Thursday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 8, 2026

Luke 11, 5-13

Jesus said to his disciples: “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.  And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

The Evangelists portray the Lord Jesus as all-powerful, and they also show him earnestly entreating the Apostles to pray to his Father in heaven, asking in his name for what they need.  Far from being miserly with his power, the Lord Jesus describes his Father as more willing to grant answers to prayers than anyone is to pray to him.  Indeed, Jesus shows the Father’s generosity through his own: if the Son is generous, curing all who desire to be cured, casting out demons, raising the dead, feeding crowds, how much more so his Father must be.  And by teaching us to call Almighty God our “Father”, the Son further encourages us to ask for gifts, for fathers bestow gifts on their children.  

In today’s Gospel reading, the Lord tells a parable in order to teach his followers how they are to ask for gifts in prayer.  He speaks of a man who has a midnight visitor.  This situation would have arisen now and then in that time and place.  A traveler in those days would most likely have made short journeys from one town to another on foot, and would have slept by the side of the road most of the time, since lodgings existed only in and near the cities.  Jesus alludes to this practice when he says that, “Foxes have dens and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9, 58).  For some reason, this visitor decides to come to his friend’s door at a late hour rather than wait for morning.  But when the visitor arrived, long-held custom dictated that his beast, if he had one, be watered, and that he himself be fed.  Since the visitor catches the householder without even bread ready, he goes to his neighbor, rouses him, and asks him to get out of bed and give him some.  Naturally, the neighbor is irritated.  It is midnight, he was in bed, and could not his importunate neighbor have used some foresight to keep some loaves overnight in case he did have a late visitor?

The man does not give up: he must provide the customary hospitality for his visitor.  People of the Ancient Near East took this responsibility very much to heart.  The neighbor therefore knows that the man would not give up calling to him, and so he relents.  Luke quotes Jesus as saying, “Because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.”  The friendship enables the man to go to his neighbor for help, and his persistence wins him the bread.  Now, the Greek word is actually much stronger here: it is not so much “persistence” as “shamelessness”, or “shameless persistence”.  The man with the unexpected guest throws self-respect to the wind and begs and pleads for the bread.  The rest of the neighborhood can probably hear him making a fool of himself, but nothing matters except procuring bread.  He does not hold back even knowing he will have to face these people in the morning.  Propriety means nothing to him.

Jesus urges us to act in the same way with the Father: to beg, plead, entreat shamelessly and endlessly.  It is not that the Father is tight with his gifts, but that we must deeply acknowledge our utter dependence on him for them.  Many gifts he gives us and we are hardly aware of it, but for some gifts we must make this acknowledgment, and learn as thoroughly as we can that all that we have comes only from his liberality.  But not only is our God generous to us, but he is surpassingly wise and knows that some of the things we ask for are not good for us.  We ask for “snakes” and “scorpions” that would end up harming us.  So many dangerous things are wrapped up in bright packages.  So instead of giving us the snake that we unwittingly ask for, he gives us the fish that will really do us good.  This too is part of his generosity.  

“How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”  The Holy Spirit grants the gift of faith and the other virtues and also the graces we need in order to use the virtues, in order to do good, in order to be saved.  How much the Father wants us to come to him in heaven!  He does everything for us.  All we have to do is to ask for his spiritual gifts and receive them when they come.  The Son himself is the way for us, and he has unbolted the gates of heaven for us with his Cross acting as their key.  We see the generosity of the Father in the Son’s abundant miracles and in his sending his Son to die for us.  Let us be generous in our turn with what we receive so that in the end we may be received into heaven.

Wednesday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 7, 2026

The Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary

Luke 11:1-4

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.”

“Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, etc.”  from reading the Gospels, we know that Jesus preferred to pray on hills, mountains, and the wilderness.  We see him rising early to pray in the wilderness after all evening curing the people of and around Capernaum (cf. Mark 1, 35).  We see him praying on a mountain all night before choosing the Apostles (cf. Luke 6, 12).  We also remember that the Lord prayed on the Mount of Olives before he was arrested, and that his last words, a prayer, were uttered on the hill of Golgotha.  We can surmise from this that at the time indicated by today’s Gospel reading, Jesus had spent considerable time in prayer outside the towns and villages.  Refreshed by his time spent with his Father, he returns to his followers, one of whom had a request — a prayer — presumably speaking for all: “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”  To this point, Jesus has prayed with his Apostles, but not in a particular way.  He has not taught them a way of praying that would brand them as members of his following, “as John taught his disciples.”  John the Baptist, in teaching his disciples to pray, probably emphasized prayers for the coming of the Messiah, and for recognizing him when he came.  After all, the reason John was sent into the world was to prepare the world for the Messiah’s coming.  The Pharisees and various roving rabbis would also have taught their disciples to pray in a way of their own.  We might ask why Jesus had not taught his own disciples to pray shortly after choosing them.  He seems to have waited for them to ask him before doing so.  Perhaps he waited in order to draw the request out of them, letting them realize that they needed from him both the words to pray and the grace to pray the words with.  This notion presupposes that before this time, the Apostles were simply not ready to learn from him how to pray.  This tells us that it is a gift to learn from the Lord himself how we ought to pray.  

The Lord Jesus answered this prayer directly: “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come.”  The Greek verb would be better translated as “may your name be sanctified”.  This is an important distinction.  “Hallowed by your name” is a statement of fact.  “May your name be sanctified”, with the verb in the subjunctive, is a prayer.  The prayer here is that we lowly servants may be granted the grace to sanctify the Lord’s name.  We are able to do this through our words and actions since we bear the name of his Son, Christ, as Christians.  Coupled with this, “May your Kingdom come” tells us what the prayer is about: that God the Father’s name may be glorified by our entrance into the Kingdom that will come at the end of the present world,

“Give us each day our daily bread.”  The Greek has: “Give us bread sufficient for the day.”  The use here of “daily bread” differs from the Greek word, which we can translate as “super-substantial”, used by St. Matthew to stand in for the Aramaic word Jesus used.  In fact, “super-substantial” is a word made up to express the word Jesus actually said and is not a proper Greek word.  Luke seems to use the word “daily” in order to avoid using the portmanteau word that would have made little sense to his Greek audience.  “Daily bread” gives the sense that the follower of Jesus lives from day to day, dependent on the Lord for all things.  The one who prays this knows his own unworthiness and does not dare to ask for more than what he needs for the day.  This “daily bread” can also mean the grace necessary for the day’s Christian work as well as for the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.  

“Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.”  As St. Matthew recalled in his Gospel, the Lord explained, “For if you will forgive men their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offenses. But if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offenses” (Matthew 6, 14-15).  “Do not subject us to the final test.”  This “test” or “trial” was a severe temptation against the Faith such as one would suffer during persecution.  “Do not subject us” is better understood as “Do not allow us to be subjected.”

While this prayer pertains to the end-times, it begins, significantly, with the word “Father”.  This is what makes the prayer distinctively Christian, that God is called “Father”.  This was the same manner of address as the Son used, reminding us that through baptism we are adopted children of God and co-heirs of eternal life.  We ought to rejoice in this whenever we pray this prayer.

We celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary today. The Our Father is recited at the head of each mystery of the rosary. Let us pray this prayer with especial attention and reverence as we recite the holy rosary, meditating on the ,ysteries which have brought us salvation.

Tuesday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 6, 2026

Luke 10, 38-42

Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

The opening lines of the Gospel reading for today’s Mass would be more accurately translated: “Now it came to pass, as they traveled, that he entered into a certain village, and a woman named Martha received him as a guest.  And there was also a sister named Mary, who was also sitting beside at the feet of the Lord, hearing his word.”  The differences between this and the text as translated above are subtle, but because this is the Word of the Lord, every detail is important.  We will pay as close attention to the written text as Mary paid attention to what she heard the Lord say with his mouth.  First, Jesus was traveling at the time he stopped at this house.  He may have been on his way to Jerusalem and he paused at this village to preach or to draw water from the village well for himself and his Apostles.  The village itself was not his primary or even secondary destination.  And yet he did not treat it with contempt as another traveler with a long road ahead might have done, for it is not significant except for its location.  Luke does not even tell us its name.  (Traditionally, though, it is thought that this was Bethany, where Lazarus, Martha, and Mary lived).  But Jesus treats the place and its inhabitants as though he had come all the way from Capernaum just to visit it.  A woman named Martha received him as a guest.  That is, she did not “welcome” him as though she had known him previously.  Furthermore, to welcome him as a guest meant that she performed or had performed for him certain services, such as anointing his head and washing his feet.  We ought to note that this would be the job of the male member of the household, whether a husband or a brother, but Luke tells us of only Martha and Mary.  Luke also does not mention the Lord’s disciples.  For Mary to have hosted the Lord as well as his Apostles, she would have needed to live in a house bigger than was customary in a “village”, and she would have needed substantial stores of food.  Perhaps receiving these guests required her to run about the village, purchasing a goat or a calf as well as bread or at least flour.

Luke tells us besides that “there was also a sister named Mary, who was also sitting beside at the feet of the Lord, hearing his word.”  Mary must have been not only younger than her sister but also not old enough to be married since this seems to be Martha’s house — if Mary were old enough to be married, she would be living in her husband’s house. It is apparent that the two women did live together and that Mary was not simply visiting because of how Luke constructs his sentence: he uses the imperfect form of the verb to-be, signifying a continuous action in the past.  If Mary were merely visiting, Luke would most likely have used the aorist tense.  The sense in Luke is something like, “There also was being there a sister named Mary”.  Now, this young, unmarried woman was not sitting beside Jesus as though the two shared a couch: Luke tells us that she sat alongside the Lord “at his feet”.  This indicates something more than a lack of furniture: Mary was adopting the position of a disciple and, even more than that, that of a handmaid, who would sit in close proximity to her master, in a position to hear his ever word and watch the gestures of his hands.  In a word, she was poised to serve even at a cue given by the wave of a hand.  Now, she was “hearing” his word.  The Greek could also be rendered as “comprehending through listening”, which is to say, learning.  She was actively engaged in learning about the Lord Jesus and the kingdom of heaven.

“Martha, burdened with much serving at table, came to him”.  This might be more literally translated as, “Martha was greatly troubled with much serving at table.”  Martha was overwhelmed with all the tasks necessary for providing hospitality for these men.  Even with servants, if there were any, preparing a meal for thirteen or so men plus herself and her sister, would have made enormous work.  We might wonder that Martha invited him into her house in the first place, knowing how much labor would be involved.  We might see here how the Lord affected people — not by his preaching alone, but by his personality.  To see him and to hear his voice caused people to leave everything to follow him, or to otherwise completely change their lives, as in the case of the tax collector Zacchaeus.  Martha perhaps invited the Lord and his disciples to her house out of the joy he gave to her heart, and in her excitement, she overextended herself.  Luke tells us that she was “greatly troubled” by the workload, not that she was very inconvenienced.  She must have wondered how she would carry this through.  She had the reasonable expectation that her younger sister would help her.  As it was Martha’s house, and Mary was living with her, and no mention is made of their parents, we can assume that their parents are dead.  Martha would have acted in place of Mary’s mother.  We could also assume that the two sisters lived poorly, without husbands or regular income, unless it came through using the house as an inn for travelers.  At any rate, the clues Luke provides lead us to think that these were not wealthy women with abundant servants to help them.

“Came to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do serving?’ ”  The Greek says, “Standing, she said, ‘Lord, does it not matter to you that my sister abandoned me to serve alone?’ ”  We can hear the despondency in Martha’s voice and we feel for her.  She also asks a good question.  Why should Martha have to do all the work by herself?  However, we can also ask, Why did Martha invite Jesus and his disciples to her home when, even with her sister’s help, providing the necessary hospitality would have proven difficult?  But Jesus looks tenderly at Martha and addresses the question within her question: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.”  We can hear the depths of his love and compassion for this woman in the repetition of her name, something we know him to do only two other times: when he weeps over Jerusalem (Matthew 22, 37), and when he tells Simon Peter at the Last Supper that Satan has sought to sift him like wheat (Luke 22, 31).  “There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”  Actually, the Greek has it that Mary has chosen “the good portion”, not merely the “better”.  The word  rendered here as “good” does not mean useful or attractive, but “good” in the moral sense.  We can understand “portion” too as “portion of service”, for that it is what Jesus means.  Mary is serving the Lord by listening attentively in the ready position of a handmaid, while Martha labors at providing dinner.  As generous as Martha may be, the service Mary provides far surpasses Martha’s service.  We may recall here the words Jesus quotes the devil in the wilderness: “Man does not live by bread alone but be every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4, 4, from Deuteronomy 8, 3).  With this, Jesus upends the Ancient Near Eastern understanding of hospitality towards guests.  In fact, we can see Jesus as the real servant here, teaching Mary and the others in the house the word of God.

We see in this short account the absolute supremacy of listening to the teachings of Jesus over everything else, no matter how urgent it may seem.  We must become like the younger sister Mary here, listening to the Lord and poised to carry out his command, and prepared to go hungry in doing it, if need be.

Personal Note: Thanks for all your prayers! I’m feeling well enough to resu,e Bible Study tomorrow evening. I’m very much looking forward to it.

Monday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 5, 2026

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.

 The 27th Sunday of Ordinary, October 4, 2026

Matthew 21, 33–43

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes? Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

“They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”  Jesus ends his parable with these words, and then questions the chief priests and the elders of the people about it.  The Lord usually ended his longer parables, such as this one, with one or more characters being put to death, imprisoned, or threatened in some way.  The major exception is the parable of the Good Samaritan, and it stands out precisely because it ends on what, to us, is a positive note.  But for the Jews who first heard the Lord Jesus tell this parable, it would have proved most disturbing, indeed, a virtual overthrowing of the world as they understood it.  The parables taken as a whole remind us that Jesus, as he himself said, came “not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10, 34).  That is, not only would belief in him would break up families and friendships, but it would force believers themselves to deeply examine their lives and all their preconceptions.  It is one thing to accept the reasonableness of the proposition that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts; it is quite another to learn that our most cherished thoughts and beliefs are at variance with God’s thoughts, and that we must change, as a consequence.

Jesus confirms this by quoting Psalm 118, 22, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes?”  What we reject, God chooses.  Interestingly, Psalm 118, along with such Psalms as Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, was recognized by the Jews as speaking of the Messiah who was to come.  They had the words about the Lord choosing the humanly rejected stone before their eyes all along and did not understand the reality it signified.  This lack of recognizing the meaning of this verse disturbed the Lord throughout his ministry.  At one point he turned to the people who were dissatisfied with him as a possible Messiah despite the miracles he had performed: “John [the Baptist] came neither eating nor drinking; and they say: He has a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say: Behold a man that is a glutton and a wine drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners” (Matthew 11, 18-19).

It is our familiarity with the mysteries of our salvation that makes it hard for us to truly understand them to the point, almost, of being aghast at them, just as it prevents us from seeing the horror that is often found in the dilemmas and other outcomes posed at the end of Christ’s parables.  The Lord wants very much to shake us up and to see with our eyes and hear with our ears.  By delving into the parables and studying their background and thinking about what Jesus is actually describing we can gain a deeper appreciation of these mysteries.  By refusing to gloss over the situations that occur in them, by refusing to add our own optimistic endings to them, we can look at what the Lord wants us to know.  When I was a seminarian I volunteered to spend a summer in a Spanish immersion program in Mexico that was run for men studying for the Priesthood.  I encountered a number of things which bothered me, including the scorpions that crawled under our bedroom doors at night, and the volcano that smoked away in the distance.  But the most troubling thing I discovered was the crucifixes the Mexicans decorated their churches and homes with.  The wood of the crosses would be real wood, crudely cut.  The crosses looked like instruments of torture.  There was nothing of the perfectly symmetrical, smooth-surfaced crosses, painted in neutral tones, that I was used to.  And the bodies on those crosses were right out of a bad nightmare.  To accentuate the humanity of the figures, Mexicans used human hair on them, affixed to the heads in such a way as to make the suffering perfectly clear.  The figures were painted in a ghastly fashion.  They were absolutely repugnant, but probably very accurate.

We have to look at the Crucifixion of our Lord as it really was in order to understand anything about the Resurrection and about his love for us.  So let us take a hard look at our Lord’s words, to know him and ourselves.

Saturday in the 26th Week of Ordinary Time, October 3, 2026

Luke 10:17-24

The seventy-two disciples returned rejoicing and said to Jesus, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.” Jesus said, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power ‘to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”  At that very moment he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” 

The seventy-two disciples had been sent out in pairs to various villages and towns.  Some planning must have gone into this enterprise so that a village or town was not neglected because another one had been visited twice.  The disciples had gone out to the towns as though fugitives from a sacked city,  with nothing beyond the clothes they wore.  But rather than returning to the Lord Jesus exhausted and dispirited, they arrive excited and joyful.  Many miracles and exorcisms had occurred through their hands: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us.”  The fearsome, snarling, sneering demons who had taken up residence within a person as though in a nest, were subject to these followers of Jesus who, up until a very short time before, had little to recommend them.  But they know their own mortality and that they had not accomplished these deeds on their own.  In fact, no one knows better than the miracle worker that it is the Lord who actually heals.  The healer feels no power running through him and may not even be aware that the person for whom he is praying has recovered.  There are no flashes or thunders, there is no music to announce the fact of the completed healing or successful exorcism.  It is clearly God, and him alone: “because of your name.”

The Lord then makes an extraordinary statement: “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.”  The Greek is better translated, I beheld Satan, as a flash of lightning, fall from heaven.  The verb tense of “I beheld” is in the aorist tense, not the perfect, indicating a completed action in the past that was done once.  Here, Jesus speaks of an event so distant in the past that neither the universe nor time existed yet.  It is in an instant following the creation of the angels in which they were offered a choice as to their eternity.  We read of Lucifer’s choice: “How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who did rise in the morning? How are you fallen to the earth, that did wound the nations? And you said in thy heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High’ ” Isaiah 14, 12-14).  And to this, the Archangel Michael cried out, “Who is like God?”  They fought and the devil fell from heaven “down to hell, into the depth of the pit” (Isaiah 14, 15).  He fell as “a flash of lightning”, that is, instantaneously and shedding his brilliance in his plunge, for he went from being the brightest of the angels to the darkest.  This statement the Lord Jesus made told his disciples why his name had such power: because he was God.  Only God could have made such a comment.  “Behold, I have given you the power ‘to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you.”  The “serpents and scorpions” of which the Lord Jesus speaks are the demons, so here he confirms the power he has given them.  “Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”  That is, written in the Book of Life in heaven: “There shall not enter into [heaven] any thing defiled or that works abominations or makes a lie: but they that are written in the book of life of the Lamb” (Revelation 21, 27).  

The Lord gave his disciples no chance to react to this because “at that very moment he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.”  That is, the Lord and the Holy Spirit rejoiced together, Jesus rejoicing through the Holy Spirit, the Embrace of Love that bound the Father and Son together.  He prays aloud, and in so doing reveals the mystery of his Divine Sonship: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”  This reads very much like something we might expect to find in the Gospel of St. John.  Jesus reveals the mystery here in order to show his disciples that they are cooperating in the work of grace, and that they are the ones “the Son wishes to reveal” the mystery of God as his divine Father.  The Son does not tell them this before they go to the villages and towns because it would have been too much for them then.  But now, seeing his power work through them, they are ready.

Friday in the 26th Week of Ordinary Time, October 2, 2026.                                                                                            The Feast of the Guardian Angels

Exodus 23, 20-23

Thus says the Lord: “See, I am sending an angel before you, to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared. Be attentive to him and heed his voice. Do not rebel against him, for he will not forgive your sin. My authority resides in him. If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites; and I will wipe them out.”

Belief in guardian angels already existed among the Jews when the Lord Jesus was born, and he teaches about them in Matthew 18, 10: “See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”  We see guardian angels at work in the Acts of the Apostles, as when St. Peter’s angel releases him from prison (cf. Acts 12, 3-29).  Devotion to them spread under the Franciscans and, later, the Jesuits, through the Middle Ages into the days of the Counter-Reformation.  Local feasts in honor of these angels sprung up here and there, and then in 1607 a universal feast for them was established by pope Paul V. The popular “Angel of God” prayer was written in the early 1700’s at the latest.

The theology of the guardian angels is well laid-out in the text of the First Reading for today’s feast, although the angel spoken of is protecting a nation rather than an individual.  “I am sending an angel before you, to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared.”  Almighty God was speaking to the Hebrews at the time of their exodus from Egypt and their wandering in the wilderness, and we can understand him speaking to us now.  In his marvelous Providence, Almighty God sends an angel from heaven — that is, he assigns and dedicates an angel in heaven — to go “before” each of us as our leader and guide “on the way”, that is, during our pilgrimage to God which we make throughout our lives.  He will “bring” us to the place God has prepared for us.  The angel will not force us to go or defend us against our will.  He will bring us to this place prepared by God.  Of this place “prepared” for us, the Lord Jesus himself says that he will address the righteous thus at the final judgment: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25, 34).  A marvelous destination, indeed!  On that day, the just will declare, “He has set me in a place of pasture. He has brought me up to the water of refreshment” (Psalm 23, 2).  The Lord urges us, “Be attentive to him and heed his voice.”  Our guardian angel speaks to us in the depths of our conscience, helping us to understand what to say or do, or whether to act at all.  He helps us to know how to act or speak when we know that this is necessary.  He warns us of dangers to our soul and of occasions of sin.  “Do not rebel against him, for he will not forgive your sin.”  To rebel against our guardian angel is to rebel against God, with whose holy will his is perfectly aligned.  Our rebellion is thus not so much against the angel but against Almighty God, and so we do not ask the angel’s forgiveness but God’s.  “My authority resides in him.”  The Lord entrusts the guardian Angel with great responsibility and the angel carries it out perfectly.  It is we who fail and fall into sin. Because divine authority is given to the angel, we have greater reason to obey him.  “If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.”  Our enemy is the devil.  If we set our will to resist the devil, we will see how God acts as our champion through our guardian angel.  “My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites; and I will wipe them out.”  A single angel suffices to “wipe out” the hordes of these peoples, so how superior he is to a single demon tempting us.  The various peoples mentioned in this verse can be understood as signifying the demons who assail us on a daily basis, but as “the angel of the Lord shall encamp round about them that fear him: and shall deliver them” (Psalm 34, 8), we have nothing to fear, and, in due time, God will wipe them out — remove us from them, drawing us into heaven where we will join with the angels in proclaiming his glory.