Legal fraternity need two elements — prayer and humility

KUALA LUMPUR: Approximately 70 Catholic Lawyers gathered at St John’s Cathedral to begin the legal year with the celebration of the Red Mass.The main celebrant was His Lordship Richard Ng DD, Bishopof Miri.

Concelebrating at the RedMass were His Grace Archbish-op Julian Leow and ArchbishopEmeritus Murphy Pakiam, Fr Jes-tus Pereira and Catholic LawyersSociety (CLS) spiritual advisorFr Michael Chua. In his sermon,Bishop Ng explained two pointsthat resonate from the readingsof the day. The first was the em-phasis on prayer and the secondthe element of humility. He ex-plained that there is no short cut tothe Lord save and except throughprayer.

The communication with theLord through prayer is essential totransform us and get us through allobstacles.

He emphasised that prayer is anecessity and it comes in manyforms. Some prayers are formal,like the Rosary, others are infor-mal. He urged all to ask the Lordthrough prayer to heal us withhis love. Prayer may or may notchange God’s plans but it helpschange us. But he echoed St John’smessage (1 Jn 5:14-21) that if weask anything according to his will,he hears us.The second point he stressedwas on humility.

This, he says,is borne out from the gospel (Jn3:22-30), where the passage em-phasises John the Baptist’s humil-ity. Despite having many follow-ers and disciples, he was humbleenough to tell his followers thathe must decrease and Jesus mustincrease.

Bishop Ng invited all to prayand to work with humility. Heconcluded by reading Pope Fran-cis’ message of peace.CLS President, Rita Wong,thanked all who had helped toanimate the Mass. She remindedthe congregation about St ThomasMore who remained steadfast toGod’s call even though he wassubjected to imprisonment and,ultimately, death.

“Our duty is tosafeguard and work towards themission of the gospel,” she said.Archbishop Julian Leow thankedthe CLS for defending and offer-ing services to the Church and tosociety for the past 25 years.

He appealed to Catholic lawyers toparticipate and be active in theCLS and to build the New Malay-sia. He reminded us that the PrimeMinister has repeated the positionof the Government to uphold therule of law. “We rely on you law-yers to maintain the rule of law,”He said.Also participating at the Masswere YB Teresa Kok, Minister ofPrimary Industries, their Excel-lencies the Ambassadors of Italy,Peru, Switzerland and the Europe-an Union.

Also present was DatukSeri Michael Chong, MCA PublicService Department Chief.The Mass ended with fellow-ship and lunch. — By Dato JoyAppukuttan

Article reproduced from Herald Malaysia online