Monday in the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 14, 2025

Matthew 10, 34 — 11, 1

Jesus said to his Apostles: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because he is a disciple– amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”  When Jesus finished giving these commands to his Twelve disciples, he went away from that place to teach and to preach in their towns.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.”  The Greek actually says, “I came to set peace”.  The Greek says “I came” in the aorist tense, which indicates the simple past, rather than the perfect tense in the translation.  And it is “to set” or “to place”, not ‘to bring”.  The sense is that the Lord is looking back at his Incarnation and its purpose.  “I have come” implies a gradual emergence.  The Lord’s message at the end of his life is the same as when he began to preach.  He has not come to “set” peace, that is, to make it solid upon the earth.  If we had peace now, we would have less incentive to strive for heaven.  Instead, he has “come to bring not peace but the sword.”  Again, to “set” the sword, to establish enmity.  The Lord elaborates: “to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother.”  That is, to make a man hostile against his father, etc.  This is no mere difference of opinion but open warfare between even members of the same family: “One’s enemies will be those of his household.”  We do not see the Lord actually doing this during his Public Life, so we have to understand what he is saying in a different way.  That is, the revelation of his divinity and the Gospel he preached will sharply divide people.  There will be no neutrality regarding him and his teachings.  As the Lord himself says, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew 20, 12).  

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”  This is both a warning and an exhortation.  It is a warning for those whose faith is weak, and an exhortation for those whose faith is strong.  As a warning, the one with the weak faith is admonished to pray for strength and to set his eyes on the Crucifix.  As an exhortation his words fortify the one who finds hostility from family or friends regarding the place of the Lord Jesus in his life.  Even more, a person must love Jesus more than loves his own life: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”  That is, the believer must accept the consequences of believing and spreading the Gospel.  We are servants who ought not to think of ourselves in our service to the Lord: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”  He is speaking particularly to his Apostles, who will later found and govern churches in the fullness of the Priesthood as bishops.  Therefore, whoever receives the appointed representative of the Lord for the sake of the Lord, receives the Lord.  But this is also true for all the faithful, for inasmuch as we are baptized and made members of the Body of Christ and are nourished by his Sacraments, we all represent the Lord.  Those who receive us and our virtuous examples and prudential words also receive the Lord — he works through all of us.

The Lord’s words here are uncompromising.  If anyone but the Son of God had uttered them, we should think him a madman.  No mere human can make demands like this of another human.  But God not only can, but he does, for it is by his will that we were created and that we are preserved in existence.  He is our beginning and end, and without him we can do nothing (cf. John 15, 5).  He alone can save us. And teach us how to be saved.  Increasingly in our world we find that meaning melts away as soon as we look at it hard.  But the Son of God means what he says, and he will save the one who loves him more than father or mother and who preserves his faith through the hostility of those who oppose God.  Those who do not love him above all things will not be able to persevere in their faith in him, and they will fall away into darkness.  It is so necessary for us to pray regularly, continuously, to God so that our faith and love might increase, and our hope one day become certainty.

The 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, July 13, 2025

Luke 10, 25-37

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’ Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

The Samaritans claim to be the descendants of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Joseph, which had settled in the north of the Promised Land at the time of the conquest by Joshua.  At the time of the Assyrian conquest of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C., very many members of these and the other northern tribes were relocated to Assyria and elsewhere.  Few of these ever returned to their homeland.  The survivors of these depopulation efforts continued to practice their tribal customs and to maintain their traditional worship of God.  One hundred and twenty-four years later, the Kingdom of Judah in the south was conquered by the Kingdom of Babylon.  Very many citizens of Judah, especially among the governing and priestly classes, were exiled to Babylon.  During the approximately seventy years of exile, the Jewish religion — that is, the religion of the Judahites, properly speaking — formed.  The writings of the Torah and of the Prophets were copied and organized, and a sense strengthened that all who worshipped God must worship him in the Temple in Jerusalem.  The rebuilding of the Temple became the priority of the people once they returned from Babylon.  To the Samaritans who had remained behind and whose religion had not changed much over the years since the fall of Judah, the “new” Jewish religion seemed like a sect that had broken off from the true worship of God, which they had maintained.  But to the Jews, the refusal of the Samaritans to acknowledge the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem as central to the worship of God was a rejection of the Covenant.  At the risk of oversimplifying, we can perhaps see this break as between the orthodox and reformed believers, or between those who refuse to change and those who adapt to the times.  Contact between members of the two groups was limited.  The Jews allowed themselves to buy food from the Samaritans, but they would not have engaged in any social activities with them. 

The Lord Jesus speaks in this parable of “a Samaritan traveler who came upon [the wounded Jew] was moved with compassion at the sight.”  Now, probably the Samaritan knew this man was a Jew, since the road lay in land between Jericho and Jerusalem, that is, in Jewish territory, although not far from that of Samaria.  Yet Jesus expressly tells us that this Samaritan “was moved with compassion” at the sight of this wounded and perhaps dead Jewish man.  Luke uses Greek verb here to tell us how Jesus felt when he saw the widow whose son had died, and whom he would raise (Luke 7, 13).  The Lord then touched the bier on which the dead man was being carried out of the city to his grave, causing those who were carrying it to stop in their tracks.  With the words, “Young man, I say to you, Arise,” the man sat up and began to speak.  Luke concludes this account with the words, “And he gave him to his mother.”  Something similar happens in the parable.  The Samaritan is so moved to compassion that he does not fear to touch even death, but does so and finds the man still alive.  Hurrying, the Samaritan unburden his beast of whatever merchandise or goods it was carrying and put the man on it, which must have taken a good deal of work to do this by himself.  Then, cleaning his wounds and binding them up, he left his goods behind, possibly hiding them in nearby caves, and took him to an “inn”.  This inn would have been something like a bunkhouse, or a cabin with several beds or simply straw mattresses on the floor.  Privacy would have occurred only if there were no other occupants to the place.  The Samaritan left the (Jewish) innkeeper with instructions to care for the wounded man, with promises of further payment if that was necessary.  And just as Jesus gave the son back to his mother, the Samaritan gives the wounded Jew back to his compatriot, the innkeeper, who must have been as astounded in the story as the “scholar of the law” was to hear this.  Here, the outsider teaches mercy.  Jesus teaches it to the crowd, and the Samaritan teaches it to the innkeeper as well as to the wounded man, who seems unconscious throughout the story.  Of course, Jesus raising the dead man is a sign for how he will touch death and destroy it by entering into it, out of compassion for us travelers wounded nearly to death by sin.

The Samaritan in the parable did not need to save the Jew, but he did not let the Jewish man’s animosity for his people stop him from acting on the compassion he felt.  He loved the man anyway, at some risk and at some cost.  So we should “Go and do likewise”, showing the compassion of Jesus to those around us.

Saturday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 12, 2025

Matthew 10, 24-33

Jesus said to his Apostles: “No disciple is above his teacher, no slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, for the slave that he become like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household! “Therefore do not be afraid of them. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is a collection of various sayings of the Lord which he may have delivered at different times.

“No disciple is above his teacher.”  This phrase might be better translated, “No disciple is of greater benefit than his teacher.”  It has the look of a Hebrew proverb since it is coupled with, “No slave is above [or, of greater benefit than] his master.”  This reflects the ancient Hebrew understanding that the predecessor, whether a father or an ancient king, is superior to whoever follows him.  The Lord Jesus reminds his Apostles of this lest they begin to think that they are in any way his successors.  This saying benefits us as well, for if we consider the great teachers, such as Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Mother Teresa, we know that however capable their followers were who taught their teaching, they could not succeed them.  They could, at best, elucidate whatever seemed obscure.  Our great Teacher, the Lord Jesus, passed his doctrine to us through his Apostles, through the Church which he established.  In addition, he provides us with the graces we need in order to understand what he teaches.  No great teacher of the past could do that.  “It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, for the slave that he become like his master.”  In learning his doctrine, we become like him, and in teaching it to others, even more so.

“If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household!”  This seems to be a separate saying from the rest, perhaps uttered on the occasion on which the Pharisees charged that the Lord cast out demons by the Prince of demons.  The Lord foretells this to us so that when we are called “devils” and are said to be in league with the devil, or that we are evil, we will not be grieved.  We are to expect to be maligned in this way.  And we are comforted in knowing that this amounts to a confirmation that we are of the Lord’s “household”: “Therefore do not be afraid of them.”

“Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known.”  We can see this saying as either independent of the previous saying, or as an addition to it.  If as an addition, then this means that at the end of the world, when the sea gives up its dead and all things are revealed (cf. Revelation 20, 13), all who are just will be shown to be the children of God, and the wicked, who clothed themselves in pretended charity and their alleged desire for justice, will be shown as pawns and agents of Beelzebul.

“What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.”  The Lord speaks to us in the darkness of the present life, steeped in so much confusion and falsehood.  We are to proclaim his teachings on “the rooftops” of the Church, which rises above the threatening clouds, and in this way we summon those who live below to rise up into the bright Daylight of Christ.

“And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”  The power of the darkness is limited, and its time is limited.  It can touch the body, but our life goes on, body or not, when we live in the Lord.  When Jesus is our everything, we will be able to say, with St. Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ: and to die is gain” (Philippians 1, 21).  “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.”  Jesus uses hyperbole here, for God does not need to count anything to know that it is all there, since he is present in it, and so he makes the point that God knows our every thought and movement.  

“Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.”  We acknowledge the Father by our public recitation of the Creed at Mass, by our attendance at Mass, and by our virtuous behavior in daily life.  When everyone around us is shrieking with anger, pushing lies and slander, and is engaged in affairs contrary to the laws of marriage, and we quietly keep our calm, speak honestly, and remain true to our spouses, it is such a novelty that our behavior gains attention and directs it to the reason for our virtue, the Father.  “But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”  And if we join those who sin without fear, then we effectively deny the Father, and become one with the darkness of unending night.

Friday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 11, 2025

Matthew 10, 16-23

Jesus said to his Apostles: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to another. Amen, I say to you, you will not finish the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”

“Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves.”  The Lord Jesus continues his instructions to the Apostles before sending them out on mission.  These words would also have applied to them as they went out to preach after the Lord’s Ascension, and they apply to his believers today.  In speaking of them as “sheep”, the Lord teaches them that they are to be innocent in their thoughts and deeds.  In teaching them that they are to be innocent “in the midst of wolves”, he is saying that those to whom he is sending them are not innocent; they are people consumed with sin who destroy the good out of their joy of destroying.  In other words, these are not other sheep, and the Apostles would be making a terrible mistake in thinking so, either through their own wishful thinking or the trickery of the “wolves”.  The Lord thus teaches them that they are to be realistic in their attitudes and behavior while maintaining their own innocence and holiness.  He is also telling them that their very innocence will draw the wolves to them, and that they, the Apostles, will be able to encounter them in this way, whereas if they came as hunters, the wolves would hide from them.  “Be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.”  We recall how it was said in Genesis 3, 1: “The serpent was more crafty than any of the beasts of the earth.”  The serpent uses its craft in order to defeat its enemies and also to hunt its meals.  It is carnivorous, and one would think it at a great disadvantage before a potential meal, but it is quite capable of striking quickly and of eating and digesting things bulkier than itself.  Ancient peoples believed a serpent could practically hypnotize prey with its eyes.  The Christian is told to use similar craftiness.  Through the use of intelligence, willingness to listen, humor, knowledge, kindness, and the miracles the Lord works through his missionaries, we can disarm many “wolves”, and “swallow” them with the Gospel, not for our nutrition but in order to bring them into true life in Christ.

“But beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues.”  While they will convert many, some will resist, and not only reject the Gospel, but persecute its heralds.  The Lord first warns them of the persecution by the Jewish leaders which they will experience in the years after Pentecost.  “You will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans.”  In later years, when their mission has spread to the lands of the Gentiles, they will be persecuted there too.  He tells them this not to frighten them but to strengthen them in those times, for they will be able to recall that the Lord had said that this would happen.  “For my sake as a witness before them and the pagans.”  It is all for the glory of God.  They are to be sheep, luring in the wolves to hear the Gospel; they will be brought before the secular authorities so that they also might hear the Gospel.  Here, we see the Lord surpassing the serpent in his craftiness.  This verse might remind us of how St. Paul spoke of his own arrest and trial: “Now, brethren, I desire you should know that the things which have happened to me have fallen out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel, so that my chains are made manifest in Christ, in all the court and in all other places. And many of the brethren in the Lord, growing confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word of God without fear” (Philippians 1, 12-14). 

“For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”  The Lord looks to the days when those who believe in him and live and preach the Gospel will be hauled up in court — legal courts, or the court of public opinion — where they would be expected to make a defense of their faith and actions.  The Lord cautions them against flights of rhetoric that are not natural to them, but to speak simply, for, having gained this opportunity to make the Lord Jesus known, “the Spirit of your Father” would speak through them.  “You will be hated by all because of my name.”  These are not the words of the founder of a secular movement or of a philosophy, seeking to gain followers by laying out visions of success.  Jesus makes it clear that we are doing this for him, out of our passionate love for him.  There will be a reward, but it will be hard-won and not given to those who merely show up: “Whoever endures to the end will be saved.”  And this is the message of the Gospel that St. Matthew wrote for the persecuted Galilean Christians a few years after the Lord’s Resurrection.  It is also the message of the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament to be written.  Over and over again, we hear: Do not faint.  Persevere.  Do not fall away in tribulation.  Persevere.  The wolves will make much fearsome noise and will kill some of you, but hold fast to the Gospel.  “When they persecute you in one town, flee to another.”  The Lord permits his followers to flee persecution, and indeed, they did at the time St. Stephen was stoned to death: “At that time, there was raised a great persecution against the Church which was at Jerusalem. And they were all dispersed through the countries of Judea, and Samaria, except the Apostles” (Acts of the Apostles 8, 1).  But in their dispersion, they preached in new towns, to which, perhaps, they would not have otherwise gone: “They therefore that were dispersed went about preaching the word of God” (Acts 8, 4).  When we allow ourselves to be God’s instruments, God achieves his greater purpose through us, even through apparent disasters. 

“Amen, I say to you, you will not finish the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”  The Lord here uses hyperbole to speak of the sureness of his coming, but he also speaks to us today, that even after two thousand years, there are lands that have never heard his name.  And as civilization falls in our own land, this becomes true even here.  The Faith spread quickly in the Roman world after it was legalized by Constantine, but within two hundred years the Huns, the Goths, and the Visigoths descended upon Europe and the world had once again to be evangelized.  The descendants of the barbarians became missionaries themselves.  And at various times through the centuries secularization and heresy necessitated the recovery of the Faith in formerly Christian lands.  May we work hard through our prayers and evangelizing efforts to bring the Gospel to the “wolves” of our own time.

Thursday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 10, 2025

Matthew 10, 7-15

Jesus said to his Apostles: “As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give. Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick. The laborer deserves his keep. Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy person in it, and stay there until you leave. As you enter a house, wish it peace. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; if not, let your peace return to you. Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words, go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

“As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ ”  In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, the Lord instructs his Apostles on how to conduct their mission.  He gives them very precise rules for what they are to say and do, and even what they are and are not to take with them.  The words they are to say are, translating from the Greek: “The Kingdom of heaven has drawn near”, or, “approached”.  The verb is in the perfect active tense: the action has taken place, with an effect upon the present.  This is very different from the “at hand” in many English translations, which makes it appear that the Kingdom suddenly came out of nowhere and with no preparation.  Also, “at hand” does not convey the dynamism of the Kingdom of heaven which has come to us, which moves of its own accord.  Indeed, the Kingdom had “drawn near” to the people at the time of Jesus, through the promise made to Adam and Eve after their sin, the covenants made with Abraham and Moses, the giving of the Law, and through the preaching of the Prophets who told the people not to give up hope, for a Child would be born to us, and “shall sit upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom; to establish it and strengthen it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth and for ever: the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this” (Isaiah 9, 7).  And, finally, through the arrival of Elijah, as was promised by the Prophet Malachi: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Elijah 4, 5-6).  That is to say, as the Lord later confirmed, John the Baptist.  The Kingdom had lately approached in the Person of the Son of God himself, who came down from heaven.

“Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  The Lord here refers to the power, and the authority to execute it, he has bestowed upon his Apostles, who are to cure the sick and even raise the dead.  They are to go into the land of the Jews not as rulers giving out favors but as servants simply going about their duties.  The Lord reinforces this by telling his Apostles that they are to go in their ordinary clothing, taking nothing with them that would indicate they are anything but servants.  In fact, the Lord refers to them as “laborers”.  They are to take no money, for instance, and they are to stay in whatever house they are first welcomed, as though grateful to have any place at all in which to sleep.  They are also not to stay long in any one town: they are not to establish residences as though to rule, but to move about as though in flight.  There is so much to do, so many souls to save.

“Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words, go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”  These are fearsome words.  With all the power the Apostles had received, and all the signs they were performing, only the most hardened, secularized, town would not receive them, at least out of curiosity.  And in all four Gospels, only place is reported to have refused to receive Jesus: a Samaritan town, and simply because Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. Today there are many people, towns, and even whole societies which are hardened against the Lord.  Many of these are not merely indifferent to religion but actively hostile to it.  The words of love and forgiveness offered by the Lord seem to burn those who hear them.  This reminds us of the need to pray for the conversion of the world, so that hatred of Christ, such as that evidenced by Saul of Tarsus, may become passion for him, as we see in St. Paul.  Thus, the Kingdom may continue to approach, through us.

Wednesday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 9, 2025

Matthew 10, 1-7

Jesus summoned his Twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the Twelve Apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus. Jesus sent out these Twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ ”

“Jesus summoned his Twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.”  St. Matthew says that Jesus gave them authority to cure “every disease”.  The Greek can mean both “every type” of disease as well as “every incidence” of disease.  Not only could they cure leprosy, but also fever.  “Every illness” actually means “every weakness”, to include conditions like blindness or paralysis.

We might wonder why the Lord gave his Apostles this authority and power.  He gave it to them, power much like his own because derived from his own, in order to help them understand their place as his chosen and named followers, to prepare them for the work they would do after Pentecost, and to show the greatness of his own power, so that he could give it to others.  This confirms his identity as the Son of God: his power did not come and go as needed, but abided permanently within him.  Beyond these reasons, it was also his will to cure the sick and raise up the crippled, out of his love for each of them.  This outpouring of love and power would have the effect of manifesting that the Kingdom of heaven had come to earth, leading to conversions.

“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.”  Matthew intends to show how the Lord avoided going outside the land of the Jews, except for two very specific and briefly mentioned occasions, and he instructs his disciples not to go to the Gentiles at this time.  “Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  One of the big questions asked by the Jewish Christians in the first years after the Lord’s Ascension was, Why did not the whole Jewish nation follow him?  The answer that Matthew insists upon and proves is that it was not for lack of the Lord’s will and effort.  For three solid years he moved almost exclusively throughout Galilee and Judea, preaching and performing miracles that astounded their witnesses.  It was not as if he had traveled the Roman world extensively and rarely came back to his own land.  The case was that the bulk of the Jews simply chose not to believe, in spite of all that the Lord did.  

Tuesday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 8, 2025

Matthew 9, 32-38

A demoniac who could not speak was brought to Jesus, and when the demon was driven out the mute man spoke. The crowds were amazed and said, “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.” But the Pharisees said, “He drives out demons by the prince of demons.”  Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”

“Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”  St. Matthew’s quote here reveals that though the rabbis were performing exorcism rituals, they did not actually succeed in driving out demons.  At the same time, the fact that the Lord’s exorcism of the demoniac as recounted at the beginning of today’s Gospel Reading teaches us that demonic possession affects the body with symptoms that manifest as disabilities or diseases.  “He drives out demons by the prince of demons.”  Matthew lays the wonder expressed by the ordinary people alongside the cynicism and envy of the Pharisees.  He does this to remind the persecuted Galilean Christians for whom he is writing that it is not all of Israel that was at war with Jesus, but those who were already known as wicked — the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.  He reminds us today to look and see what the Lord Jesus does for us and not to pay attention to those who puff themselves up as somehow superior and who deny the Lord’s power, his love, and even his existence.  Like the claim of the Pharisees, the sputtering of these folks are absurd on their face.

“Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness.”  Matthew now lays a summary of the Lord’s ministry alongside the bile of the Pharisees.  The Lord Jesus, influenced by no one, goes his way, obeying the will of the Father, seeking to serve and not to be served.  He does not reveal his splendor publicly as he will on Mount Tabor in the presence of three of his Apostles; he does not exact payment for his good deeds; he does not court praise.  He goes about in his same clothes, he mostly sleeps in the fields outside the towns, he eats fish and bread and drinks water, except on the infrequent occasions he is invited to a feast.  He patiently bears the company of his Apostles, who are slow to understand.  And he bears rejection by so many of the people he has come to save.

“At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.”  No hardship and no rejection could dim the enormity and the ferocity of his love for the human race.  Where a Pharisee would feel contempt, Jesus feels compassion.  He looks upon a human being, no matter how degraded by sin, and his Heart pounds for him and his desire to die for him increases even more.  He also strongly desires for us to aid each other in our salvation: he wants us to allow him to work through us: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”  We are those laborers.  In ancient times, harvesting required different tasks by different sets of workers.  There were those who wielded the scythe; those who gathered the crop from the ground and delivered it to the barns; and those who loaded the crop into the barns.  The workers labored together with urgency and the crop was brought in, with celebrations in the aftermath.  Whatever task each of us is assigned by the Lord, let us do our parts for God’s greater glory.