The 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 27, 2026

Philippians 2, 1–11

If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

In teaching basic Christian morality to pagan converts, St. Paul always pointed to the example of Christ.  We see him do this in his letters to the Ephesians (in chapters five and six) and to the Colossians (in chapters three and four).  In the second reading for today’s Mass, St. Paul first speaks of the need for generosity and unity for pleasing Christ, and then, with the words, “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus”, he tells them how they might live in Christ.  This “attitude” is one of obedience even unto death, and the most savage kind of death.  In the Christian this might take the form of martyrdom, but it always means holding all things — all things — as nothing, for the sake of Christ.

Paul considered the absolute obedience of the Lord Jesus to be his most important characteristic.  It is what makes the Son of God who he is.  The Son is equal in power and glory to the Father but his obedience makes him distinct from the Father.  In his subjection to the Father the Son makes himself subject to us as well, and dies on the Cross because of the Father’s love for us and his desire for us to be saved: that is, the Son loves us because the Father, whom he loves, loves us.  We can imitate the Son in this and in doing so, we can live out the life he commands us to live.  His first commandment is to love God with all our heart and soul.  We see the Lord adoring the Father with his prayers and by fulfilling the Father’s will.  Seeing this, and with the help of grace, we may also adore him with our prayers and by fulfilling his will for us.  The second commandment the Lord Jesus gives us is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Now, very many people make themselves unlovable and even despicable to us, and yet we can love them, that is, have a will for their conversion, knowing that the Lord Jesus himself loves them.  We love the ones he loves for his sake.  We often do this in small ways in our daily life: our spouse or parent or sibling has a friend or relative that we find simply odious, and yet for the sake of the person we love, we are civil to that odious person.  As Christians, we pray for the conversion of people who openly offend God and scandalize or even persecute the faithful.  We do this for the sake of Christ who died for them, too, even if these people refuse to receive the graces he won for them.

Not long ago there was a kind of fad among Christian youth groups. The leaders of such groups taught kids to look at difficult moral situations and then to think, What would Jesus do?  This was their method of teaching practical Christian morality.  Problems arise with this strategy because there is not a human alive who can rightly envision how the Lord would act in a given situation.  Jesus’s actions on earth were inherently unpredictable.    He never did what people expected him to do.  What we can and ought to do, though, is to imitate his virtues.  Let us, then, imitate the Son’s obedience particularly so that we might share in the Son’s inheritance.

Saturday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 26, 2026

Luke 9, 43-45

While they were all amazed at his every deed, Jesus said to his disciples, “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

Jesus has just descended the mountain where he had been transfigured before his Apostles Peter, James, and John, and a man has brought his only son, who is possessed by a demon, to Jesus.  After Jesus exorcises the evil spirit, the boy is restored and the gathered crowd rejoices. St. Luke tells us that, “they were all amazed at his every deed.”  The Greek word has the meaning of “awestruck”.  It is at this point that the Lord begins to prepare his Apostles for his coming betrayal, arrest, Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  The journey to Jerusalem which they had now begun was to be the final one with their Master, and they could not believe their ears when he told them this.

In the midst of the acclamation by the crowd, the Lord said to them, “Pay attention to what I am telling you.”  He had often spoken solemnly on matters of the law, but here he speaks as a parent to a beloved child, warning him of some danger.  The peril of which he speaks pertains to him: “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”  That is, he does not warn them of am imminent, physical danger to themselves, but only to him.  He warns them in this way because he knows that their faith will be sorely tested.  Indeed, if the Lord had not prepared them and told them what would happen beforehand, the Apostles might not have stayed in Jerusalem after the arrest but fled back to Galilee.  He tells them what they need to hear, that he will be “handed over to men”.  The literal meaning of the Greek is more urgent: The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.  Even if the Lord had said nothing more than this to them on this occasion, these words by themselves would have caused great alarm.  Already, shortly before the Transfiguration, to go by Luke’s chronology, the Lord had said to his Apostles, “The Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and the third day rise again” (Luke 9, 22).  Now, he emphasizes that he is about to be “betrayed” into the hands of the rulers of the people.  

The Apostles were thunderstruck: “But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it.”  Was Jesus speaking to them in a parable?  Was he quoting some obscure Scripture?  At the height of his success in Galilee, it seemed impossible that he could be speaking literally.  And if he meant some danger of which they had not heard, then surely he would be able to avoid it.  “Its meaning was hidden from them.”  Luke uses a figure of speech.  God is not “hiding” the meaning of these words from them, but allowing them to wonder about them or to ask Jesus what he meant by them.  But they do not ask: “They were afraid to ask him about this saying.”  

We are often in the position of the Apostles, concerned about what is happening to us or around us, and afraid to ask about it.  A friend of mine, a Harvard MBA, once told me that she was driving down the street in her car when suddenly a loud clanking erupted under the hood.  I asked her what did she do, and she told me that she simply turned up the volume of the radio. This can also happen to people when they notice some physical change in their bodies that might indicate the progress of a dangerous disease: some strange swelling or pain, perhaps.  Many people would go to the doctor to find out about it, but many would “turn up the volume” and hope that if they forgot about the problem it would go away by itself.  This can happen in the spiritual life as well.  A person feels the guilt of some unconfessed sin but always finds a reason for not confessing it.  Admitting the serious nature of the sin they have committed means recognizing a state about ourselves we may not care to see.  The Apostles would have benefitted from asking the Lord about the words he had spoken, but they preferred not to know.  We should not feel afraid to ask our Lord the important questions which we have: Who am I?  Who are you, O Lord? What am I to do with my life?  Let us not be so afraid of his answers that we keep quiet.

Personal Note: I am starting to feel better. Thank you for your prayers!

Friday In the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 25, 2026

Luke 9, 18-22

Once when Jesus was praying in solitude, and the disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” They said in reply, “John the Baptist; others, Elijah; still others, ‘One of the ancient prophets has arisen.’” Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said in reply, “The Christ of God.” He rebuked them and directed them not to tell this to anyone. He said, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”

“The Christ of God.”  This differs from St. Matthew’s recollection of Peter’s answer: “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16, 16).  Luke‘s shortened version emphasizes that Jesus was the Messiah whom the Jews awaited.  Luke has already, throughout his Gospel, made it clear that Jesus was the Son of God.  It begins with his quote of the Archangel, “He will be called the Son of God” — a Hebrew idiom meaning, He is the Son of God. So now Luke means to show his Greek Christian readers how the Jews rejected and killed the very Messiah they had awaited. For the Gentiles, the fact that the Lord fulfilled the Scriptures, performed astounding miracles, and then rose from the dead, and the Jews still rejected him, was baffling.

We might be greatly puzzled by the fact that Jesus evidently did not want people to know that he was the Messiah, the Son of God.  In fact, the term Messiah had been adopted and modified in its meaning by the Pharisees in the century before Jesus was born.  It became identified with political independence, with the restoration of David’s kingdom.  And so Jesus, “the anointed” of God, refused to be known by the public by this title, preferring “the Son of Man”, the title given by The Prophet Daniel.  He did however want his Apostles to know him as Christ, and to see what this title truly meant — not for a restorer of an earthly kingdom but for the one who would restore the human race for the heavenly kingdom.

“The Son of Man must suffer greatly.” By omitting the promises made by Jesus to Peter which Matthew 16, 17-19 records, Luke directly ties the Lord’s identity as Messiah to his rejection by the Jews and their leaders and then his Death.  It is as though he were saying: Jesus was killed because he was the Messiah.  

We rejoice in the gift of faith by which we know that the Lord Jesus as our God and King, as our Savior from sin, and marvel at what he endured for our salvation.  Let us pray for the conversion of those who lack faith so that they may rejoice with us.

Thursday in the 25 Week of Ordinary Time, September 24, 2026

Ecclesiastes 1, 2-11

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays. The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises. Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds. All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going. All speech is labored; there is nothing one can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.  What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, “See, this is new!” has already existed in the ages that preceded us. There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.

The Book of Ecclesiastes lays out for us the grim situation of the human race before the coming of the Son of God into the world.  It also paints for us the picture of the modern human living without Christ and the hope of heaven.  It is a short book, but just long enough to remind us of our great good fortune in what we have and what will be our fate should we lapse into a life of sin.  It also ought to motivate us to help others who do not know the Lord to get to know him, most of all by praying for them, for without grace, nothing changes.

“Qoheleth” is not a name but a position in which a person acts as a teacher or the speaker to an assembly.  Verse one identifies him with Solomon, but nearly all Hebrew wisdom was attributed to Solomon in the same way that we might say a king conquered a territory — his generals and soldiers in fact accomplished this.  The word translated here as vanity means “breath” or “vapor” in the Hebrew.  The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew word means “emptiness”, “purposelessness”, “nonsense”, and “emptiness”.  With this in mind, we can translate verse two as “It is all nonsense”, or “It is all without purpose”.  While perhaps striking some of us as a negative way to start a book, particularly a biblical book, this teaching reassures us of what Jesus teaches.  For instance, in the Parable of the Rich Farmer, the farmer has an abundant crop one season and decides to take it easy from now on and live on his enormous surplus.  But the Lord speaks to him in his bed: “You fool, this night do your soul will be demanded of you. And whose shall those things be which you have gathered?” (Luke 12, 20).

“One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.”  This verse sounds like the inspiration for “Ol’ Man River”, which points to the universality of this wisdom.  A given human person will make scant impact on the world — unless he becomes a saint.  We might think that an inventor could make a big difference in how the people of the world live, but ultimately nothing substantial improves.  There is no progress in the world of men and women, only change.  We find cures to one disease only for another to appear.  We create one technology only to find that the convenience it gives us does not make up for the dangers it unleashes.  Progress only occurs in the spiritual realm, where the most wretched sinner can repent and grow in grace and become a John of God, or a Mary of Egypt.

“The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.”  Fallen human nature makes us ever restless to find peace.  The godless self-medicate on things far worse than narcotics in order to forget the pointlessness of their existence: pornography, violence, our jobs.  They do not ease their suffering and find no answers, and at the same time the spouses and children they have accumulated suffer from their absence.

“Nothing is new under the sun.”  This held true until the Son of God became incarnate of the Virgin Mary.  And he came precisely in order to renew us.  This is why we Christians use words like “resurrection”, which literally means “to rise again”.  We do not just rise on the last day, we rise again.  That is, this is an entirely new kind of rising: not only the soul, but the soul and the body rejoined and glorified.  Jesus changes everything that matters.

“There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.”  Even three or four hundred years before the Birth of Christ, when this book was written, ancient ruins abounded.  Babylon and Nineveh, once so mighty, lay crushed to the ground.  The great pharaohs of Egypt were no more and hardly anyone knew their names anymore as the land was controlled  by the Greeks, who would later give way to the Romans.  

We give God thanks for making himself known to us, and for the grace which enables us to do his will so that he have purpose in our lives and heaven to look forward to.

Wednesday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 23, 2026

Proverbs 30, 5-9

Every word of God is tried by fire; he is a shield to those who hope in him. Add not anything to his words, lest you be reproved and found a liar. Two things I have asked of thee; deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me vanity and lying words. Give me neither beggary nor riches; give me only the things necessary for my sustenance, lest perhaps being filled, I should be tempted to deny, and say: Who is the Lord? or being compelled by poverty, I should steal, and forswear the name of my God.

I became confused and on Tuesday September 21 posted a reflection on the Gospel Reading for the following day and not for that day. Instead of posting a second reflection on that Gospel Reading, here is a reflection on the First Reading, from the Book of Proverbs. To add to the interest, the following is a translation from the commentary on Proverbs by Rabanus Maurus (780-856), a brilliant Frankish Benedictine monk who wrote many commentaries on the Scriptures, and whose feast day is celebrated on February 4. The translation of the Reading follows the text Rabanus used and so differs from the one used in the lectionary.

From the Commentary on The Book of Proverbs by Rabanus Maurus:

“Every word of God is tried by fire; he is a shield to those who hope in him.” The whole Church of Christ knows this, and those especially perceive it who, with God dwelling within them, despise the pride of earthly wisdom. For indeed every word of divine authority both kindles the hearts of the elect with the fire of charity, enlightens them with the knowledge of truth, consumes whatever stains of vice it finds in them, and defends those who hope in it from the snares of enemies and from every adversity.

But it must be considered more carefully that the particular force of the Greek expression πεπυρωμένον cannot be expressed in Latin by a single word. Hence it is sometimes translated “kindled,” and sometimes “tried by fire,” as in: “Your word is exceedingly kindled,” (Psalm 118:140) and: “Silver tried by fire” (Psalm 11:7). In Greek, however, both meanings are expressed by the single word πεπυρωμένον. There is also a verse of the Psalmist which closely resembles this saying of Solomon: “Every word of God is tried by fire; he is a shield to those who hope in him.” (πεπυρωμένα): “He is the protector of all who hope in him” (Psalm 17:31).

Πεπυρωμένον, therefore, signifies something that has been, as it were, purified by being melted in fire. For just as metals which have been melted in fire contain no foreign or useless impurity within themselves, but whatever remains in them is true, perfect, and cleansed of every stain, so too the word of the Lord, containing within itself the good things of eternity, remains pure.

Hence that saying of the Lord: “One jot, or one tittle, shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:18). For all these things in the Scriptures are true, and, beyond every ambiguity, are refined by fire from the superfluity of emptiness.

“Add not anything to his words, lest you be reproved and found a liar.” Do not corrupt the words of the Holy Scriptures, as certain heretics are known to have done, lest they should be convicted by them.

“Two things I have asked of thee; deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me vanity and lying words. Give me neither beggary nor riches; give me only the things necessary for my sustenance, etc.” These words the man with whom God is, still radiant with the fire of his word, now utters with his voice turned toward the Lord himself, beseeching that he may never prefer the vanity of this world or lying words to the truth of the heavenly Scriptures, nor again, through either abundance or want of passing things, fall into forgetfulness of eternal things.

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Key to understanding Rabanus’s point is that the Scriptures are both purified and purifying by the fiery love of God. The lectionary translation says merely that God’s word is “tested”, an inadequate rendering of either the Hebrew or the Greek. However, purified by the love of God the Scriptures do not simply sit inertly and perhaps inspire a soul here and there to live with greater zeal for God’s cause. Rather, “the word of God is living and effectual and more piercing than any two edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow: and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). That is, as Rabanus points out, the word of God the word kindles, illumines, cleanses, and defends those who come to it with faith.

Wednesday in the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, September 23, 2026

Luke 9, 1-6

Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.” Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.

“Jesus summoned the Twelve.”  Luke phrases this very formally, as though a king or a general were summoning his emissaries for a mission.  Luke says “the Twelve” as though he were naming an official body of men.  The number seems important to him, and he is the Evangelist who informs us of how the Apostles added one to their membership after Judas hanged himself, thus preserving the number.  The Greeks to whom Luke was writing considered the number twelve a sign or even component of the cosmic order.  They recognized twelve constellations in the zodiac, counted twelve months in the lunar year, and worshipped the twelve gods of Olympus, who had overthrown their predecessors, the twelve Titans.  The number of the Apostles thus reflected for them the new cosmic order of the Gospel.

“And gave them power and authority.”  That is, the Lord shared his power with them; they did not possess power on their own, and the sharing lasted only for the duration of their mission.  He gave them both the power and the authority to use this power — he left its use to their discretion.  “Over all demons and to cure diseases.”  The demons possess varying levels of their own power according to their hierarchy.  The power and authority Jesus lends the Apostles takes in all of them.  These actions, exorcism and curing the sick, act as signs that God walks among men, that the kingdom of the devil is shattered, and for the forgiveness of sins.

“Take nothing for the journey.”  The Apostles are to go abroad as though they were fleeing from something, or fleeing to something.  They were hurrying without impediments just as a person drops everything he is holding in order to run and greet a long-lost loved one.  Nothing matters except seeing them again.  Their entering a town or village as travelers but without a staff, a second tunic, or sack would certainly have drawn people’s attention.  This kind of arrival would also contrast with the arrival of Pharisees or scribes, or any traveling preachers, who would attempt to impress the locals with their wealth, which would imply approbation.  The Apostles come as simple messengers.  “Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.”  The better off denizens of the place would vie with one another to house the Apostles when they saw them perform miracles, but the Apostles had come not for their own benefit but to announce Christ.  They were not to accept honors of any kind.

“And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.”  To shake the dust off from one’s feet amounted to declaring that one would never return to that place, or to write off the place.  The Apostles were to show this sign to a town where they were not welcomed, that is, if they came to a town and began to preach and they were told to leave.  There will always be people who will reject the Gospel no matter how well it is preached or how many miracles support it.

“Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.”  We see here the commitment of the Apostles.  They did not think of themselves merely as students of Jesus but as his messengers as well.  We should try to imagine how this looked, the Apostles tired and hungry from walking, arriving unannounced into a strange town with no money.  They might have begun to preach in the marketplace, announcing the coming of the kingdom of God and calling people to repent.  They probably lacked charisma and were not used to speaking in public, and they came without credentials — they were neither scribes nor Pharisees from Jerusalem.  They probably spoke of Jesus as the Messiah.  If they gained little hearing, they might have spotted a lame man lying in the shadows, or a child with a deformity, and then laid hands on them to cure them.  The man or child would have stood up healed instantly, and this would have caused a commotion, with a crowd surging around the Apostle to find out who he was.  Then the Apostle would have his audience.

You and I may not possess the power to cure, but we all have the power to perform charitable works.  These are the signs that will draw others to us.  May they see us and our good deeds and find Christ.

The Feast of St. Matthew, September 21, 2026

Matthew 9, 9-13

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He heard this and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

The Jews in the time of Jesus paid several different taxes: the Temple tax, which went to Jerusalem; the head tax, which the Roman authorities charged and which did not cost a lot, but which had to be paid in a coin bearing the likeness of the emperor.  Using a coin of this type reminded the people that they lived under a foreign thumb and it also smacked of idolatry.  Then there were the customs or toll taxes, paid on merchandise on its way to its destination.  The toll stations were set up in cities and at crossroads on the trade routes.  Wealthy men would bid for the appointment to these tolls stations.  Once appointed, they paid Rome the expected tax in advance and then recouped their costs through what they charged the merchants who had to pay it.  There might be several toll stations along any given trade route.  Of course, the opportunities for gouging and extortion abounded.  These tax collectors were despised by the population for their exorbitant wealth, their power, and the abuse of their responsibilities.  In addition, the people considered them unclean because of their familiar dealings with the Gentiles.  St. Matthew would have been one of these.  Zacchaeus would have acted as a regional supervisor who received kickbacks from them.

Despite their status and the feelings of the people against them, some tax collectors were attracted to John the Baptist, who stood against all that they stood for.  The tax collectors, in their rich clothing, would have made an odd sight among the followers of John and the mostly ordinary people drawn to him.  Yet they braved the comments and whatever unease they felt to stand by the Jordan River to hear him preach.  We do not know of any who became more or less regular disciples.  Like most folks, they would have gone to hear John preach on the coming Messiah and how they should live their lives in anticipation of his arrival.  Matthew might have been one of these.  Though swathed in wealth and luxury, he felt an urgency in his heart that he could not explain.  John’s words would have provided a little soothing, but the urging did not go away.  Instead, it increased.

Capernaum was not such a large town that Jesus could have gone unnoticed even if he had wanted to.  But all in the town had seen him, heard him, and many would have been healed by him.  Matthew would have known about him and probably had heard him.  But if he had any hope of speaking or following Jesus, he knew that a greater gulf existed between them than between he and John the Baptist.  John performed no miracles, but Jesus seemed to be alive with the power to heal.  At the same time, the urging he felt within himself grew ever more persistent every moment that Jesus was near.  

It was Jesus who came across the gulf.  “As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.”  Probably the customs post was set up near the gate of the town or just outside it, on the road.  The Lord would have had to deliberately come there.  “Follow me!”  Jesus did not call to him in the act of walking, as though casually, but looked deep into his eyes, right into his soul, and called out to him.  A large number of people would have heard him.  And just as Peter and Andrew were in the midst of their work when the Lord called, so was Matthew, perhaps at that very moment making an assessment or issuing a receipt.  The Lord always seems to call when it is least convenient for us.  And then Matthew stopped and felt unable to bear the urgency any longer and got up and went to the Lord, to the shock of everyone standing by.

“While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples.”  Matthew, shaking with excitement and a little dazed, led the Lord to his house, not knowing or caring what anyone else would think.  He had a substantial household whether he was married or not, though it is safe to say he was: slaves and servants and possibly relatives and unmarried family members.  The house was large enough to provide room for the Lord and such close followers as he had at the time, as well as his family and friends — “tax collectors and sinners” — scoundrels of various sorts, the sort of friends only a tax collector would have.  The talk would have gotten loud in the house, for these were not refined people, but those who lived on the edges of society.  Jesus would have felt right at home here, however, and acted and spoke freely with all who wanted a word with him or sought his attention.

The Pharisees came along to see the spectacle of the righteous man cavorting with the wicked.  They sought to sow dissension among the disciples by pointing out his behavior to them.  But the Lord heard them and had a sharp answer for them: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.”  For the Pharisees, there were the righteous of the world and the unrighteous.  For the Lord, there were the righteous and there were those who could become righteous — and there were the wicked who sought to prevent them.  “I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  The Lord quotes from Hosea 6, 6: “Hosea: “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice: and the knowledge of God more than holocausts.”  Significantly, the next verse: “But they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant, there have they dealt treacherously against me.”

St. Matthew devoted himself to the Lord Jesus the rest of his life and traveled far in preaching the Gospel, traditionally including to the land of Ethiopia.  His Gospel, written in Hebrew or Aramaic for the Galilean Christians of 35-50 A.D. suffering persecution by the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, focuses on the need for perseverance in the Faith and on the great Judgment to come.  The great collection of the Lord’s moral teachings he hands on to us provides us the means to live our lives so as to be set on the Lord’s right hand in that Judgment.

We pray to St. Matthew for help in our perseverance and in living the righteous life made possible by Jesus Christ.