Thursday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 18, 2025

Luke 7, 36-50

A certain Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?” Simon said in reply, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.” He said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The others at table said to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The anointing of Jesus which is recalled in today’s Gospel reading bears a similarity to the anointing of Jesus by Mary, the sister of Lazarus, of which St. John tells us in his Gospel (12, 1-8), but various details tell us that these are two separate events.  The woman in St. Luke’s account, for instance, is known as a “sinner”, while the woman in St. John’s Gospel is Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus.  Again, here, Luke tells us specifically that the woman anointed the feet of Jesus, and John tells us that it was his head.  

Jesus also uses each anointing to make very different points.  In John, the Lord says that Mary has anointed him in preparation for his coming Death and burial.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes the occasion to teach about the forgiveness of sins.

Luke says that, “There was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee.”  Luke does not tell us which city this occurs in.  Since Luke locates Jesus in Galilee during this part of his ministry, this may have occurred in Capernaum, the city Jesus moved to after leaving Nazareth.  The “sinful woman” of whom Luke speaks would not have come to the synagogue to hear the Lord preach but could have heard him when he taught on the shore, as he did on at least one occasion.  She could very well have known some of those whom he had healed from their diseases or whom he had released from the devil.  As a prostitute, though. she would have kept her distance.  From her subsequent actions, we know that she possessed a certain humility, a recognition of her own lowliness.  Perhaps she had thought of going before Jesus on previous occasions, but she had shrunk from this out of her shame.  Here, a strong urge, a prodding by the Holy Spirit, moved her from within and she determined that come what may, she must humble herself before the One who had touched her heart, however remotely.  We can wonder if she had heard the story of how the Lord had forgiven the sins of the man carried on the mat by his friends, and desired with all her heart to be forgiven too.

She brought with her “an alabaster flask of ointment”.  Alabaster is a soft stone that is easily carved.  In ancient times the highest quality alabaster was mined in a particular place in Egypt.  A bright white stone, in those days it was often carved into vials for perfumes and ointments.  “She stood behind him at his feet” must mean that she positioned herself behind him, since she could hardly have kissed his feet from a standing position.  She “began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.”  Why does she cry?  Perhaps she was overpowered by the Lord’s powerful presence.  She may have looked into his eyes briefly and seen the love for her in them, a love which she had never felt before in her life from anyone.  At the feet of this holy man, she would certainly have wept over her sins.  She completely abases herself here, her hair disheveled, sitting on the floor where only the lowest servant would have gone, subject to shameful rejection.  But she would rather be there at the feet of Christ than anywhere she had ever been.

The Pharisee, who had most likely invited Jesus to his house to learn from him who he claimed to be, reasons: “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”  This is a fair question.  If the woman is unclean, then she makes Jesus unclean by her touch.  Would not a prophet know the clean from the unclean?  Jesus, without making any claims, shows himself to be something more than a prophet by taking up the man’s unspoken question.  In so doing, he brings up the Pharisee’s shocking lack of courtesy: he had provided no water for Jesus’s feet, had given him no kiss, and had not anointed his head, all expected ways of welcoming guests.  This behavior on the part of the Pharisee came through no accidental oversight but was purposeful and calculated to make clear that Jesus was not honoring him by his visit; he was honoring Jesus by inviting him to his house.  The omissions flew in the face of eastern culture which prized the guest, and represented a jarring breach of etiquette.  It is, in fact, a sign of contempt.  Jesus contrasts this with the behavior of the woman who has washed his feet with her tears and hair, kissed his feet, and anointed them with her perfume.  

“So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  A better translation might read: “Her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much.”  There is no justification for “she has shown great love.”  For one thing, this would have the verb in the perfect tense, whereas it is in the aorist.  The aorist tense is used to show that a single action happened in recent past, and so Jesus is referring to her washing, kissing, and anointing his feet, rather than some action completed before this one, as indicated by the use of the perfect tense.  This woman did not love in the past, but now she did.  The word translated here as “hence” (that is, “therefore”) actually means “because”.  The lectionary translation makes it sound like the woman loved because she was forgiven, rather than that she was forgiven because she loved.  Jesus then implicitly compares to the Pharisee the woman’s state with his own: “Her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much.  But he who has not loved much is not forgiven much.”  We note here that Jesus is referring to love for himself, as well as claiming to be able to forgive sins, which only God can do: “He said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven . . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’ ”  He makes an unequivocal statement here regarding his divinity, and the people at table with him know it: “Who is this who even forgives sins?”  

Jesus shows here how love and faith lead to forgiveness and salvation.  Love of Jesus leads to faith in him, which leads us to seek his forgiveness knowing that he is himself the source of forgiveness, and this leads us to peace with him, and salvation.  It all begins with the spark of love, which induces humility in us, allowing us to truly love.

Let us look deep into the eyes of the love of God in prayer and fall deeply in love with him so that we might also rejoice in hearing the words, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Wednesday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 17, 2025

Luke 7, 31-35

Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.’  For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

“The people of this generation.”  The Hebrew word for “generation” is dor, and like its Greek equivalent, it has a more general meaning than the one we usually associate with the English word.  Dor could mean generation as in a period of forty years), or an age, or a cycle of time.  The Jews of the time of Jesus believed that they were living in the sixth age, that of the Messiah; the seventh age being the age of the Sabbath.  The early Christians adapted this, understanding the sixth age, or generation, as beginning with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and concluding with the end of the world and the final judgment.  The resurrection of the just and their entrance into heaven would inaugurate the seventh age or eternal Sabbath.  Jesus is speaking here of this sixth age, which continues to the present time.  The people of “this generation” attempt to interpret him according to their ideas, conceits, ideologies, cultural norms, and even their own personal sinfulness.  Many seek in Jesus a political liberator, a mere heroic example, a wise man, a misunderstood prophet, a wandering story-teller, or a man as sinful and given to weaknesses as any of us.  So few these days (or any other days) seek to understand him as he knew himself to be.  This requires, among other things, setting aside all preconceptions and foreign cultural prisms — indeed, our pride.  More than anything else, it is this pride that makes Jesus so hard for people to know.  Only the little ones, the child-like, can know him well.  The merely childish cannot.

“For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ ”  In preparation for the feast of grace the Lord would bring when he came, John and his disciples fasted often.  They fasted to such a degree that people felt intimidated, and so they accused him, at least among themselves, of being “possessed by a demon”.  But the people seeing that the Lord and his disciples did not fast, said, “Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”  In this way, they also let themselves off the hook: Fasting is bad, just look at that John the Baptist fellow; and, There is no need for us to talk with sinners so as to bring them back, just look at that Jesus of Nazareth character.

So let us throw off our pride and learn who Jesus truly is, which we can do through the study of the Gospels and through gazing at him on the crucifix and at the altar.

Tuesday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 16, 2025

Luke 7, 11-17

Jesus journeyed to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,” and “God has visited his people.” This report about him spread through the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region.

Only St. Luke tells us this story about Jesus.  It takes place in Naim, a town a short distance south of Nazareth in Galilee.  Luke tells us that “his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him.”  We might wonder why the large crowd accompanied him.  Did they want to hear more of his teaching?  Did they want to see more miracles?  What did they want?  This event took place in the early stage of the Lord’s Public Life, so perhaps the people simply wanted to see who he was.  And who were the people who made up this crowd?  They would have had to be in a position where they could take time off from their work.  Maybe some of these were fishermen from Capernaum, and perhaps their families too.  Maybe some day laborers who could move from town to town.  It would be interesting to know.  “As he drew near to the gate of the city.”  It is significant that Luke tells us that the town had a gate.  All that is left of the old town is ruins, so we can know from the fact that a wall with a gate went around it means that it was fairly well populated and that there was some wealth in the town.  “A man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.”  The Jews buried their dead before sundown, so the man had not died long before.  His body would have been anointed by his female relatives and then wrapped in burial cloths.  Because Luke mentions his mother but not a wife, he may have not yet reached the age to marry.  The Jews were carrying his body out on a bier so as not to touch it and become unclean.  They were bringing it outside the town’s walls because they buried their dead outside of towns and never within.  The body of the man would might have been on its way to the family sepulcher, since the town lay in a hilly location where tombs could be carved out of the rock or, if the family had no money, his body would have been buried in the ground.  The fact that this woman was a widow tells us of her grief and of her dire situation.  She would have been dependent on her son’s earnings for her living.  If she had no one to take her in after her son was buried, she would have to beg in the streets.  “A large crowd from the city was with her.”  This may indicate that the family had been an important one in that locality or that the people of the town were simply moved with compassion for her.

“When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her.”  Here we see, through Luke’s eyes, the humanity of the Lord Jesus, for he evidently had not known the man or his bereft mother.  He grieved for her as he grieved for his dear friends Martha and Mary when Lazarus died.  And we also see something of the Lord’s divinity too, for he comes on the scene at exactly the right time.  He does this several times in the Gospels.  He goes to the very much out-of-the-way Gentile region of the Gerasenes and seems to have no object there other than to cast out a legion of demons from a possessed man.  Naim, too, is away from the Sea of Galilee where he spent so much time preaching.  “Do not weep.”  When we ask others not to weep, it is because their weeping makes us sad.  But Jesus says this to the woman to prepare her for the raising up of her son.  We should not miss the strangeness of the Lord, whom she does not know, speaking to her, and at a time like this.  Many in the crowd must have found this behavior shocking and outrageous.  “He stepped forward and touched the coffin.”  The Greek word here translated as “coffin” can mean an open bier or a coffin, but since the Jews of that time did not use coffins, it should be translated as a bier.  

“At this the bearers halted.”  They stopped in their shock at the impropriety but also that a man had purposely contracted uncleanness.  The bearers would have preserved their clean state because they would have touched only the long handles of the bier, but Jesus touched it itself.  “Young man, I tell you, arise!”  The Greek verb is in the passive, so what the Lord said would be more like, “Be raised up!”  That is, rise not by your own power but by mine.  “The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.”  This verse has an eerie sound to it, for Luke says “the dead man spoke”, and the Greek could also have been translated as “the corpse spoke”.  Luke speaks this way because he wanted to make clear that the man had indeed been dead, and had not been merely brought out of a deep sleep.  

“Fear seized them all.”  This is the Greek word phobos, which is usually translated as “terror” but can also mean “reverence”.  Both seem to fit here, for the crowd also “glorified God”.  We can easily understand the terror people felt at seeing a corpse on its way to burial suddenly sit up and begin to talk.  And they could hear him talk because the moment Jesus touched the bier and the bearers stopped, the crowd would have quieted quickly.  “A great prophet has arisen in our midst.”  The people attributed the raising up of the dead man to the Lord immediately and they identified him as a prophet, remembering that Elijah had raised up a widow’s son (cf. 1 Kings 17).  The widow responded by saying to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God.”  This may be the beginning of the notion that some people had that Jesus was Elijah come back again (cf. Matthew 16, 14).  “God has visited his people.”  The crowd also knows that a mere prophet could not raise the dead on his own: God worked through him.  The people thus proclaim the Lord’s humanity and divinity, inspired by the Holy Spirit.  

The Lord Jesus raises us from the dead when he forgives our sins and hands us back to our mother, the Church.  We are so careful these days with anything to do with our physical and psychological health.  If we were half so careful with the health of our souls we would become great saints very quickly.

The Feast of our Lady of Sorrows, Monday, September 15, 2025

John 19, 25-27

Standing by the Cross of Jesus were his Mother and his Mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your Mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

The sober wording of this passage of St. John’s Gospel underscores the horror of the action it describes.  Let us consider for a moment that men put the Savior of the world on a cross, there to hang in torment until he died of it.  Even if we did not love him, the image the word would produce in our minds would sadden us to some extent, depending on our store of compassion.  And for those who recognize him as an innocent man who went about doing good, it wound wring out some deeper feeling of grief,  and those who know of his immense love for each and every human being so that he willed to die for them, even more.  But for those who knew him personally and for many years, and experienced the passion of his love, the grief would be overwhelming.  This is still true, even today. Many saints recorded that they could not read the Gospel accounts of the Lord’s crucifixion without weeping copiously — for the more intense the love, the greater the sorrow when the one we love is caused to suffer.  

Most especially is this true of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Throughout her life as a Mother, her pure love for her Son brought her tremendous pain.  For the three years of the Lord’s Public Life, for instance, she followed him at a distance, mostly unrecognized, just another of his female followers.  She did nothing to draw attention to herself, but trailed along in humility and listened carefully to every word, treasuring them in her heart, watching him cure all those who came to him, seeing him hungry and exhausted and misunderstood and slandered, and she could do nothing to help. The Lord even seemed to distance himself from her, as though to show in his own life what he taught his followers: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14, 26).  And she could not even look for solace from members of her family, for as St. John recalled, “for neither did his brethren believe in him” (John 7, 5).

And so at the Cross, standing below her Son, torn to shreds by scourges and barely able to draw breath as he hung there, her heart, united to his and broken as though beyond repair, she hears him say to her, “Behold your Son.”  Behold the love of your life, he says to her, see how the joy of your soul hangs here in tatters amid the mockery of all who stand around or pass by. With these words, the Lord does more than to show her himself: he offers her the work of suffering with him for the salvation of the world.  Wordlessly she accepts, her whole life lived according to her words to God through the Angel: “Let it be done to me as you have said.”  

There is nothing like the pain of innocent suffering, and there was nothing innocence so pure as that in the hearts of the Lord Jesus and his Mother.  On this day, we ponder the love that binds these two hearts together, and which are so full of love for us, for whom they suffered.

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Sunday, September 14, 2025

John 3, 13-16

 Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

This Feast, commemorates the finding of the True Cross by St. Helen in the fourth century and also its recovery in the sixth century after Jerusalem was raided by the Persians.

What we honor on this feast is not so much the wood itself as the fact that our Lord and Savior died upon it for our sins.  We celebrate a love stronger than death, more powerful than hell (cf. Song of Songs 8, 6).  We regard the wood of the Cross as a relic and honor it accordingly.  We show our love for the Cross of Christ on Good Friday when we kiss or otherwise venerate the crucifix during the celebration of the Lord’s Passion.  When we kiss the crucifix, we kiss the infinite love Christ continuously pours out upon us.

In the Gospel reading for this feast, Jesus says to the Pharisee Nicodemus, “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven”, thereby claiming his divinity, but in the next breath he tells him, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”  Here, the Lord speaks of the fact that he has taken up a human nature purposely that he might be “lifted up”.  By believing in him as God and man, we might be saved: “So that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  But what is it to the eternal God, supremely joyous in himself, and having no need of anything, as to whether sinners are saved?  According to the punctuation in the lectionary, the following words were a commentary by St. John on what the Lord had just said. From ancient times, it has been held that the Lord himself said them: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  That is, God did this for the sake of his love for us.  Love does not act out of need, but out of desire for the good of the beloved.  Even a partial realization of his love stuns us.  By essentially trading his Son for us, he shows how great is his love is for us.    “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  Even with all the contempt the people of the world have shown the Lord throughout our history, he sends his Son into the world to tells us of his love for us, and even more, to show us how great his love is by dying on the Cross for us, as though to say, There is nothing, my beloved, that I would not do for you.

Saturday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, September 13, 2025

Luke 6, 43-49

Jesus said to his disciples: “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles. A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who listens and does not act is like a person who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”

“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit.”  The Gospel Reading for today’s Mass is taken from a section of St. Luke’s Gospel which is sometimes called “The Sermon on the Plain” to distinguish it from “The Sermon on the Mount” which contains similar though distinct teachings.  Luke gives a preamble to this sermon: “And coming down with them, he stood in a plain place: and the company of his disciples and a very great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the sea coast, both of Tyre and Sidon, who were come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And they that were troubled with unclean spirits were cured” (Luke 6, 17-18).  The naming of the Twelve Apostles precedes this sermon.  In speaking of good trees and good fruit, the Lord takes a common observation drawn from nature to speak of the seeming more complex reality of humans.  From this it proceeds that “every tree is known by its own fruit”.  That is, a fig tree is known from its fruit, the fig.  Since this is so, people know better than to “pick figs from thornbushes [or] gather grapes from brambles.”  That fig trees produce figs and grapevines grapes is well-known and predictable.  It is the same way with people, the Lord says:

“A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil.”  That is, a person habitually disposed to do good will do good, while one habitually disposed to do that which is wicked will do so: “for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks”.  Thus, expecting a wicked person do perform an unselfish deed is foolish.  The Lord teaches this in order to make clear to those who are wicked and wish to repent that this cannot be accomplished through a good deed performed now and then but only through a complete overhaul of one’s character, and this requires grace.

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command?”  This may be a separate saying from the above.  Otherwise, the Lord is pointing out the contradiction of a person acting as though he was good (acknowledging him as “Lord”) while remaining in an evil state.  This is the bad tree posing as a good tree.  But if a person acknowledges another with his words as his Lord and does not obey him, he does not in fact recognize him as such.  And this is pointless.  The true follower of Christ, acknowledging him as Lord comes to him, listens to his words, and acts on them.  This is the good fruit of the good tree, the good and faithful believer.  

“That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock.”  This and the following verses recall the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount found in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and certain scholars have drawn from the similarity that Luke adapted what he found in the earlier Gospel for his Gentile audience.  In essence, then, the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain are the same, according to this view.  However, these are two different sermons as is clear from the time in which they were delivered and from the differences between them.  We can account for any similarities by keeping in mind that the Lord preached in many cities, towns, and villages throughout the three years of his ministry and he would certainly have repeated his sayings as he moved through Galilee and Judea.  In these particular verses, the Lord compares the one who comes to him, listens to him, and obeys him as one who, in building his house, digs deeply and lays his foundation on rock.  The work is hard and takes time.  It is not for the lazy, for one who does not properly assess the danger to the house of a bad storm.  In the same way, listening to the Lord,is words entails thinking upon them and considering one’s own life in light of them.  Done properly, this is also hard work and takes time.  The lazy, the complacent, and the wicked will not do this.  “When the flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been well built.”  The “house” is the person’s faith.  It is built upon a sure foundation and is maintained by the grace that comes from prayer and good deeds.  The “flood” is not ordinary temptation but persecution or some other tribulation.  

“But the one who listens and does not act is like a person who built a house on the ground without a foundation.”  Without action, the listening is wasted.  This recalls the pleas the Lord foretells of those who saw and heard him during his lifetime but then went their way: “We have eaten and drunk in your presence: and you have taught in our streets” (Luke 13, 26).  “When the river burst against it, it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”  Notice here that the Lord says, “When the river burst against it”, not, “If the river bursts against it.”  The Lord is saying that persecution and tribulation will surely come, but the one who believes that the Lord, with whom he is barely acquainted, will save him if he merely calls out his name or his title.  “It collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”  This destruction is not annihilation but eternal punishment, for the human soul cannot die.  The sufferings of the wicked soul in hell will immeasurably surpass any sufferings a human body can endure on earth.

Through conformity to the will of Almighty God and perseverance in the Faith which we have learned, accepted, and grasped, we are made good trees which produce fruit pleasing to him.

Friday in the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, September 12, 2025

Luke 6, 39–45

Jesus told his disciples a parable, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye. A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles. A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is a collection of the Lord’s sayings.  St. Luke calls the following a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?”  This may seem a commonplace, but the question raises questions.  Did the blind person deliberately seek out another blind person to lead him?  Did a person offer to lead him not knowing that he himself was blind?  Did the blind person have no one else to lead him?  Where did he want to go?  The blind person is one without faith.  If he follows another faithless person, both will fall into hell.  It is inevitable.

“No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.”  The Lord himself had no teacher, and this was well known at the time: “And the Jews wondered, saying: How does this man know letters, having never learned?” (John 7, 15).  Even so, he teaches his disciples that they will never grow wiser than he, nor anyone else.  The disciple can become like the teacher, but no more.  All those who teach what is contrary to what he teaches is blind.  

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?”  The “splinter” and “beam” could be moral or doctrinal.  Now, a splinter may fall into a person’s eye, but a beam going into an eye requires negligence or deliberate action, either by the self or another.  The Lord warns that a person who has left the Faith has no standing for assisting someone who struggles with Church teaching or making moral choices.  “You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”  We remove the beams from our eyes by returning to the Faith and through absolution in the Sacrament of Penance.  

“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles.”  This may also seem a commonplace, but how often we fail to apply the lesson!  We are attracted by the apparent beauty of a person, philosophy, or movement without examining whether it is true or not, and this we can see by its application or “fruits”.  We might wonder why we so often fail to do this, whether we find something appealing because of our own inward turmoil or  through peer pressure or through wishful thinking.

“A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”  We find this saying only in Luke’s Gospel.  It is related to the saying about the trees and their fruit.  A person may seem unattractive, unusual, or backward and yet may act with great charity.  We can tell something of what is in the person’s heart by his actions, especially over a period of time.  The Lord himself seemed primitive, uneducated, and smacked of the back country to the sophisticated Sanhedrin.  We should be careful not to dismiss a saint simply because he does not look like what we think a saint should look like.

Thursday in the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, September 11, 2025

Luke 6, 27–38

Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

The Lord Jesus does not merely tell us to love one another, leaving us to guess at what that means: he explains love to us so that we can carry it out.  And although it may strike us as unloving that we are to “carry out” our love, we must remember that love has to be expressed in actions, just as faith and hope do.  What St. James says about faith applies equally to love: “But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” (James 2, 20).  The Lord commands us to love one another, including those who hate us.  That is because in order for us to become perfect we must love as he does: “Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and slander you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and rains upon the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5, 44-45).  We love for the sake of the One who loves us.  This requires untwisting our twisted human nature — difficult work which we can do only with the help of God’s grace.  That this is possible at all is shone us not only in the life of Christ but also in the lives of his saints.  We can do this, and we must do this.  Loving as Christ loves is for our good and ultimately God’s glory.  It is for our good because it results in an eternal reward of unimaginable ecstasy.  Only those who love perfectly can bear this ecstasy and be transformed by it.  All others will back away from it as yet without the capacity for it.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”  Here, the Lord lays out the general principles of our love for others.  “To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic.”  Next, he uses hyperbole to emphasize the imperative of this love.  He sums up his teaching with, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  That is, consider in what way you can serve a given person, according to your abilities and within your already existing responsibilities, and then act accordingly.  The most important action we can perform is to pray, although it is often the last action we think of.  We should, in fact, pray in our considerations and for the other’s good.  “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.”  That is, Even the secular-minded people around us love those who love them.  “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.”  This is a much misunderstood commandment.  The Greek word translated here as “judging” means “to bring to trial” or “to decide innocence and guilt”, in a judicial context.  It is to be compared with “condemning”.  We are not to set ourselves up as God as though to judge another soul, for God alone is the Judge: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12, 19).  Vengeance, or, punishment, is God’s, not ours, to hand out. 

“Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.”  This is the ecstasy of heaven.  It will pour over and through us in an everlasting torrent.  Some will experience it more keenly than others, for “the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”  If we love without measure, we will experience love without measure to our fullest ability to receive it.

This love that our Lord so wants us to enjoy that he commands us to show it so that we can receive it, is not the mere natural love all people are capable of, but the supernatural love that only the children of God can love with.  We pray that we may love fully with this love, itself a gift of God.