Thursday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 30, 2022

Matthew 9, 1-8

After entering a boat, Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town. And there people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” At that, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” Jesus knew what they were thinking, and said, :Why do you harbor evil thoughts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”– he then said to the paralytic, “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.” He rose and went home. When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe and glorified God who had given such authority to men.

“Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”  In the Mosaic Law, God commanded various sacrifices to be made to him as “sin offerings”, and after the construction of the Temple by King Solomon and the centralizing of religion to Jerusalem, the Israelites had to go up to the Temple to make these sin offerings in order to obtain forgiveness.  But in fact, the sacrifices ordered in the Law were signs of the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus for our sins.  They did not take away sin: “For it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sin should be taken away” (Hebrews 10, 4).  The Lord fulfilled the sign of these sacrifices when he offered himself for us.  But already, during his Public Life, he was forgiving sins: here, with the paralyzed man; in the case of the sinful woman (Luke 7, 48); Zachaeus the tax collector (Luke 19, 9); and others as well.

Jesus angered the Pharisees by forgiving sins because they rightly understood that only God can do this, but they erred in not recognizing Jesus as the Son of God.  They should have known that this was who he was because of the signs of divine power he performed.  The miracles themselves acted as signs of the forgiveness of sins.  In the case of this paralytic, he may have become crippled through some sin he was committing at the time.  Repenting of his sin, what could be a more apt sign of God’s forgiveness than by restoring his ability to walk?

We ought to ask the question, What does the “forgiveness of sins” mean?  For some Protestants, it means that God covers up our sins and attributes Christ’s righteousness to us.  But the Church teaches, as the Lord reveals to her, that our sins are truly wiped out.  In the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18, 21-35), a servant owed his king an impossible amount of money.  He begged for forgiveness and the king, pitying him, canceled his debt.  For the Protestants, the servant still owes the debt; the king only overlooks it.  But the Lord is saying that the debt was actually canceled — wiped out (though afterwards reinstated) — so that the servant ceased to be in debt to the king.  The Blood of Jesus does not merely hide our sins; it erases them.  To think otherwise is to minimize the power of the Lord’s Sacrifice and to make sin so horrible that it cannot be affected even by divine power.

“Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”  With these words the Lord assures the former paralytic that he is healed and forgiven.  It is the same when the priest says to us after he absolves us: “Go in peace.”

 The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Wednesday, June 29, 2022

2 Timothy 4, 6–8; 17–18

I, Paul, am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance.  The Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat and will bring me safe to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

St. Paul wrote these words towards the end of his life on earth, but St. Peter could have also penned them with a few exceptions.  Both men had endured great hardship for decades to spread the Gospel.  By the time Paul writes this Letter to St. Timothy, he has reached his sixties, as has Peter.  This was not an extreme age for a working man of the time, but the years would have shone in the grooved lines on their faces, the scars on their hands, and by the welts on their backs from the beatings they had suffered.  

To look closely at these two men is to look at reflections of the Lord Jesus, for they served him with all their hearts.  We see the young fisherman who already owned his boat and who made a good, steady living from the Sea of Galilee.  He left this and his family at the call of the Lord, returning only in following the Lord.  What drove him to do this?  What intensity pounded in his heart so that he would leave all things for Jesus?  As with St. Paul, Peter could say, “To me, life is Christ and to die in gain” (Philippians 1, 21).

St. Paul was born in Tarsus, in southern Asia Minor and was raised in Jerusalem.  Since he worked as a tent-maker his father may very well have made tents as well.  He studied in Jerusalem under the wise Pharisee Gamaliel, but seems not to have seen the Lord Jesus during the Lord’s three years of ministry.  The first we hear of Paul, he is known as Saul of Tarsus, and he adamantly opposes the Gospel.  He even gets himself appointed by the Sanhedrin to persecute the believers in Jesus both in Israel and in other countries.  He experienced a very dramatic conversion, and from that time on he preached on behalf of Jesus even more ardently than he had worked against him, not sparing himself in any way.  What did he see on the road to Damascus? What made him such a relentless Apostle?

We can understand a little through prayer and the study of their lives.  We can understand more through our daily and continual perseverance in the Faith. 

 

                                                        The Sea of Galilee, October 2019

Tuesday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 28, 2022

Matthew 8, 23-27

As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?”

The Apostles had seen the Lord heal many people and expel demons from many others, and as much as these miracles had awed them, they had heard of miracles like these performed by the long ago Prophets.  But this sign of the Lord’s power over nature “amazed” them, or, “struck them with wonder”.  When they saw the Lord healing the paralyzed or the blind, they had the role of dispassionate witnesses.  But here they themselves were at the point of violent death in the sea, and the Lord saved them with hardly any effort on his part.

I have managed to paste at the top of this page a photograph I took two years ago when a priest friend and I visited the Holy Land.  It is of the Sea of Galilee as seen from its western edge.  I took other pictures of the Sea, but this one best shows something of its size.  In the top right of the picture is a tiny white dot which is the sail of a boat we watched.  It is a very big fresh-water lake, indeed a “sea”.  St. Matthew does not record that Jesus told the Apostles to head for any particular destination, although he must have done so.  It is possible that he told them to head south along the western coast for another Galilean town and that the storm that raged up against the boat threw them off course so that they landed in the “country of the Gerasens” about fifteen miles, ten on the water, from Capernaum, from which they had started out.  Clinging to the shore at night would have made more sense to these fishermen than attempting to cross the length of the Sea in the dark.  Without warning, “a violent storm” came upon them.  The Greek word translated in this way is seismos, from which we get the English “seismic”, and it has as its primary meaning “earthquake”.  It is modified by the adjective megas, meaning “large” or “great”.  Matthew uses these words so that we do not labor under any misapprehensions.  The storm was of unprecedented suddenness and fury.  Matthew, reflecting afterwards in safety on dry land, perhaps remembered these verses from the Psalm: “[God] said the word, and there arose a storm of wind: and the waves thereof were lifted up. They mount up to the heavens, and they go down to the depths: their soul pined away with terror. They were troubled, and reeled like a drunken man; and all their wisdom was swallowed up.”And then this verse: “And they cried to the Lord in their affliction: and he brought them out of their distresses” (Psalm 107, 25–28).  

“The boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep.”  We note the contrast.  The boat, tossed about by the waves like a toy, the Apostles bailing for their lives and in danger of being blown overboard even if their vessel did not capsize, and the Lord, stretched out and sound asleep.  When awakened by his panic-stricken followers, he rebuked them for having little faith.  Then he rebuked the sea and the wind and the storm utterly vanished.  The Lord sleeps at this time in order to show the Apostles and us that if he watches over them while he is asleep, despite their worst fears, how much more when he is “awake”.  That is, when we are beset by life-threatening disaster and persecution, and it seems that the Lord is not aware or does not care, he is indeed preserving us, and how powerful he shows himself to be when he dispels our troubles, when he seems to “wake up”.

Another Psalm helps us to understand what he does for us.  It is also a prayer we can pray in our emergencies: “Our God is our refuge and strength: a helper in troubles, which have found us exceedingly. Therefore we will not fear, when the earth shall be troubled; and the mountains shall be removed into the heart of the sea. Their waters roared and were troubled: the mountains were troubled with his strength. The stream of the river makes the city of God joyful: the Most High has sanctified his own dwelling. God is in the midst thereof, it shall not be moved: God will help it in the morning early. Nations were troubled, and kingdoms were bowed down: he uttered his voice, the earth trembled. The Lord of armies is with us: the God of Jacob is our protector. Come and behold ye the works of the Lord: what wonders he has done upon earth, making wars to cease even to the end of the earth. He shall destroy the bow, and break the weapons: and the shield he shall burn in the fire: ‘Be still and see that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, and I will be exalted in the earth.’  The Lord of armies is with us: the God of Jacob is our protector” (Psalm 46).

 Monday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 27, 2022

Matthew 8, 18-22

When Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other shore. A scribe approached and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But Jesus answered him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”

This reading is similar to the last part of yesterday’s Gospel reading, and it provides us an opportunity to consider the Lord’s life, how the Evangelists described it, and the nature of a call from God.

First, in thinking about the Lord’s life, we must understand that it consisted of much more than the Gospels tell us.  St. John’s Gospel, for instance, tells us of some of what the Lord said and did on a handful of days.  St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke preserve for us the beginnings of the Lord’s life on earth and the beginnings of his ministry, but the remaining contents of their narratives comes from the last year or last few months of his life here.  The Lord spent most of his ministry moving from one town to another, preaching  repentance from sin and the approach of the Kingdom of heaven.  He preached in the marketplaces and the synagogues.  Largely, he preached the same message.  He would have retold many of the shorter parables which we find in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels.  He would have answered the same questions in each of the towns.  He did not stay long in any one place, tearing through the land of Israel.  It should not surprise us if dialogues such as those recorded by Matthew and used in this reading occurred in these and similar words throughout the Lord’s ministry.

Then again, perhaps these encounters and words did occur only once, so that Matthew and Luke are both describing the same thing.  Matthew places his telling of it early in his Gospel while Luke places it towards the end, as the Lord Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem for the final time.  In this case, we can see the methods of these two distinct writers.  Matthew tends to write according to theme, but also seems to drop in a story or a saying as it occurs to him.  If we look at the verses surrounding today’s Gospel reading, we see the Lord coming down the mountain, curing a leper, then the centurion’s servant, and after that performing more cures.  Then the verses of this reading, and after them the crossing of the sea at night during a storm.  We see that we can lift the verses of this reading out of chapter eight of Matthew’s Gospel and it does not affect the story of the Lord’s victorious procession after delivering his Sermon on the Mount.  Now, since Luke makes it very clear at the beginning of his Gospel that he has as one of his goals the chronological sequence of events in the Lord’s life, we might look to Luke, then, as putting this account in its proper order.  If this is the exclamation for the difference between the Gospels we can appreciate the more raw, immediate sense of Matthew’s Gospel: reading it is as though we are hearing him tell us about the Lord as what he said and did comes to mind.  We can also appreciate St. Luke’s thorough examination of the Lord’s life from the witness of people who actually saw and heard him.  He heard many accounts from people, and of these a certain number diverged in details of time and place even while they agreed on essentials.  Luke sifted, asked questions, and wrote his Gospel accordingly.

Finally, we see how precious a calling from the Lord is, and how easily it can be reasoned away or rejected out of hand.  Sometimes we even try to answer the Lord’s call, but on our own terms and in our own time.  We  wonder what happened to the first man in today’s reading, who so eagerly promised to follow Jesus wherever he went.  The Lord did not tell him no, but left it to him if he was willing to endure and share in the hardship of his own life.  Perhaps this man went away sad, like the rich young man who would not follow the Lord “for he had many possessions” (Matthew 19, 22).  Then, the second man receives a call (and does not try to snatch one, as the first man does) but has conditions, or, excuses.  Possibly he returns later, like the first son in the Parable of the Two Sons: “A certain man had two sons: and coming to the first, he said: Son, go work to day in my vineyard. And he answering, said: I will not. But afterwards, being moved with repentance, he went” (Matthew 22, 28-29). 

Prayer and practice in cooperating with the grace of God in small things prepare us to serve him completely in the instant he calls.

 The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 26, 2022

Luke 9, 51–62

When the days for Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village. As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” To him Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

The second part of the Gospel reading, dealing with the Lord’s call, helps explain the first part, dealing with James and John and their desire to call down the wrath of God on an inhospitable city.

“As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ ”  The Lord Jesus and a large following are making their way to Jerusalem, where the crowd with him will announce him as the conquering Messiah.  This man who promises to follow Jesus wherever he goes is expressing his enthusiasm for the restoration of Israel, but this is not true faith.  His enthusiasm reminds of us of the Parable of the Sower and the seed spread on stony ground, “where they had not much earth: and they sprung up immediately, because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they were scorched: and because they had not root, they withered away” (Matthew 13, 5-6).  “The sun was up and they were scorched” — the hardness of life of the true disciple: “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”  

The Lord then called a second man, but he answered, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” To which Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their dead.”  The second man is saying that he will follow the Lord later after his father has died and he is secure in his inheritance.  But the Lord’s call is urgent: “But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  This man offers quite a different response than that of James and John when they were called: “And forthwith he called them. And leaving their father Zebedee in the ship with his hired men, they followed him” (Mark 1, 20).  Even if the man had indeed gotten news of the death of his father and intended to return to bury him, the Lord’s call takes precedence.  

It is a similar case with the man who said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”  He is in fact saying: Lord, I will follow you, but on my own terms.  But the Lord has made it abundantly clear: “He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10, 37). 

The disciple of the Lord, then, must be completely available to him at all times.  He may be called upon to give up his life in martyrdom, to cross the vast seas as a missionary, to live enclosed in a monastery as a religious, to live out life as a mother or father or single person who does the necessary work of giving good example to their neighbors, to raise their children in the faith, and to assist their spouse in the life of faith.  We see this in the first reading, in which the Prophet Elijah calls Elisha to join him in his life as a prophet of God.  Elisha does not hesitate, and provides a sign of his irreversible acceptance by butchering the oxen with which he was plowing his fields — twelve of them, a sign of his great wealth.

The disciple must continuously strive to conform his life to that of his Master.  In this he must work to avoid confusing his own will with the Master’s.  Thus, James and John desire to call down fire on the inhospitable Samaritan town.  But they do not argue with the Lord when he corrects them and they move on peacefully.  

So let us then make ourselves fully available to the Lord, calling down the Holy Spirit with our words, actions, and prayers upon the people whom we meet everyday.

 Saturday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 25, 2022

Matthew 8, 5-17

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.” He said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion said in reply, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven, but the children of the Kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.” And at that very hour his servant was healed. Jesus entered the house of Peter, and saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand, the fever left her, and she rose and waited on him. When it was evening, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick, to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.

The striking down of the nearly fifty year old Supreme Court opinion this morning gives us great cause for rejoicing and for giving thanks to Almighty God.  This comes not from the hard work of a day or a month or a year, but from fifty years of struggle from the grass roots up.  At the same time, the decision is not the end of our labor but a signal for us to carry on, with the help of God, in changing the hearts of those who do not respect unborn human life, but call it a baby or a mere zygote or fetus depending upon whose it is.  We must also now work on the state level for the passing of laws that protect human life, and to make even more of an effort to assist those pregnant in difficult circumstances.  Of course, the most necessary action we can take is to pray for the conversion of our society.

“When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him.”  St. Matthew presents this miracle story as early in the Lord’s Public Life.  It is the first miracle that he performs for a Gentile.  A centurion will also be present at the end of his Public Life as he died on the Cross.  Just as the centurion in today’s Gospel reading will make a profession of faith, so will the centurion on Golgotha: “Indeed this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27, 54).  In both cases, Matthew shows the faith of Gentiles surpassing that of the Lord’s own people.

“Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”  In St. Luke’s telling of the story, Jewish leaders approach Jesus on the centurion’s behalf.  Perhaps the centurion came to the town but stood back, or went even outside the town, after engaging the Jewish leaders to speak for him.  The centurion shows himself as a good model for us in that he goes to the Lord Jesus for help for another person.  He goes to some trouble to do this as well, since his post would have been some distance from Capernaum.  When he comes before the Lord, he speaks with respect and proper deprecation: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.”  He speaks clearly and directly.  He does not try to bargain with the Lord to do as he asks, but leaves it to him whether he will help him or not.  Because the Jews had as little to do with the Gentiles as possible, no one would fault the Lord for not helping the man.  Yet the Lord is glad to go and does not hesitate.  We see in this his eagerness to assume our human nature so as to come among us, with all our sins and uncleanness.  

“I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”  This saying seems to indicate that the Lord had already spent considerable time preaching and healing.  If so, his saying this would have struck the Jews as all the more remarkable.  The Lord uses this occasion to then declare: “ I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven, but the children of the Kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  From the west: the Greeks and the Romans; from the east: the inhabitants of what used to be Israel’s most destructive foes, Assyria and Babylon.  People from these nations, all of which had conquered Israel and occupied it, would come together to recline at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven alongside the founders of the Jewish people: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  These people of faith would show themselves to be true members of the Chosen People not by their being Jewish but by their steadfast belief in Jesus as God.  At the same time, “the children of the Kingdom will be driven out.”  The Jews who do not believe will not be saved on account of their genealogies, but will be condemned “the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  This could also be translated as “the outmost darkness”.  That is, driven out so far that they cannot see the walls of the Kingdom or hear the noise of the revelry within them.  They sit in darkness since the light of faith is not in them and they rejected the Light of the world.  They wail in the pain that is inflicted on them by the demons, and they gnash their teeth in their guilt.

“You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”  Here we see the necessity for faith when we pray.  Sometimes we doubt when we pray for help.  We doubt that God will help us, or that he can help us, or that the help will prove insufficient.  We should not come before Almighty God like this, but to be ready to ask for the faith we need in order to pray for that which we need, imitating the desperate father of a possessed child: “I do believe! Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9, 24).

At the end of the following account of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, St. Matthew quotes the Prophet Isaiah: “He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases” (Isaiah 53, 4).  As the Jewish Christians reading this Gospel would have known, the verse after this reads: “But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.”  Matthew reminds the people that their Messiah, Jesus, did not conform himself to the expectations of the Pharisees but came precisely so that he could suffer and die for us.  The verse Matthew quotes tells us that even in healing the sick, Jesus suffered: “He bore our diseases”.  The Greek text of this quote should be translated: “He received our weaknesses and bore our diseases.”  He was afflicted in some way by the afflictions he cured.  He paid a price for his acts of love.  This helps us to understand a little better his sufferings in his Passion, which came from taking upon himself the sins of the world.

 The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Friday, June 24, 2022

Luke 15:3–7

Jesus addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes: “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”

This feast was promulgated in the Church throughout the world by Pope Pius IX in 1856 after it had been already celebrated in various places since the 1600’s.  It celebrates the love of the Incarnate Son of God for all humanity, a love demonstrated most dramatically in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and his subsequent Death on the Cross.

In today’s Gospel reading for this Feast, the Lord speaks of a flock of a hundred sheep, one of which strays.  The shepherd goes in haste to find it.  The sheep, away from the safety of the flock and its shepherd, has exposed itself to numerous dangers.  It may even have left the pasture.  It could be attacked by wolves, lions, or other predators, or injure itself, making it even more vulnerable to other animals.  The search for this sheep becomes more desperate as the time passes, but at last the shepherd  sights it and, rather than risk its life further, he puts it on his shoulders and carries it back to the fold.  The shepherd has gone to great trouble and stakes his own life in his search for the sheep, and now rejoices and even feasts with its recovery.  This might strike others as an overgenerous response to the finding of the sheep, but it is not their sheep but that of the shepherd, and his feelings are his own.  This is the Lord Jesus, who rejoices way out of proportion to the lost soul that comes back to him, drawn by his grace, causing all of heaven to rejoice with him as well.  

Another passage from the Scriptures helps us to understand the Sacred Heart of Jesus and what it does for us: “And when Moses had lifted up his hand, and struck the rock twice with the rod, there came forth water in great abundance, so that the people and their cattle drank” (Numbers 20, 11).  This verse signifies the Lord Jesus, who approaches our hardened hearts and strikes them twice with the rod of his Passion and Death so that our hearts may gush forth our love for him.  He strikes them twice: once in his Incarnation and Birth, when he became a tiny Baby lying in an animal’s trough because the inns of our hearts were closed to him; and once in his suffering and Death on the Cross, abandoned by all and left to the inhuman jeers of the Pharisees and soldiers.  The rock which Moses struck shows us how our hearts ought to react to what the Lord Jesus endured for us, the pathetic depths into which he took himself to gain our love: it gushed forth “water in great abundance”, so much so that not only did all the Israelites drink of it until they were satisfied, but their livestock as well.  Our hearts, greatly affected by our considerations on the Lord’s sufferings and indignities, should gush forth such abundance of love for him as to result in a plentitude of good works done for his sake which will benefit our neighbors both materially and spiritually.

 Thursday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 23, 2022

Matthew 7, 21-29

Jesus said to his disciples: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’  Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”  When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

With this reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew, we come to the end of the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.  He has laid before us his moral teachings and will shortly confirm them through a series of powerful miracles.  Here, he speaks of the consequences of those who do not follow his teachings though pretending to be his followers.  And in the Sermon’s concluding words, the Lord teaches how following his laws provides his true followers a sure foundation for us to reach heaven.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  It is easy to call for help when we find ourselves in grave danger.  Likewise, it is easy to call Jesus “Lord” when he is about to judge us. But only those who served Jesus on earth as his servants will enter the Kingdom of heaven: “Only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  To enter heaven after we die we must serve the King of heaven while we live.  He will recognize us as his servants and will invite us in.  More than that, “He will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12, 37).  “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?”  However, they did not.  Or, for personal gain some people fake their Christianity and act as go through the motions of prophesying — preaching — and performing good works, but these, coupled with immoral living — insult God and do him no honor at all.  Instead, “their god is their belly” (Philippians 3, 19).  

“I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.”  That is, he never knew them as his followers, his servants.  They never came to him to learn of him.  In the end, they call upon him merely to stave off their condemnation: he is nothing more for them than a means to an end.  He calls them evildoers because he knows them for their godlessness.

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”  This means that the builder sinks the principal beams that will hold his house together into the rock, the deeper the better.  He must use solid wood, preferably a hardwood, or even with such a rock as the foundation the house will not last long.  The “rock” is the Church, which preserves and advances the teachings of the Lord.  The “wood” the builder uses is his intellect and free-will.  Grounded in this rock, these beams will fixedly hold together the house of this man’s hope for heaven.  “A fool who built his house on sand.”  It is relatively easy and cheap to build a house on a foundation of sand, but it will not endure.  Sand does offer much in the way of stability but is quickly scattered by the wind and washed away by water.  In the spiritual life, “sand” signifies our neglect of prayer, the Sacraments, Holy Mass, and a perverse trust in our own abilities.  “The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.”  Trials, tribulations, health failures, the weakness of old age do not trouble those who have given themselves entirely to God, but will mean disaster for those who have not: their house will collapse and be completely ruined.  

“When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.”  Throughout his Sermon, the Lord declared to the people, “I say.”  Here is your understanding of the Law, or the understanding of the scribes, but I say to you, etc.  The Lord Jesus came to complete and to fulfill, and to reveal the deeper demands of the Laws given to the people through Moses, which can now be carried out with the help of God’s grace.Through our adherence to the commandments of Christ we build our house on rock, looking forward to the day when we will dwell in God’s eternal dwellings. 

 Wednesday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 22, 2022

Matthew 7, 15-20

Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.”

Sprinkled throughout the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount are sayings that would make better sense if the Lord had spoken them after his Resurrection rather than before.  St. Matthew may have presented many of the Lord’s words here as he remembered them, not concerning himself with chronology so much as with topic.  This was a common method of writing which we find in, say, the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Isaiah.  When the Lord warns his disciples about false prophets, he is speaking of situations which will arise as the Church grows.  

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.”  The quintessential false prophet in “sheep’s clothing” is the beast in the Book of Revelation, the Anti-Christ, who is described by the number 666.  The number itself was considered a perfect number among ancient people, especially among the Israelites, because the number 6 is the sum of its parts: 1+2+3+6.  It also signified goodness in that God created the universe in six days, and considered all that he had made “good”.  For this reason, we must be careful of those whose words are honeyed but whose actions reek with sin: “By their fruits you will know them.”

 Tuesday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 21, 2022

Matthew 7, 6; 12-14

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.  Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the Law and the Prophets. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”  

St. Matthew’s presentation of the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount continues in today’s Gospel reading.  Although many groups of consecutive verses in this Sermon revolve around particular themes, many verses hang loosely from its woven garment, and such is the case here.

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.”  Examining this verse, we must first realize that the Israelites did not much esteem for dogs.  This is evident in verses such as 2 Samuel 16, 9: “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king?”  That is, the only thing worse than a living dog was a dead one.  Abishai, the son of King David’s sister, said this to David concerning the cursing of a member of the deposed King Saul’s family.  They had their uses for herding sheep, but the Israelites do not seem to have kept them as pets as their neighbors, such as the Phoenicians, did.  For them, dogs served mostly as scavengers that ate the dead bodies of animals and humans.  Thus, they would incur uncleanness which could be transferred to people.  And so when Jesus says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs”, he means not to give them that which is dedicated to God lest they make it unclean.  For this reason the Church carefully teaches her children and also those who wish to become her children the meaning of holy things such as the Gospel and the Sacraments.  She teaches her children of their great sacredness and how they should be accepted from God as his most precious gifts.  A person who has only a slight education in holy things is likely to consider them lucky charms that they need for success and to ward off enemies, or will receive them without thinking.  This is the meaning of the swine which tramples holy things underfoot and turns on anyone who dares to offer correction.

“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the Law and the Prophets.”  The Golden Rule has been criticized as unworkable because it is too broad in scope, but we have to remember that it was made for people who had entered a covenant with God and were striving for righteousness.  Such people do not make ridiculous demands on others and expect them to be carried out, but rather are looking for the good that they can do for others.

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many.”  St. Matthew quotes the Lord several times in his Gospel as saying that the way to heaven is “narrow” and not easy to find or to walk.  It is a regular theme in his Gospel.  St. Matthew does this in order to remind the persecuted Galilean Christians for whom he was recounting the Lord’s words and deeds that the way to heaven is supposed to be hard, wending its way through threats, tribulation, and even martyrdom.  We struggle against our fallen human nature and the world struggles against the Faith.  But the one who passes through the narrow road enters a land of endless peace.  “How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”  The word translated here as “constricted” also has the meaning of “persecuted”.  They are indeed “few” who find it as a fraction of all humanity that has ever lived, and yet the numbers will exceed our counting: “Behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the Throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7, 9-10). 

Through cherishing the holy gifts we are given by the Lord, and following his commandments, we shall walk the narrow way unhindered to the place where the One who sits upon the throne and the Lamb wait for us.

 Monday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 20, 2022

Matthew 7, 1-5

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

The Lord continues to deliver his Sermon on the Mount, a summary of his moral teachings.  It is interesting to compare St. Matthew’s Gospel with that of St. John.  St. Matthew presents little of the Lord’s teaching on doctrine, such as on the divinity of the Son and his equality with the Father, but concentrates on his moral teachings.  John’s Gospel presents the Lord’s teachings on his identity as the Son, equal to the Father, and other doctrine, and shows how his moral teaching derived from those truths.  Matthew’s presentation reflects his understanding of Jesus, the Son of God, as fulfilling the roles of Moses and Elijah, who taught and defended the Law to the Israelites.  John’s emphasis was motivated by his desire to show the Judean believers in God that they were Jews no longer, but Christians, and that they had no further need to worship in the Temple, circumcise, or follow the purification laws.

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.”  The Greek word translated as “judging” here is krino, and here it means “to try as a judge”, “to sentence”, and “to condemn”.  The Lord is saying, Stop acting like a judge when you are not one.  A judge, in a proper trial, will hear various witnesses and question the defendant.  We see this in Pilate’s deliberations over Jesus.  But the Lord is rebuking those who give their judgment of a thing or a person even though the person has not looked at all the evidence or talked to all the witnesses.  One way to describe this is “jumping to conclusions”.  The Lord is not saying that we should not form opinions and judgments.  In fact, doing this is an essential part of life.  But we must take in all the information we can before doing so.  Sometimes people express a fear of “being judged”.  They say, Don’t judge me.  They say this out of the guilt that comes from their own recognition that what they are doing is wrong.  The Christian will not judge the person but can judge an action or series of actions.  The reason why people engage in such actions may be a mystery even to themselves.  The Lord tells us to not judge that we may not be judged.  He speaks of judging in two senses here: the imperfect judgments we render when we do not have all the facts, and the perfect judgment God will render for us at the time of our death.

“The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”  This is another way of saying, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7, 12).  The Lord elevates this common saying of ancient times to a higher meaning: As we treat others, so God will treat us.  It is sobering to think that how we treat the people around us will have eternal consequences for us.

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?”  The first part of the verse should read, How do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye.  It is not a question of why, but of how.  We see the splinter in our brother’s eye because we are looking for it.  Our brother turns to us and tells us that he has a splinter and can we help him get it out.  We turn our full attention to him and look carefully into his eye to find it so that we can remove it for him.  At the same time, if we have a splinter in our own eye, we will have a hard time assisting him.  We ought to ask someone else to do this.  Of course, helping our brother would be out of the question if we have a wooden beam sticking out of our eye, but if somehow we were not aware of this, we would make his situation worse.  How could we not be aware of our own beam?  Through denial of our own vulnerability to beams, that is, by firmly believing that we have a monopoly on truth, that we are perfect, that our way of doing something is the only way, and that there is something wrong with a person who has a different way of thinking.  The Lord rightly calls such a person a “hypocrite”.  This English word is derived from a Greek word that was used by the early translators of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek to translate a word that meant “godless”.  Today we only think of a hypocrite as saying one thing and doing another, but we need to think of this godless aspect too.  A person who professes a religion and acts against its precepts is a hypocrite — godless — in that they ignore what God commands, and show contempt for him.  This is a very terrible state.

“Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”  The Lord shows that it is possible for the “beam” to be removed from our eye.  But how can this be done?  If a person needs help removing a splinter from his eye, he will need help from others to remove the beam.  This is accomplished through spiritual counsel and by recourse to the Sacrament of Penance.  The tricky part, though, is admitting that one has a beam in one’s eye.  If the person himself does not recognize this, he is not likely to believe others when they inform him of this fact.  Arrogance reinforces itself.  What we all need is to humble ourselves and to realize that we are susceptible to all sorts of weaknesses, failures, and misapprehensions.  We must be more ready to listen than to speak and more ready to obey than to demand obedience.  To do this properly, we must fall in love with the Lord Jesus, and we can do this by meditating upon his love for us.  Sowing in love, we will reap love.

 The solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, Sunday, June 19, 2022

Luke 9, 11–17

Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured. As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, “Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.” He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.” Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty.” They did so and made them all sit down. Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.

It makes one curious that the Gospel reading for this great feast is not from John 6, where the Lord Jesus speaks of his Body and Blood as our food, or from the descriptions in the other Gospels of the Last Supper.  The reading from St. Luke’s Gospel about the feeding of the five thousand certainly presages and prepares us for the Lord’s teaching about his Body and Blood, but is no substitute for it.  The Gospel reading for the traditional Latin Mass for this feast, which was celebrated last Thursday, uses John 6, 56-59.

Key to understanding Luke’s telling of the feeding of the five thousand is the struggle between the Lord and his Apostles.  They come to him and urge him to dismiss the crowd.  They are exhausted, hungry, and fully aware that they are in a deserted place.  Perhaps they also fear the crowd turning on them in their hunger.  The Lord’s response came in the form of a challenge, which they may have taken as a rebuke: “Give them some food yourselves.”  The Apostles react incredulously: “Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.”  But the Lord will have them do as he tells them.  First, he prepares the crowd by having the Apostles sit everyone down, for they would have stood to listen to his teaching.

“Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.”  The Lord said the prescribed blessing over the loaves and fish in the baskets, and then broke them.  He broke the loaves so that the people could eat them.  His breaking the loaves showed his ownership of them and also that he accepted his responsibility as host to feed his guests.  He had his disciples hand out the loaves and fish as though they were slaves at a banquet.  To their credit, the Apostles do not revel and refuse to take part in what must have seemed an impossible task.

“They all ate and were satisfied.”  The people ate until they had enough.  We can imagine the effect of this miracle on the Apostles.  They started as reluctant and as doubting and then became bewildered and amazed.  Perhaps they wanted to say to the Lord, afterwards, as Peter had said at the time of the great catch of fish: “Leave me Lord, for I am a sinner” (Luke 5, 8).  This miracle might bring to mind that at the wedding at Cana, where Jesus produced an over-abundance of fine wine, and the only ones who knew about it were the servants who helped him and the Apostles.  Here too, the Apostles knew very well how little they had to start with and what the Lord had done, while the crowd, or, at least, most of the crowd had no idea of what exactly had happened.

The Lord Jesus, in his overwhelming love for us, gives us not just enough but more, for as we see here: “When the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.”  He gives us more than we could ask for even if we knew what to ask for.  He gives us his Body and Blood to eat and drink although there was no need, strictly speaking, for him to do this: he redeemed us from sin by his Passion and Death on the Cross.  He gives us this inestimable Sacrament in order to remind us of what he has done for us and in order to fortify us to live holy lives.  He gives these to us too in order to prepare us to see him in heaven, whole and entire, and to enjoy his company there forever.

 Saturday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June q8, 2022

Matthew 6, 24-34

Jesus said to his disciples: “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”

“No one can serve two masters.”  In our modern world many different masters make demands on us.  Often these conflict with one another.  Men and women engage in demanding careers and then try to still be a spouse and parent.  Many people work more than one job, perhaps a main job and then a side gig that they hope will turn into the main job.  Those with dual citizenships are sometimes cast into difficult situations.  We may pride ourselves on our ability to multi-task, too.  In the end, we have to choose because it is unsustainable to have multiple masters.  Portable phones and computers have aggravated the situation because now we can work or communicate with others in places where our attention ought to be focused on higher priorities. 

The Lord begins to speak on this subject in what seems to us a general way: “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.”  We ought to consider the societal context to gain understanding.  When we say “master” today we mean something very different from what the Lord  meant when he used the term.  In the Lord’s day, a “master” was someone who owned slaves.  The slave was dependent on the master for his life, and to disregard his master’s command for another’s was to put his life in jeopardy.  Only if he deeply despised his master could he risk obeying the other man, otherwise the other man represented a threat to his existence and so he would be despised.

“You cannot serve God and mammon.”  The Lord here gives a prime example of what he means by two masters.  The Greek word translated as “serve” here means “to be subject to”, or “to be a slave to”.  Here we see another word that means something entirely different now than it did two thousand years ago.  The Lord is telling us that we are either God’s slaves or mammon’s, that is, the pursuit of wealth.   We can either slave for God or slave for money.  If we slave for God we will enjoy his presence here on earth during our lifetimes, and will enter its ecstasy in heaven.  If we slave for mammon. We may or may not become wealthy, and we will not live long  after we obtain wealth.  Then, because we have rejected God, we will suffer forever.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”  The Lord now turns back to explain what it means to accept God as one’s Master.  Because the slave belongs to the master, it is the master’s responsibility to shelter, clothe, and feed him.  Thus, the slave did not have to worry about finding shelter, clothes, or food.  They were provided.  Therefore, the slave need not “worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”  The one who belongs to the Lord Jesus has even less worry in this regard, for Jesus is not a harsh master who thinks little of his slaves, but a tender Master who thinks only of his slaves.  In fact, he even calls us “friends” (cf. John 15, 15) though we remain in bondage to him.  “Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”  That is, we ought to pay little attention to these things.  The Lord will see to them so that we can devote ourselves to our life of serving him.

“Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?”  This brings to mind these lovely verses from the Psalms: “You have made [man] a little less than the angels, you have crowned him with glory and honor and have set him over the works of your hands. You have subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, moreover, the beasts also of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea” (Psalm 8, 6-9).  

“Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?”  This line in the lectionary does not translate very well the Greek, which says, “Can any of you, being anxious, add one cubit to your stature?”  One of the differences between the two translations is the participle I have translated as “being anxious”.  That is, “being anxious” is a persistent state for someone — he or she is an anxious person.  The lectionary reading implies that “worry” is used as a tool in order to gain a moment of life.  The anxious person is in a worse state than one who can utilize worry.  This is anxious one is Martha, to whom the Lord said, “You are worried and upset about many things” (Luke 10, 41).  He counsels her to follow her sister’s example: to sit at his feet and to listen to his word.  That is, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.”  The “cubit” mentioned in the text would measure between two and three feet, so this would make a substantial increase in height for someone.  It could make a person of average height a giant.  A person can become a giant, but, as the Lord says, an anxious person cannot achieve this.  The one who is the “greatest” will be the servant of all, in the servitude of Jesus Christ, for “whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled: and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23, 12) by Almighty God.  

 Friday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 17, 2022

Matthew 6, 19-23

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.”

I should have mentioned yesterday the fact that in the U.S. we no longer celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi on the Thursday  after Trinity Sunday as the bishops of this country moved it to the Sunday after Trinity Sunday.  It is a sad concession to the secular culture in which we live.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.”  The Greek word translated here is “treasures” can also have the more prosaic meaning of “stores”, as in food, valuables, or money saved up for a rainy day, or hoarded.  This changes the understanding of the verse a bit since “treasures” implies luxuries and “stores” things that can be useful in time of need.  It is clear, though, that if the Lord means the latter, then he certainly would not want his disciples storing up the former.  At any rate, we can see the deeper meaning the Lord intended in the things of this world which do not help is towards salvation.  These things could be material things, but they could also be attachment to these things, as well as worldly ambitions, a cherished self-image, lust, and so on.  These weigh us down so that we cannot do our work of spreading the Gospel and for this reason the Lord forbade his disciples to carry anything with them on their missionary journeys (cf. Matthew 20, 10).  The Lord does not forbid necessities, of course: he does not tell his disciples to go naked.   “Where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.”  We eventually lose the things we try so hard to preserve, including attitudes, conceits, habits, and addictions.  “Moth and decay” signifies the loss of physical things; the loss of our place on earth in society, at work, in our families, is signified by the “thief”, who is the Lord himself, who takes our earthly lives away at the time of our deaths (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5, 2; Revelation 16, 15).  

“Store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.”  The phrase “treasures in heaven” helps to explain the meaning of “treasures on earth”, since the Lord sets the phrases in opposition to each other.  We cannot store physical things in heaven.  It is not even clear at first what we can store in heaven.  But we must be able to store immaterial things in heaven.  This could mean the merits imputes to us by Almighty God for the good works which we perform.  We cannot merit anything of ourselves since only by the grace of God can we accomplish anything, but God, in his wondrous mercy, counts these acts in our favor.  We can therefore speak of storing up merits in heaven that will work towards our salvation.  We can also think of storing up treasures in heaven as the deepening of our intimacy with Jesus through the good works we do, including our prayers, which have the effect of opening wider our hearts to him.  Thus, “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

“The lamp of the body is the eye.”  The Lord uses the contemporary understanding of the eye in order to make his point.  Indeed, one theory of what the eye does was that it served as a lamp, a sort of headlight, so that the physical world might be seen.  The light pouring out from the eye was supplied from within the body. “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light.”  That is, if a person’s eye functioned so the person could see, this indicated that the body must still be filled with light. “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness.”  Blindness in the eye indicated that the light within the person had failed and so the interior of the body was dark.  “And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.”  There is no remedy for this darkness.  It is complete and lasting.  In this saying about the eye, the Lord Jesus speaks of faith and grace.  If we have the light of faith within us, we can see the world as it really is, the creation of Almighty God.  We can also know about God and his commandments.  Because of this, we can walk the path of life eternal.  

 Thursday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 16, 2022

Matthew 6, 7-15

Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This is how you are to pray: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

“Do not babble like the pagans.”  The Greek word translated here as “babble” means “to chatter” or “to speak empty words”, that is, to speak words and not mean them.  Greek and Roman religion did not encourage love for the gods.  Prayers and sacrifices were offered regularly but without personal devotion.  Religion took the form of offering what appeased the gods and kept your family and city safe, or for some favor from them.  The Lord Jesus, teaching that we should love God with all our hearts, instructs us that we cannot pray in that way but with love.  Our prayers ought then to resemble more the speech of lovers than that of businessmen.  

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”  Our Father knows what we need, but still wants us to ask him for it, acknowledging that every good thing we have is from him, and also preventing us from taking for granted that God will automatically take care of us without us taking some part in our own welfare.  We should also notice here that the Lord Jesus does not speak as in our role: he says, “Your Father”, not “our”.  When he prays to the Father it is in his own way as his Son.

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, etc.”  The English translation of the prayer which we use in our prayers and at Mass is that found in the Tyndale Bible, produced in 1536.  This version of the Lord’s Prayer was imposed on the English people by King Henry VIII after his break with Rome, and Catholics and Protestants alike used it.  Certain relative pronouns were altered by the Catholic Church in England subsequently but did not change the prayer otherwise.  Interestingly, though William Tyndale claimed that his translation used Greek and Hebrew texts, his translation of the Lord’s Prayer was based on the Old Latin text (as distinct from the Vulgate text) of the Gospel of St. Matthew.  The traditional English translation of the prayer is set bodily in many English language Bibles.  This is incorrect, for while the Old Latin has “daily bread”, the Greek actually has “supersubstantial” bread.  That is, Almighty God always provides us more than we can actually use, as when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes for the crowds: he could have made exactly as much as he knew would be necessary to feed the people, but he wanted to show how much he loved them by giving them even more than that.  The word may also refer directly to the Holy Eucharist, the true Bread that comes down from heaven.  

The prayer the Lord taught his disciples to say asks our Father to bring about the final judgment: “May your kingdom come.”  The form of the verb here is a aorist imperative, as distinct from the present imperative, which would signify an ongoing and continual “coming” of the Kingdom.  The aorist imperative means, Let your Kingdom come once and for all.  St. Augustine reminds us that the Kingdom will come whether we pray for it or not, and that the Lord tells us to pray for it to come so that our desire for it may be kindled.  We may also pray here that God shorten the time for the judgment, although we ought to tread carefully so that we do not shorten our own time on earth to become perfect.  Augustine also says that when we pray for our Father’s Kingdom to come, we are really praying for it to be made manifest to the whole world, for God has ever ruled the earth.  We pray that all people will see God’s rule over them.  But at that time also there shall arrive the judgment.

“If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”  To forgive others is to be forgiven by God.  Forgiveness does not set the wrong-doer free so much as the one who was injured by him.  It frees him from seeking vengeance, from holding grudges, and from becoming a person who looks on others with anger rather than love.  On the other hand, forgiveness by God wipes out our sins as though they had not been.  He charges us to do so little, and he gives us so much.