The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 2, 2026

Matthew 14:13–21

When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. The crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns. When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples approached him and said, “This is a deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” But they said to him, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” Then he said, “Bring them here to me,” and he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over — twelve wicker baskets full. Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children.

Our God creates us, sustains us in existence, nourishes us, heals us, and will raise us from the dead at the end of time.  Here, we see how God nourishes us, and how he provides not merely sufficient food, but more than sufficient.  His desire to feed the people and his desire to show how capable he is of doing this lead to everyone eating until they “were satisfied”, and that twelve large baskets held what remained afterwards.

It pays to compare the feeding of the five thousand men, recorded in all four of the Gospels, with the miracle at the Wedding at Cana, recounted in the Gospel of St. John.  In both Gospels, someone pointed out a need to the Lord Jesus: in the case at Cana, it was the low supply of wine.  In both Gospels, Jesus gives directions for the remedy.  At Cana, he has servants pour water into stone jars and then take some out and present it to the master of ceremonies.  Here, he has the Apostles distribute the food.  In both cases, an over-abundance is brought about.  At Cana, he made about 180 gallons of wine, which might have amounted to two or three gallons per guest.  In the feeding of the five thousand, enough was left over to feed hundreds more people.  

We might ponder the meaning of this miracle, for it has a meaning.  All the Lord’s miracles acted as signs.  But we are also assured of this miracle acting as a sign in a remark the Lord makes to the Apostles during a later discussion: “Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?” (Matthew 16, 9).  For help, we look to the end of the account of the wedding at Cana, where St. John comments: “Jesus . . . manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2, 11).  This hints to us that while Jesus fed all those men and women because they were hungry, just as he provided wine for the benefit of the guests at the wedding, he also performed this action in order to show forth his glory and to strengthen the belief of his Apostles in him.  These miracles act to prepare the Apostles in this way.  The miracle at Cana prepared them for the Lord’s casting out of the money changers at the temple in Jerusalem, establishing thereby that he regarded this building as his own house; the miracle here prepares them for a great question which he will ask them and which Peter will answer: “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16, 18).

This feeding of the five thousand as well as the later feeding of the four thousand, in addition to the making of the wine, ought to remind us of Psalm 104, 27-28: “All look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.”  The Lord perfectly fulfills this passage in nourishing the souls which he has created by revealing the depths of God’s love for them, even by dying on the Cross to open heaven for them.  All this he does for us.  We have a fabulous abundance in the food of the Holy Scriptures and in the Holy Eucharist.  If we go hungry, we have only ourselves to blame.

Saturday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 30, 2022

Matthew 14, 1-12

Herod the tetrarch heard of the reputation of Jesus and said to his servants, “This man is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why mighty powers are at work in him.”  Now Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, for John had said to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” Although he wanted to kill him, he feared the people, for they regarded him as a prophet. But at a birthday celebration for Herod, the daughter of Herodias performed a dance before the guests and delighted Herod so much that he swore to give her whatever she might ask for. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and the guests who were present, he ordered that it be given, and he had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who took it to her mother. His disciples came and took away the corpse and buried him; and they went and told Jesus.

The Church teaches that in the interpretation of Holy Scripture, we first need to find and understand its literal sense, the meaning intended by the biblical author through a consideration of the text in its original language, its historical context, and the context of the passage within the book or section of the book.  Thus, in looking at Luke 10, 25-37, we must note first that the Lord is telling a story, a parable.  He is not relating a historical fact.  Then we can examine what it meant to be a Samaritan at the time of Jesus, what inns of the time were like, and so on.  We can also peer into the Greek of the text to see what nuances we can find in the language of the story that would help us better understand it.  After determining the literal sense, we can read more deeply to discover the spiritual sense.  We can do this with the help of the Fathers, especially writers like St. Augustine and St. Jerome.  We can consult the works of St. Thomas and other medieval teachers, too.  Various Catholic editions of the Bible now in print offer these insights in the form of notes.  The spiritual meaning is the more fundamental reality of the text, presenting to us truths which we can learn by considering what lies beneath the literal sense.  In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we can understand the half-dead victim of robbers as the human race, despoiled of grace by the devil.  The Samaritan in the Son of God who raises the man up on his beast — that is, his Body — and takes him to an inn — the Church.  The wine and oil he uses on the man’s wounds are the Sacraments.

St. Albert the Great (d. 1280) taught at the .university of Paris and among his many books is a wonderful collection of his sermons on the feasts days of saints.  These are brief, direct, and filled with wisdom.  He preaches on the saint and also on the Scriptures used for the Mass of the feast.  In his sermon on the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, St. Albert teaches that we can understand the account of his death, in the spiritual sense, as the devil’s attack against the Christian.  He says that Herod signifies the devil, and that John the Baptist signifies the Christian in the world.  The devil attempts to destroy the soul of the Christian in five ways: sending (Mark 6, 17: “For Herod himself had sent”); apprehending (“and apprehended John”); binding (“bound him”); imprisoning (“and imprisoned him”); and beheading (Mark 6, 28: “And he beheaded him in the prison”).  The devil “sends” temptations to us.  He “apprehends” us through our consent to the temptations.  He conquers and “binds” us through our commission of sin.  He “imprisons” us when sin becomes a habit in us.  And he “beheads” us when we despair of ever repenting.  

St. Albert concludes his sermon with a prayer: “Brethren, pray that the divine mercy may snatch us from the chains and prison of the devil through our true repentance, lest Herodias — the envy of the devil — glory in our destruction, but rather that all the armies of the angels of God rejoice over our salvation.  Amen.”

The Holy Spirit has so caused the Scriptures to be written that untold riches remain to be mined even after thousands of years.  By finding these riches and adorning ourselves inwardly with them, we will persevere in time of temptation and comes into the presence of Almighty God.

Friday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time,July 30, 2026

Matthew 13:54-58

Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue. They were astonished and said, “Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.” And he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith.

St. Matthew summarizes the return of Jesus to his home town of Nazareth in five verses whereas St. Luke spends sixteen verses on this episode.  We might expect Matthew, an eyewitness, to provide more detail that Luke, who relied on the memories of others, but Matthew intends to make a point based on the Lord’s teaching that immediately precedes the account of his rejection st Nazareth: that of the treasure hid in the field and the pearl of great price.  This is in accord with Matthew’s method of showing the Lord’s teachings illustrated by his deeds.  Jesus himself is the treasure hid in the field, the pearl within the oyster in a large basket of oysters.  Nazareth is the field and the basket of oysters.  The only thing that distinguishes this otherwise ordinary field and ordinary basket of oysters is what they house: immense wealth and beauty.  Once the treasure is fully excavated and the pearl removed from the basket of oysters, they go are discarded while the treasure and pearl are admired and marveled at.  The treasure seeker probably sells the field cheap and the merchant probably leaves the basket of oysters where he round them.  Thus, all that raised the town of Nazareth to such significance as it had was its place in the Lord’s life.  Once he left it for good, it fell back into its obscurity without realizing the wealth that had passed from it.  The people of the town looked at the Treasure of the Ages and the Pearl of Great Price promised by the Prophets, and yawned.  

It is so necessary for us to grasp the Lord Jesus and hold him close to our hearts, listening closely to his words in the Gospel and studying them, while seeing the miracles that still fill our world by his hand.  They do not make the secular news media but any priest and virtually any hospital nurse, and many other people have seen them and known them for what they were.  His words are not historical artifacts but are directed to each of us now.  His deeds are public and are meant to be seen.  They are signs to us of his continued presence among us, and of how near the time is when he shall come in glory with the angels.  And we come before him in prayer so that we might grow in our personal experience of him.  This is most important.  In this way we feel his words within us and know him in the way the Apostles did.

Thursday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 30, 2026

Matthew 13, 47-53

Jesus said to the disciples: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.  Do you understand all these things?” They answered, “Yes.” And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.

“The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.”  The Apostles Peter, Andrew, James, and John would have especially paid attention to this parable as they had made their living from fishing before Jesus called them.  Jesus had even promised to make them “fishers of men”.  Here, they might pick up a clue as to what he had meant.  The net the Lord speaks of is indifferent to the kinds of fish that go into it: a fish of any size and any condition might be naught in it.  “When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets.”  When we read “buckets” we should think “baskets”.  The hard work of fishing is not finished when the boat returns, but continues with the sifting of the catch.  This would be done with the sunrise.  “What is bad they throw away.”  The Greek word translated here as “bad” actually means “rotten” and “useless”.  Something “bad” might still be salvaged, but not something rotten.  

“Thus it will be at the end of the age.”  The Jews believed that the world passed through six ages, and that the seventh brought an eternal Sabbath.  Jesus taught that the people of his generation lived in the sixth age, and that at its end would come the great judgment.  We know that this age began with the Lord’s Incarnation and will end with his Second Coming.  

“The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous.”  The Lord repeated a number of times in his preaching that the good and the wicked — the “rotten” — would be together until the end, at which point it would be the task of the angels to separate them.  See also Matthew 13, 24-30.  The angels, always an important part of our lives, have this responsibility as well.  “And throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  The rotten are not merely set aside but are burned into eternity.  We see from this that those deemed rotten are punished for having made themselves so, and by mixing with the good, threaten to cause them to go rotten as well.  This may remind us of the wheat and the weeds, where the weeds are wicked because they steal nutrition from the wheat.  Their punishment is eternal because they have permanently fixed their malice in their hearts through the evil they have committed repeatedly during their lives on earth.

“ ‘Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.’ When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.”  The Lord commends the scribe who understands the Gospel well enough to teach it using the works of the Prophets and also the words of Jesus and, later, his Apostles.  The Lord may be addressing whatever scribes were present, or he may have been looking to the future when Matthew and John, among those present at that time, would write their Gospels, and when James, Jude, and Peter would write their epistles.

We strive to be the good fish which the Lord puts in his baskets and we strive to recognize the dead, rotten fish  around us so that we may preserve ourselves from them.

 Revelation part 4:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FBfNklhDXGBqcZFXUDKeId1vObIUzapy/view?usp=drivesdk

Wednesday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 29, 2026

The Feast of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

John 11, 19-27

Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother [Lazarus, who had died]. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever zbelieves in me, even if he dies, will live, and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

Formerly, St. Martha alone was celebrated on this day, but recently the feast was expanded to include her brother St. Lazarus, and her sister, St. Mary, who lived in Bethany, near Jerusalem.  The St. Mary celebrated today is not St. Mary Magdalene, who stood at the Lord’s Cross and was the first to see the Risen Lord after his Resurrection, but “Mary of Bethany”.  St. Gregory the Great seems to have been the first to conflate these two distinct women.  

From the three accounts in the Gospels which involve Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, we can see their close connection to the Lord.  In Luke 10, 38-42, Jesus enters “Martha’s house” and talks to an enraptured Mary while Martha struggles to prepare dinner.  It would seem from this that either Martha owned the house outright or that it was the house of Lazarus, whom Luke did not know about, and that Martha lived there.  We are not told that Martha was married, so if the house was hers, she might have been a widow.  It could also be the case that Luke does not mention spouses or Lazarus in order to keep his story simple, because the presence or absence of anyone except Martha, Mary, and Jesus does not affect the main point.  

In John 11, 1, the Evangelist tells us, “Now, there was a certain man sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, of the town of Mary and of Martha her sister.”  The implication here is that the three siblings did not live together, but separately.  A further implication is that these three were well-known to the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem to whom John was writing his Gospel, for the names of those for whom Jesus performs miracles are almost never given.  John also here identifies Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, as “she that anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair”.  He mentions this even before he tells the story how she did this (which he would do in the chapter following the raising of Lazarus) leading us to believe that the story was very well-known at the time of his writing.

The Lord loved these three, as is clear from the story of his raising Lazarus from the dead.  Indeed, when Mary notifies the Lord that her brother is in need of healing, she says, “Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.”  And John comments, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary and Lazarus.”  They firmly believed in him as the Messiah, and as one with great power.  When the Lord arrives in Bethany, Martha says to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But now also I know that whatsoever you will ask of God, God will give to you.”  And Mary will say to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Mary’s faith and her gratitude for the Lord raising up her brother bring her to anoint his feet with a very expensive perfume, and to wipe his feet with her hair.  (This is anointing is distinct, though similar, from that done by the sinful woman in Luke 7, 36-50, which took place in Simon the Leper’s house, not in that of Lazarus.)  

“Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”  This profession of faith spoken by Martha, reflected the faith of her brother and sister as well.  No one but Peter would make such a profession before the Lord’s Resurrection.  We pray to Saint Martha, that she might obtain for us the grace to be filled with such faith as hers; to her sister Mary, that we may become as dedicated to the Word of God as she; and to Lazarus, that we may hear the Lord saying to us at the moment of our deaths, “Come forth!”, summoning us into his life in heaven.

Personal Note:  The fourth part of the Bible Atidy on the Book of Revelation has been recorded and the link for it will be posted on the right-hand sidebar sometime today (Wednesday). Feel free to let me know if you found it helpful!

Tuesday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 28, 2020

Matthew 13:36-43

Jesus dismissed the crowds and went into the house. His disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He said in reply, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom. The weeds are the children of the Evil One, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his Kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

To begin with, Jesus speaks of “the end of the age” as a “harvest”.  The harvest is a very active time on a farm when the mature crop is brought into the barns as quickly as possible before it over-ripens or before it rains, making the field a muddy mess that is harder to work in.  For the modern farmer, a big rain just before or in the middle of the harvest means he cannot use his machinery because of the condition of the soil.  The end of the age, then, will involve great urgency and speed.  The world has ended.  No deeds remain to be done.  The destiny of each person has been decided.  At this point, too, we are speaking of resurrected bodies, which move with incredible swiftness.  The angels will reintegrate the bodies of the deceased so that they may live again, and the souls of those bodies rejoin them so that soul and body may together share in the joys of the blessed or the torments of the damned.

The wicked will be placed away from the just at the last judgment so that each group may hear its sentence with the members together.  The just will rejoice at seeing the great saints in their company, saints to whom they prayed during their lives and whose virtues they imitated.  On the other hand, the wicked will look upon the faces of their fellows with alarm and growing horror.  They will recognize the most evil men in history who thought nothing of the slaughter and massacre of innocent humans.  The instant the judgment on each group is pronounced, the just are brought into heaven, where “they will shine like the sun”,  and the wicked will be thrown by the angels into “the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  Here is how St. John the Apostle saw the final judgment in a vision he himself recorded: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne. And the books were opened: and another book was opened, which was the book of life. And the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Revelation 20, 12).

The just will enter “the Kingdom of their Father”.  These are very sweet words.  We can think of how the father of the prodigal son watched for the coming of his son day after day, night after night, and when he finally saw him afar off, ran out to meet him, tears of relief and joy streaming from his eyes.  We can think of how tightly the father held him, and then led him home to a great feast.  Our Father watches for us, waits for us, and will finally embrace us on our entrance into heaven.  We might think of the words of the Song of Songs: “For, behold, the winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land: The fig tree has put forth her green figs: the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come” (Song of Songs 2, 11-13).

Terrible and unrelenting punishment awaits those “who cause others to sin and all evildoers”.  These shall “suffer eternal punishment in destruction, from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power” (2 Thessalonians 1, 9).  That is, their punishment shall be both external and internal.  External in “destruction”.  Jesus gives us a hint of this in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.  In hell, the rich man cried out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16, 24).  The internal punishment is indicated by the words “wailing and grinding of teeth”.  This punishment is the awareness by the damned that they are away “from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power”.  They will suffer from the knowledge that they are permanently cut off from the face of God by their own choice, by their own works.  The words of the afflicted Job allow us some insight into their hearts: “Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said: A man child is conceived. Let that day be turned into darkness, let not God regard it from above, and let not the light shine upon it. Let darkness, and the shadow of death, cover it, let a mist overspread it, and let it be wrapped up in bitterness” (Job 3, 3-5).

“Whoever has ears ought to hear.”  This is an idiom that means the same as, “a word to the wise”.  Let us pray for wisdom so that every day we might know how to firm up our place with the just by an unshakable faith and a bounty of good works.