Wednesday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 2, 2026

Luke 4, 38-44

After Jesus left the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon. Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever, and they interceded with him about her. He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and waited on them.  At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them. And demons also came out from many, shouting, “You are the Son of God.” But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ.  At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them. But he said to them, “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.” And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

“After Jesus left the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon.”  The events in the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass follow the Lord’s exorcism of a demon in the town’s synagogue.  We hear no more of the man whom the demon possessed nor of those who witnessed the exorcism.  Simon and Andrew certainly witnessed it.  St. Luke assumes that his readers know that Jesus is already acquainted in the two brothers, which St. John confirms in his Gospel.  Luke uses Peter’s original name, Simon, since Jesus has not yet changed it.  “Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever, and they interceded with him about her.”  Here is early evidence of the intercession of the saints, for Peter and Andrew interceded for this woman.  It is no different today when we ask Peter and Andrew for their prayers for some cause.  She was afflicted with a severe fever from which she would die without divine help.  “He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and waited on them.”  Luke is careful to show the Lord’s position over her, perhaps recalling the words of the Psalm: “The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life” (Psalm 121, 5-7). (The “smiting” of the moon at night was thought to cause “lunacy” as the sun caused “sunburn”).  Luke reports that the Lord “rebuked” the fever as though it were sentient.  In this way he shows that he commands all things, and all things serve him.  The illness itself served to provide a sign of his power, even as did the death of Lazarus, as the Lord explained to the Apostles at the time.  “She got up immediately and waited on them.”  She got up and went to work without any period of convalescence such as she would have ordinarily needed.  Her work was to “wait” on them, reminding us that this is our work too, and we can do this when we are ill as well as when we are well.  

“At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him.”  Luke tells us that Simon’s mother-in-law waited on Jesus and the others which tells us the healing occurred around the time of the midday meal.  By sunset some hours had passed and the story of the exorcism as well as of the healing would have spread to the surrounding area.  Some of the sick would have walked hours.  Other would have had to be carried or dragged on mats.  “He laid his hands on each of them and cured them.”  The Lord could have cured them at one and the same time, but he chose the exhausting method of meeting each one, perhaps exchanging a few words with each, and healing them individually, standing for hours.  In this way he showed his love for each.  Looking back at this we can learn that the Lord would have died over and over again for us if he could have, and if this would have won for him the love and gratitude of each human.  Even so, the one Death he died overwhelmed him with a suffering that we can never imagine.  “And demons also came out from many, shouting, ‘You are the Son of God.’  But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ.”  The demons now cry out anything, tempting him to himself to reveal himself to them.  Since he had already publicly revealed at Nazareth that he was the Messiah, they did know this about him.  Jesus “did not allow them to speak”, that is, to do anymore than make a single cry which would prove the case of the possession as well as help indicate the success of the exorcism afterwards.  

“At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place.”  If the Lord slept, he could not have slept much.  St. Mark tells us that after this torrent of miracles, “rising very early, going out, he went into a desert place: and there he prayed” (Mark 1, 35).  Perhaps the wasteland resembled, to some extent, the world at the very beginning: “The earth was void and empty” (Genesis 1, 2).  Here is the Lord, as the sun’s rays only begin to light the sky, beginning his work of re-creation and redemption.  “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.”  For the first time, he teaches that he has been “sent” into the world, having preexisted it; he was outside the world and now he is inside it.  He also reveals his purpose for being sent: to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, that the redemption of the human race is now st hand.  “And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.”  If we read only Gospels of Matthew and Mark we would not know that Jesus preached in the towns of Judea, for they do not mention this.  Luke is careful to do so to show the Gentiles reading his Gospel that the whole Jewish nation had the opportunity to accept or reject him.

Eventually in Capernaum the Lord’s miracles became commonplace.  The people took them and him for granted so that he rebuked them before his final journey to Jerusalem.  Let us look about us and see the many miracles and signs of love that he gives to us that our love for him may grow.

Tuesday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 1, 2026

Luke 4, 31-37

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee. He taught them on the sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of him!”  Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm.  They were all amazed and said to one another, “What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region.

In this Gospel Reading, St. Luke reports that the Lord Jesus went to the larger town of Capernaum beside the Sea of Galilee after he was rejected and nearly killed at his hometown of Nazareth.  The two towns were about twenty hilly miles apart, but were worlds apart in that Nazareth was landlocked and relatively isolated and Capernaum sat by the sea and on a trade route.  It was also situated within easy reach of other towns and cities.  And while at Nazareth “he wrought not many miracles there, because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13, 58), at Capernaum “all the city was gathered together at the door” (Mark 1, 33).

“They were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority.”  The Greek word translated here as the fairly mild “astonished” means the stronger “astounded” and “thunderstruck”.  When the Pharisees taught, they backed their teaching, however misguided, with quotes from the Scriptures.  The Lord preaches in a different way: “Matthew 5:27–28 (D-R): You have heard that it was said to them of old: You shall not commit adultery.  But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5, 27-28).  He teaches on his own authority, for he himself is the Lawgiver.  This directness shocked the people, and the fact that he was “unlearned” in the Law and not a Pharisee added to this effect.  But they listened.

“In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon.”  We can read this both as a historical fact and as Luke’s summary of the rejection of Jesus by the Jews: the unclean spirit of the Pharisees, the chief priests, and the elders dwelling within the Jewish world, resisting the Son of God who has come to cast them out and save the people.  We might ask how an unclean spirit would permit the individual it possessed to enter a synagogue or church.  Among other reasons for this, demons are driven towards that which will conquer them due to their self-destructive nature.

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”  The demon speaks in the first person plural as the spokesman for several demons that are present with it.  It claims to know who Jesus is and names him as “the Holy One of God”, indicating that all it knows is that Jesus does the works of God.  The devil did not know until quite late in the Lord’s life that he was the only-begotten Son of God.

“Be quiet! Come out of him!”  Elaborate rituals, often involving sacrifices, were used in ancient times to drive out demons.  Here, the Lord demonstrates his power with two brisk commands.  “Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm.”. The Lord permits the demon to throw the man down in order to make manifest some token of the demon’s power, but the man is protected and is able to side up unhurt.  We should notice how cleanly Luke describes the scene and the dialogue.  He does this in order to keep the focus on the main point of the event: the Lord’s power over evil.  But we should think about how this actually played out, with the demon contorting the man and driving him back and forth through the synagogue, then hissing and crying out in turns.  The very appearance of the man during the demon’s encounter with the living God would have terrified any onlooker, the eyes bulging, foam dripping from the mouth, his whole visage wild.

“They were all amazed.”  Those who had witnessed the exorcism would never have seen or heard of anything like this before, and it happened very quickly.  “What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.”  The Lord commanded the demon to depart with his own words and by his own authority.  He did not resort to long prayers and involved rituals.  His word drove the demon out.  But where did the word’s power come from?  Where did his authority come from?  For this was the power and authority of God alone.  In Luke’s telling, this began a virtual torrent of miracles that day.  It was as if Jesus had barely restrained himself through his life until this moment to pour out his healing into the world.  This is a sign of how passionately he wished to die on the Cross for our redemption.  He waits until the moment ordained in his Father’s Providence, and then devours the work the Father appoints to him.

We should cultivate through prayer and meditation on the Cross this same zeal for doing the Father’s will so that we might become more and more like his Son.

Monday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, August 31, 2026

Luke 4, 16-30

Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”  Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

St. Luke puts events in their chronological order that are in thematic or some other order in other Gospels.  St. Matthew, for instance, shows Jesus moving to Capernaum before returning to Nazareth, but St. Luke shows that Jesus went back to Nazareth, was rejected there, and then moved to Capernaum.  The rejection was the cause for the move.  The move was the sign that the Lord accepted their rejection.  And it was a warning.

“Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day.”  Throughout his Gospel, St. Luke shows his Gentile readers that Jesus obeyed the Law on every respect and fulfilled the Scriptures pertaining to the Messiah: it is the high priests and Pharisees who do not obey the Law and falsely accuse Jesus.  He was rejected by his own people bot because he was a bad Jew but because they were.  

“He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.”  Synagogue services did not include worship, which was restricted to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Rather, they were discussions on the Law and the Prophets.  Anyone could read on a given Sabbath and lead the discussion.  Jesus chooses to read from a scroll containing the Book of Isaiah.  Almost every synagogue in Israel at that time had a complete copy of the Law and the Prophets.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.”  This was a text considered to speak of the Messiah.  “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”  The Lord identifies himself as the Messiah with these words.  We note that he does this not at Jerusalem or even in the town his Mary and Joseph’s family was from but at the town where he grew up.  He was according this insignificant out-of-the-way settlement an immense honor in which the inhabitants could have basked.  Instead of Capernaum, he could have drawn his first disciples from there, and used Nazareth as his base.

At first, the response proved favorable: “And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”  But as the talk continued, it turned negative.  How could this be the Messiah?  “Is this not the son of Joseph?”  According to the Pharisees, no one was supposed to know where the Messiah came from.  His claim contradicted this widely accepted idea.  Jesus seems to preempt another objection: “Physician, cure yourself.”  Some of the earliest Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, wrote that the Lord possessed some sort of deformity such as a bowed back, and this would seem to answer the proverb the Lord quotes and it would also make it less likely that he could be the Messiah.  “Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.”  The crowd now realizes it has only heard of the miracles the Lord has performed; they have not seen any themselves.

“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.”  The Lord reminds the people of how the Prophets whom they now revere were themselves rejected and persecuted by their own people.  Then he cites how the two greatest of them accepted this rejection and went and performed miracles for others instead.  “When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury.”  The murderous nature of this fury, this riot, eludes us a little.  But the Lord’s comparing them to the ungrateful people at the time of the Prophets touched some deep feeling within them.  Perhaps they were of the mind of the Pharisees: “If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Prophets” (Matthew 23, 30).  In this case they would have seen Jesus as telling them that they were no better than their ancestors, who persecuted the Prophets.  Ironically, they endeavor to fulfill this: “They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.”  The Lord shows his divine patience in not destroying the town but in simply slipping away: “But he passed through the midst of them and went away.” 

Nazareth would hear much more of the Lord’s miracles over the next few years but he would never return there.  They had rejected him and he accepted that rejection.  They will be accountable for it at the great judgment.  Let us grasp the Lord gratefully with our hearts and ever seek to obey his commandments of love so that he may his home in our hearts.

The Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 30, 2026

Matthew 16, 21–27

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

The Greek text begins the first verse of this reading with the words, “From that”, that is, “from that time”.  St. Matthew is telling us that at some time following the naming of Simon the fisherman as “Peter”, the “rock”, Jesus began to tell his Apostles about the future towards which he was nearing as they made their way to Jerusalem.  Jesus first lets the momentous teaching about this “rock” on which he was to build his “Church” sink in before the much more shocking announcement of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  St. Matthew says that he “began” to tell them this.  He might have meant that from then on he did this, through parables and also directly speaking of these events.  Just after the teaching about Peter as the “rock”, Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John, and afterwards Jesus mentioned to them his Resurrection, which they did not understand, so it is clear that he had not spoken much of this at that time.  This leads to the conclusion that the rebuke of Peter in this reading did not happen directly after he had been named thus by the Lord.  The sequence of events makes more sense if we see this rebuke as taking place as the Lord and the Apostles drew much nearer Jerusalem, or even after they had entered it, when Jesus had become much more explicit about what would happen to him.  Matthew places it at this spot in his Gospel because it is his custom to group his sayings about the Lord according to theme, with less thought to historical order.  The theme here would be Peter’s relationship with the Lord.  This understanding of the events also eliminates for us the jarring effect of Jesus raising Peter to the heights in one moment, and then calling him “Satan” in the next.  There is some time between these events, days or weeks.  We recall another jarring effect that Matthew produces in the last verse of chapter two and the first verse of chapter three of his Gospel.  There, we go immediately from the infancy of Jesus to “In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the desert” — thirty years later.

“God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  The expression Peter uses, the Greek word hilaos, does not mean “God forbid”, which, in any case, would not be an expression Jews would use.  The word itself means something like “merciful” or “favorable”.  In the context here, it could be translated very loosely as “Mercy help us” or the simple ejaculation “Mercy!” which we sometimes hear today.  Peter would not have used the word as an expression of astonishment, but as a sort of a statement, or the prelude to an oath: “No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  Peter may have taken our Lords words about his coming Death as a challenge to see which of his followers would step up to fight for him, just as the Lord had told the Apostles to feed the feed the crowd of five thousand themselves, presumably (in Peter’s mind) to see how they would react.  Peter, the most zealous of the Apostles, is ready to defend his Lord.  But the One whom Peter has rightly named the Son of God does not need his assistance.  Here, as later when Peter unsheathes his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord rebukes him.  

His words must have stung and confused the Apostle: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” This is as strong as the Lord’s “Begone, Satan!” from Matthew 4, 2, when the devil tempted him to worship him in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world.  The Lord calls no one else “Satan”, coming only as close as to tell certain of his opponents that the devil was their father (cf. John 8, 44).  To understand what the Lord means by calling Peter “Satan”, it helps to compare this incident with the earlier one, when the Lord faced Satan in the wilderness.  On the first occasion, the devil sought to determine who this Jesus was, “tempting”, or, testing him.  As the Lord’s wisdom and holiness of life became more apparent through the testing, the devil continued to think of him not as divine but as merely human, finally promising him to rule the kingdoms of the world, which the devil plainly thought was the ultimate fulfillment of human desire.  Here, the devil did not — and could not — think as God would think, but only as a man would, or might.  How many times throughout history had he succeeded in gaining the souls of men and women with such a false promise?  This is what Peter does, and he, more than any other disciple deserved such a reprimand because as Jesus had confirmed for him, it was his Heavenly Father who had revealed to him that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, that he was divine.  Peter’s mistake is to forget, ignore, or not think through what this meant, and so to contradict, as though to countermand, the Lord’s will.  For, the Lord did not say that he might “suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised”, but that he would certainly undergo these things.  Jesus, in his divinity, was revealing the events of the future to the Apostles in order to prepare them for what was to come.  Peter, in effect, is treating Jesus as he would any mere mortal leader of whom he was a follower: he is “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do”.  

Matthew next describes Jesus as evidently referencing that last temptation, for he says to his Apostles, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?”  As if to warn them that he is not seeking for himself nor promising them “all the kingdoms of the world”, the conquest of which would presumably begin once they had secured Jerusalem.  And when Jesus says “life”, here, he means one’s soul, one’s eternal life.  His speaking of the necessity of their denying themselves, picking up their crosses, and following him means that rather than pursuing worldly power they must renounce it, even as he has.  But in renouncing it, by renouncing their own wills for that of Jesus, they gain their souls and eternal life: “For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

Renouncing one’s will for that of Jesus, which is to say, promising Jesus obedience to his will for us, is no easy task.  It is the hardest thing a human can do.  Not even all the angels succeeded in doing this.  It turns a person inside out.  The most graphic display of this is in the vows and promises made by a man or woman upon their ordination or their making their final vows in the religious life.  Nowadays, contracts do not mean very much even at the time people enter into them.  But when a person publicly promises to serve God, it is a powerful sign for all of us that it is something we can want, and must want, to do.

Friday in the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, August 29, 2026

Mark 6, 17-29

Herod was the one who had John the Baptist arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, whom he had married. John had said to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” Herodias harbored a grudge against him and wanted to kill him but was unable to do so. Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody. When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him. She had an opportunity one day when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his courtiers, his military officers, and the leading men of Galilee. Herodias’ own daughter came in and performed a dance that delighted Herod and his guests. The king said to the girl, “Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you.” He even swore many things to her, “I will grant you whatever you ask of me, even to half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the Baptist.” The girl hurried back to the king’s presence and made her request, “I want you to give me at once on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was deeply distressed, but because of his oaths and the guests he did not wish to break his word to her. So he promptly dispatched an executioner with orders to bring back his head. He went off and beheaded him in the prison. He brought in the head on a platter and gave it to the girl. The girl in turn gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

St. John the Baptist preceded the Lord Jesus in that he was born before him, preached of his coming, and in terms of sanctity, for as the Lord himself said of him, “There has not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11, 11).  His sanctity consisted of his relentless carrying out of the will of God, challenging the established religious authorities and even the political leaders of the time.  He did not do so recklessly or needlessly.  He challenged the Pharisees to put their houses in order before facing the wrath to come.  And as the Prophet Elijah rebuked King Ahab for his unlawful marriage to the pagan Jezebel, so John rebuked King Herod for the illegal marriage of his brother’s former wife.  At the height of his influence and following, he baptized Jesus of Nazareth and recognized him as the Messiah concerning whom he had preached.  In the several months following this encounter of the two, John’s influence and following ebbed while that of the Lord grew.  John understood this, and said to one of his adherents, “He must increase but I must decrease” (John 3, 30).  All the same, he continued to preach repentance and to baptize up until Herod (or his wife)  felt threatened enough that soldiers came and dragged him away in chains.

John was not formally charged with any crime nor was he tried by any court.  He was jailed simply on the king’s order.  The Evangelists imply that John remained in prison for some time, but probably not more than a few months: “When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him.”  The Greek word translated here as “very much perplexed” means “at his wits end”, as though not knowing what to do about his marriage or about John.  Despite this, he heard him gladly, willingly.  It seems that with John in custody, he no longer posed a threat and Herod, who went to listen to him, does not seem to harbor any murderous intentions towards him.  Herod is shown as a dupe by his swearing to give his niece anything she wanted as a reward for her dance.  She also comes across as a mere pawn in going to her mother for advice rather than stating her own preference.  The devil works this way: through the hapless and the unwary, he harms the good.  He is the master manipulator whose sole goal is to destroy whatever is good.  The knowledge that he cannot win against God only embitters and enrages him further.  The devil managed to start a war as a result of this marriage of Herod and Herodias, for to marry her, Herod divorced his first wife, the daughter of an Arabian king.  This war broke out within a year of the Death and Resurrection of the Lord and proved disastrous for Herod.  A few years after the war the Roman Emperor Caligula accused him of plotting against him and both Herod and Herodias were sent into exile in the province of Gaul, where they died in misery.

John the Baptist’s life ended not in misery but in glory, circumstances notwithstanding, for his end was attended by hosts of angels, who brought his soul to the place where the great Patriarchs and Prophets awaiting the coming of Christ, who would appear to them on the day after his own Death.

We pray that through John’s intercession we too might stand up for the commandments of God in the face of all evil.

Friday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time, August 28, 2026

The Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo

Matthew 25:1-13

Jesus told his disciples this parable: “The Kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones, when taking their lamps, brought no oil with them, but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps. Since the bridegroom was long delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight, there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise ones replied, ‘No, for there may not be enough for us and you. Go instead to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.’ While they went off to buy it, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him. Then the door was locked. Afterwards the other virgins came and said, ‘Lord, Lord, open the door for us!’ But he said in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Throughout the New Testament we find the Kingdom of heaven likened to a  Jewish wedding feast, beginning with the words of St. John the Baptist: “He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled” (John 3, 29).  St. Paul speaks likewise: “I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11, 2).  Finally, at the end of the Book of Revelation, we read of the vision revealed to St. John in which the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven, adorned like a bride for her groom (cf. Revelation 21, 2).  We learn from these references that marriage serves as the primary image for the union of Christ and his Church.  The Lord himself shows this in various parables.  In the parable from today’s Gospel, we see how he uses the marriage feast to teach about the need for perseverance in faith in the life of his disciples.

The context of the parable is the return from the house of the bride’s family.  The groom brings her to his house so that they might begin their life together.  As part of this ritualized action, ten virgins, that is, girls in their early teens, would wait for the bride and groom outside the house and light the way for them until they went inside.  It was quite an honor to be chosen for this role, just as being chosen as a member of a wedding party would be for people today.  Now, five of the girls are described as being “wise”.  The Greek word actually means “practical”, “shrewd”, “sensible”, “prudent”, and “well-behaved”.  These girls realized that they were called to this role in order to fulfill a simple purpose, and so they procured that which would enable them to accomplish this.  They saw they were called to serve.  The other five girls are called “foolish”, and the Greek word is the basis for our word “moron”.  The Greek word has the meaning of “being dull”, “stupid”, “mentally inert”.  These virgins do not appreciate their role and do not prepare for it.  Even if they had not acted in this role for previous marriage feasts, what was necessary to carry it out would have been widely known.  In fact, they act with contempt towards the bridegroom and his bride.

The prudent virgins are those believers who light the way for Christ as he brings his Church into heaven at the end of time.  These are the saints, the Apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and married people who have brightened the world below with the light of their faith and holiness.  Their lit lamps are their good works, and the oil is the faith which fuels these good works.  They have sufficient faith no matter how long they must wait for the Lord to come, for they have prayed for it to be strengthened, and they have increased it through witnessing it to others.  The foolish virgins showed up with lamps, but they did not do these things, as though the role itself were repugnant to them, or the bride and bridegroom were contemptible to them.  That they run to buy oil when it is already too late shows only that they wish to not be left outside but to join the party within.  They do not care for the host and hostess, only for themselves.  The groom’s words, “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you”, repeat back to the foolish virgins in words what they have said to him with their actions. 

Jesus says to us, and not for the first time, “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  It is necessary for us to take stock of our own situations and to see if we have what we need for when the Lord comes again, for he surely will.

We celebrate today the feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the two great theologians since the Apostles who have shaped the Catholic Faith.  His two best known works are his Confessions and The City of God, but he also wrote hundreds of relatively short sermons that are filled with insights on the Scriptures and the life of our Lord.  Much of this is online.  We ask for his intercession that he may instill in our hearts a great love of the Lord Jesus and his holy words.

Thursday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time

The Feast of St. Monica

Matthew 24:42-51

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Throughout his Gospel, St. Matthew records very many instances of the Lord Jesus teaching about the coming judgment at the end of the world.  Doing so enabled Matthew to console the persecuted Jewish Christians for whom he was writing.  In Matthew’s Gospel more than the others, we see the wicked, often thinly disguised Pharisees, scribes, and the leadership in Jerusalem — their persecutors — being punished severely while the faithful are rewarded.  The Gospel reading for today is taken from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.  Chapters twenty-four and twenty-five contain the last public addresses of the Lord before his Passion begins and so they constitute a farewell speech.  He does not address large crowds again.  His last words to the crowds are about the second coming, and the next time large crowds see him will be at his second coming.

The reading is cut out from the middle of the Lord’s words on his coming again for judgment, and the context is his reason for people to live in  expectation of it.  In the Greek text, this reading is connected to those words with oun, which means “therefore”.  The Greek verb here is gregoreíte, which does not mean “stay awake” but “be on the alert”, or, “keep watch”.  The difference is significant.  A person can be awake but unaware.  Jesus is telling people to stay on their toes, to keep alert, “for you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”  We might ask why it is necessary for us to keep alert, since the Lord will certainly come again whether we are paying attention or not.  Foreseeing this question, Jesus speaks in a parable: “If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.”  We can understand this in two ways.  First, that Jesus is the thief who comes while everyone is asleep, sure of their safety.  But complacency is not real safety and if the thief comes and is able to break in, the sleepers will lose everything.  They could protect themselves with good works, and these would act as “the master of the house” keeping watch at night.  Second, it can be understood as the devil seeking to steal away a person’s faith, since faith can also be lost through complacency.

The moral Jesus gives here, “So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come”, he repeats several times in this section in the same way as he repeats “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you” over and over again as recorded the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.  We must live holy lives today as though our souls will be demanded of us tonight (cf. Luke 12, 20).

“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.”  The servant “put in charge of his household” — the master’s household — is the disciple of Christ who “distributes to them their food”, that is, feeds others the Gospel, “at the proper time”, doing so prudently and skillfully.  “Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.”  This servant is “blessed” in the sense that he is praiseworthy and also in the spiritual sense: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25, 34).

“My master is long delayed.”  The wicked servant, that is, one who has no interest in the master except to supplant him, persuades himself that the master will not return.  He may even tell himself that the master does not really exist, and so he is not bound by any objective rules or laws the master had set down — and not even basic human decency — and acts according to to his lusts and propensity for extravagance and violence.  But here he acts against his own interests because he is a servant and does not know how to be a master.  The other servants quit and the house falls apart, untended.  The crops are not planted, or not planted at the right time and they fail.  The returning master finds his property in a disastrous shape and so he “will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  The wicked servant sails aloud in the agony of his suffering, and grinds his teeth in frustration of what he could have had if he had simply done his duty, and in rabid envy at the reward of the good and faithful servants. 

The Gospels are not for the faint of heart, and particularly not these chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, but for those who have the strength of faith and the love of God, they strengthen their strength and deepen their love.

We celebrate today the Feast of St. Monica, a woman of great faith and perseverance in prayer.  We ask her intercession for the return of wayward children to return to the arms of Holy Mother Church.