Mass, there was a cake-cutting ceremony for mothers at the parish hall.
St Simon Catholic Church Likas 