Thursday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time, June 19, 2025

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.” 

The Lord Jesus teaches us how to pray, in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass.  The reading begins with, “In praying, do not babble like the pagans”, which might be better translated as, “Do not chatter like the pagans.”  To babble” means to speak in such a way as to be incomprehensible.  The Greek word means “to speak empty words”, or, “to chatter”.  The Lord explains, “the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words”, as though they might wear down their gods through the bulk of their rhetoric.  “Do not be like them”, that is, “Do not do as they do”.  The Lord emphasizes this because there is a great deal of difference between trying to convince an image of stone to do something for you and beseeching the living God.  “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him”: that is, “Your Father knows your business or necessity which you have before you ask him.”  

Now, we ought to pay attention to how the prayer the Lord gives us is constructed: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  The first words are an address (literal translation from the Greek): “Our Father, who is in heaven, may your name be sanctified!”  We can compare this to an address to a powerful king in the Old Testament: “O king, may you live forever!” (Daniel 6, 21).  The next phrase tells us what the prayer is asking for: “May your kingdom come!”  The “Our Father” asks God to bring human history to an end, to usher in divine justice, and to welcome the righteous into eternal life.  In this, we ask for God to hasten the working of his will.  In Revelation 6, 10, we hear the holy martyrs cry out to Almighty God, “How long, O Lord, Holy and True, do you not judge and give justice for our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”  It is the cry of all the saints: “For we know that every creature groans and labors in pain, even till now.   And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit: even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:22–23).  Next, the Lord teaches us to pray for the sanctity we need in order to be saved in the kingdom for which we pray: “Give us now our bread, sufficient unto the next day; and forgive us our sins, as we also forgive those who sin against us.”  This “bread” is the Bread of Life, of which the Lord Jesus says, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever” (John 6, 51-52).  And of the necessity of forgiveness for salvation, the Lord tells us, “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  This is the final phrase of the prayer as it was translated into English in the sixteenth century, preceded by, if not influenced by, the earlier Middle English translation.  The Greek, translated into modern English, reads more like this: “Do not lead us into the test, but deliver us from evil (or, the evil one)”.  “The test” was judicial torture intended to cause an accused or a witness to give evidence.  We still use the phrase “putting to the test”, meaning to find out what something or someone is made of.  The Christian believer is here beseeching God not to allow him to be put into a position in which he might apostatize or inform on other Christians during persecution.  The confusion in the translation arises from the fact that in both the Greek and the Latin, the word under discussion could be translated as either “temptation” or “test”, and, originally, the word meant both.  Thus, the believer is asking God for the virtue of perseverance.

“If you forgive others their transgressions.”  So necessary is it for the believer to forgive those who sin against him that the Lord reiterates the petition from his prayer, and links it to the forgiveness by God of the believer.  Any virtuous action strengthens the virtue that is exercised and it also enlarges the capacity for experiencing God’s graces.  In this way, by our exercise of the virtue of mercy, we become more able of receiving forgiveness.  By refusing mercy we harden ourselves so that, in effect, we reject mercy — even for ourselves.

Let us then live out the Lord’s Prayer in our lives, praying its words with solemnity and understanding and conforming ourselves to Christ’s obedience to the Father.

Wednesday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time, June 18, 2025

Matthew 6, 1-6; 16-18

Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.  When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.  When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

“Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them.”  The Lord’s words here sound simple and straight-forward enough, but they seem to contradict what he had said earlier in his Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in Matthew 5, 16: “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”  Note, though, that in the first quote, Jesus says, “Take care not to perform”, that is, Do not perform an act purposefully; and then he says, “Let your light shine”, that is, Do not hide it.  Thus, his disciples are to perform good deeds, but they are to do them for God’s glory, not for their own.  And this, properly is the nature of being a “disciple”, to bring glory to one’s master by proficiency in the master’s teachings.  On the other hand, the Lord does sound insistent on this matter, for he also says, “When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret.”  The Lord does mean for the action to be secret, or, better, “hidden” — but from the one performing it.  His disciples must become so accustomed to looking for good deeds to do, and so natural in doing them, that the disciple does not think twice about them.  Performing charitable actions should become as normal for his disciples as breathing or walking. 

“When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.”  The Church Fathers and later spiritual writers loved this verse and understood it particularly in terms of contemplative prayer, teaching that “your inner room” is one’s innermost heart, and praying “in secret” meant losing oneself in the wonder of God.  This first applies, however, to ordinary believers: Go to a place where you can be alone and undisturbed and there open your heart to Almighty God.  Speak to him of what you cannot speak to anyone else.  Be intimate with him as with no one else.  But this is not all.  Jesus tells us, “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”  “Your Father who sees in secret”, that is, who knows all things and is waiting for you in the place to which you will go, “will repay you.”  The Greek word here translated as “repay” actually means “to return”, or “to give back”.  The problem with “repay” is that the word has the sense of “paying back a loan”, or “granting a reward”.  The actual sense here is that when we offer God our intimacy, he offers his to us — by his grace we make ourselves capable of experiencing his intimacy.  And this is prayer.  We talk to him as we would talk to no one else, and he listens whole-heartedly to us and responds deep in our hearts.

The Pharisees saw God walking on their streets for three years and they never asked him for anything. 

Tuesday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time, June 17, 2025

Matthew 5, 43-48

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love

your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers and sisters only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”  The love of enemies starkly illuminates the difference between Christianity and every other religion.  And the Lord Jesus can command such a thing because he provides the means by which it can be accomplished — the only means, which is grace.  Now, we become adopted children of the Father through the grace of baptism.  But it is necessary for us not only to become but to make progress in our growth as his children through imitating him.  Through prayer we receive further graces to imitate him.  This grace comes to us along with the experience of God’s love, for which we must also pray.  We love others, even those who act against us, knowing the love of God and knowing he loves these others.  We love them for his sake.  This love is acted upon when we pray for others, especially for their conversion.  It may also require us to say no to someone, for sometimes the most loving act we can perform is to say no.  This includes the action of defending ourselves: we do so out of love of self, which God commands us to do; but also to prevent a person from committing a worse sin than attacking by wounding or killing us.

“For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?”  It is good that we love those who love us, but “the tax collectors do the same.”  That is, we will no more receive a reward for this action than the wicked will.  “And if you greet your brothers and sisters only, what is unusual about that?”  The Lord tells us in these words that it is indeed unusual for someone to love his enemies, but we must remember that we are supposed to act in unusual ways as Christians, following the law of love and not the allurements of self-indulgence, as most people do.  “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Now, in this context, the Lord is speaking about having perfect love.  We can love perfectly according to our human ability, just as the Father loves perfectly according to his infinite divinity.  To do this, we need to pray for grace that we might know God’s love for us.  Knowing his love, unworthy of it though we are, will enable us to love with the love with which we are loved.  The fullest example of this is the Son’s love for us.  We also have before us the examples of the saints who gave up everything this world values in to serve the poor, the lepers, prisoners in the galleys, newly arrived slaves, and those who sacrificed their lives to save a stranger.  This perfect love will grow our capacity to experience the love of God.  As we love so shall we know love.  And we shall know the fullness of God’s love in heaven as we look upon him.

Monday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time, June 16, 2025

Matthew 5, 38–48

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow. “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The Lord Jesus speaks many hard words to us and gives us many hard commandments to obey.  His calling “lust” a sin as deadly as adultery places a serious burden on us, and not just on the young.  Now, at the beginning of today’s Gospel Reading, he issues commandments such as these: “Offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well.”  On their face, these words seem impossible to follow.  They run completely contrary to the most basic  instinct of any living thing, that of self-preservation.  But let us see what they really mean, for just as the Lord does not mean for us to cut off our hands and eyes lest we sin with them, he does not command us to refuse to protect ourselves and those in our care.  The Lord is saying that if someone commits an evil act against us — he assaults or robs us — we are not free to reply with evil of the same level or kind.  In the case of the Lord Jesus himself, when he was struck by the guard for speaking to the high priest, he rebuked him, but he did not destroy him, as he could have.  And divine justice was enacted at the end of that guard’s life.  So we are not to act as our enemies act, and this is the sense of the quote of the Law with which Jesus begins this section of his Sermon: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  The follower of Jesus does not exact revenge.  St. Paul explains this simply for the Gentile Christians in Rome: “To no man rendering evil for evil, providing good things, not only in the sight of God but also in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as is in you, have peace with all men. Revenge not yourselves, my dearly beloved; but leave wrath to God, for it is written: Revenge is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12, 17-29).

“If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.”  The Lord here speaks about how a fundamental disposition of the Christian is generosity.  He is not making hard and fast rules, for according to the Law, a Jew could not take the cloak of another Jew if that was all he had to sleep in, and a Jew could walk a mile on the Sabbath, but that was the limit.  “Give to the one who asks of you” does not mean necessarily to give what the person is asking for, for as the Lord will point out, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (Luke 11, 11-12).  So if a person asks us to give him that which will not be good for him, the person should give something that will be, such as food instead the means for buying drugs or alcohol.  

“He makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”  The Lord repeats his principle of not treating the wicked with wickedness, and grounds it in the justice of the Father.

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  We should be careful when we come to this word “perfect”.  The Greek word from which this word is translated has the sense of “completeness”, especially a completeness in all one’s parts.  The word implies a growth and a fullness to the growth so that the person or thing is complete: it is what it is meant to be.  The Lord is telling us to be complete so that the following of his Law comes easily and naturally to us.  He is also speaking of our growth in grace so that we are as filled with grace as we can be, for our beings are finite unlike his.  The saints are thus “perfect” because they are complete in grace and holiness.  They have carried on their vocations in obedience.  They had been given five talents and they then traded with them and received five back — that is to say, they achieved all that they were able to achieve, with the help of God.

And so can we, by loving others, praying for them, seeking their good, imitating the Lord Jesus as best we can.

Sunday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time

John 16, 12-15

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.”

“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”  The Lord Jesus is speaking during the Last Supper.  In the course of the meal he has taught the Apostles about the Father’s love for him as his only-begotten Son, about what must happen to him, that he is leaving them though he will come back to them, and about the Holy Spirit.  The Apostles, for their part, are already  overwhelmed.  Jesus was not acting or speaking as they expected the Messiah to do.  And now he was saying to them that he had “much more” to tell them.  In his words there is an eagerness, a powerful desire to impart what they must know, but he holds himself back.  So many times in the Gospels Jesus is shows as painfully restraining himself, putting the Father’s will first.  Perhaps the most moving come when the Lord is gazing upon Jerusalem as he approaches it for the last time: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together your children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not?” (Matthew 23, 37).  

He restrains himself for the present but will reveal all things to them after he rises from the dead and they begin to understand what it means that he is the Son of God — not the restorer of David’s kingdom but the Savior of the world.  Even then, they will hear but not understand.  Therefore, “the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”  They have the experience of the Lord teaching them so that they know the truth, and then the Holy Spirit confirms it and gives them the ability to understand it.  Jesus reveals the mission of the Holy Spirit to the Church in one sentence: “He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.”  The Holy Spirit, in the unity of the Holy Trinity, speaks the words of the Father from whom he proceeds, teaching what is necessary for the Church to believe and to do.  

He will also teach “the things that are coming” so that the Church can interpret the signs of the times.  The Lord Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Sadducees, saying, “You know then how to discern the face of the sky: and can you not know the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16, 3).  They did not recognize the Son of God when he came because he did not fit in with their notions of what he would be like.  But the Church strongly desires to do God’s holy will and so the Holy Spirit teaches her how to prepare her children for the future: prayer, fasting, and alms-giving.

Saturday in the 10th Week of Ordinary Time, June 14, 2025

Matthew 5, 33-37

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow. But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the Evil One.”

In an oath, God is called upon to witness the truth of a statement, as in, “I swear to God that the man is guilty.”  Since a human cannot live in isolation and is not omnipotent, he must rely on others for many goods and services.  The procurement of these goods and services, including the rendering of justice, often involves the exchanging of promises.  At times, these promises are of such a serious nature that they are written down and signed.  The signature to the promise, or one attesting that the signature is that of one or both of the parties involved amounts to a minor oath, by which we implicitly swear by our own good name, with some thing at stake, that we are making or agreeing to a truthful statement.  In more serious cases involving the testimony of witnesses in which a person accused of a crime is at risk of punishment, oaths invoking God have been the custom.  We see that oath-taking in one form or another has an essential place in a society of weak humans who are already predisposed to selfishness and falsehood.  It is not too much to say that oath-taking makes civilization possible, whether in ancient or modern times.

So why does Jesus come down so hard on oath-taking, and what does he mean?  First, we must consider that in the Lord’s time particularly, people abused the oath by making them over trivial issues.  Since the Lord’s name was called upon, it meant a use of his name in vain.  Also, rampant breaking of oaths rendered the practice open to ridicule, further damaging the honor Lord’s name and power, since the Lord seemed not to hold the oath breaker accountable.  It became practically a matter of putting the Lord God to the test, which was forbidden.  It is against this background that we can understand the Lord’s words.

The Lord did not forbid oaths absolutely just as he does not command the cutting off of one’s hands if they “cause” a person to sin.  The Lord Jesus is here making a series of commandments using the figure of speech of hyperbole.  We use this device today when we say such things as, I’m so hungry I could eat a cow.  No one could expect to carry out such a thing, or intend to hold another to it.  The hyperbole allows a person to dramatically express a truth, such as that I am very hungry, and to impress this truth upon his audience.  Jesus does the same.  We are to understand from his words, as the Fathers teach us, that the believer must be so honest and truthful that no one would think of requiring an oath from him.  That is not to say that a believer must disclose all his hidden, private thoughts to another — no one is required to do that.  But in everyday dealings to speak no lie and to mean yes and no when we say these words.  The Christian bears the name of Christ and so must be careful to glorify that name with our actions and not to sully it with our falsehoods.

Friday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 13, 2025

Matthew 5, 27-32

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Some argue that the Lord Jesus was teaching that people should strive for ideals that no one could actually reach.  But Jesus was not an idealist.  He was in fact very much a realist and he taught that not only can a person carry out his teachings on the moral life but that in order to attain heaven, he must.  The Lord both teaches what we must do to be saved but he provides the grace which enables us to live the life to which he calls us.

“But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  The Lord Jesus is both giving a particular commandment and also explaining what true holiness consists of; the love of God and neighbor.  For one who loves God and neighbor, there is no place for impure thoughts.  And for one dedicated to the will of God, it would be better to cut out an eye or lose a hand than to offend him.

The following verse from Malachi is the source for the otherwise odd question the Pharisees pose to Jesus about divorce: “Take heed to yourselves, and let none be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord the God of Israel” (Malachi 2, 15–16).  The Hebrew translated here as “divorce” is, in fact, “sending away”, the term the Old Law uses for divorce.  The Lord Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, confirms what the Father had said through the Prophet, and thus stakes out a position in what evidently was a matter of great debate at the time.  Malachi, who lived in the 400’s B.C., was the last of the Old Testament Prophets and, as such, his book had special meaning.  Even though what is written in it seems to contradict the Mosaic law about divorce, the Pharisees would have been slow to reject it entirely.  Actually, no contradiction exists: God hates divorce but he permits it up until the time of his Son’s teaching.

Thursday in the 10th Week of Ordinary Time, June 12, 2025

Matthew 5, 20-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.  You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”

The Lord Jesus did not offer himself to the Jews as merely an alternative to the Pharisees, in terms of his teaching, but as one who came to restore the Mosaic Law to what it actually said.  The Pharisees had interpreted the Law through the prism of the Temple and the purity and other precepts governing it.  They also brought the Law “up to date” to a population that was no longer mainly nomadic by extrapolating from the original law, thus creating the “precepts of men” that the Lord so much opposed.  In effect, the Pharisees made it very hard to carry out Jewish duties.  At the same time, they did not teach much on the moral laws, as distinct from the laws regarding ritual purity and things of this kind.  Part of the appeal of Jesus as a teacher came from his stripping away this accretions that the Pharisees held up as the true meaning of the Law.

When the Lord Jesus says to the crowd, “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven”, he is insisting that the people need to follow the Law as God gave it to Moses, and as Moses gave it to the people.  They could hear it — and the Prophets — read out in the synagogues so that they could know it, and they were to follow it without falling into the ways of the Pharisees.  Their teachings on righteousness made righteousness nearly impossible for the average Jew and for anyone but themselves, but their teachings were wrong.  Righteousness was within the grasp of any Jew who carried out the Law in his life — the righteousness that was possible for the Jews before the time of grace, at any rate.  And the Lord prepares them to receive grace by instructing them correctly on how to follow the Law.  He has established by his miracles, which were only possible by the power of God, that he has the authority to teach the Law, whereas the Pharisees have no real standing to do this.  They were not appointed by the high priests to teach, nor did they have anything to do with the Temple authorities and the governance of the Jews.  Indeed, their sect only arose in Israel a couple of hundred years before.  It was certainly not inaugurated by Moses.  It is, in fact, just another emperor without his clothes on.

There are many cultural forces and self-important persons which strive to tell us how to live in society, and even as Christians.  They attempt to foist their pathologies on us and to call these “normal” or normative.  But there is only one Christ, and he calls us to a salvation that cannot be surpassed.  We, his sheep, know his shepherd’s voice, for it rings out through the Church.  These forces and people are the new Pharisees whose moral code sometimes uses Christian terms, but in ways at odds with their true meaning.  They would have us think that theirs is the only ethics, the only morality, but it benefits only themselves.  The difficulty in following their shifting code makes life and even language impossible, but the new Pharisees mock and try to destroy those who fail.  Let us, for our part, listen to and follow the Lord Jesus, who is the only Way, the only Truth, and the only Life.

Wednesday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 11, 2025

Matthew 5, 17-19

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

I want to apologize for uploading the wrong blog article for Monday.  I had written a few articles ahead of time because I anticipated an especially busy week, and I lost track of what day it was.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  The Lord does not do away with the Law which he gave through Moses, nor with the words of the Prophets, whose very mouths he opened and filled with his message.  Instead, he has fulfilled it and in so doing has transformed it.  The old Law was but the sign of the new.  The sacrifices commanded in the old Law could not take away sin or offer suitable thanksgiving to God, but were a sign of the Sacrifice of our Lord on the Cross, which fulfilled them and which now is continually offered in the Holy Mass.  The commandments against killing and adultery were fulfilled by the Lord in this very Sermon on the Mount, with the Lord showing that they were signs of commandments against hatred and lust.  The sign of circumcision was fulfilled by the reality of baptism.  The sign of the sabbath, likewise, was fulfilled by the reality of the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection on Sunday.

“Not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter, etc.” In the Greek, the text literally reads, “not an iota nor the smallest part of a letter”.  “Iota” is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet.  It is transliterated as “i” in English.  The iota is smaller than the English letter “i”, being barely a mark between the other letters in a word.  It has a long “e” sound.  Very likely, Jesus would have said, in Hebrew, “not a yod, etc.”  The Hebrew letter yod looks a bit like a curved single quotation mark ( ’ ) and can act as a consonant or as a vowel marker.  As a consonant it sounds like the English “y”, as in “young”.  As a vowel marker it usually sounds like a long “e”.  It is a critical letter for writing God’s name in Hebrew, which is done only with consonants.  Without the yod, the name of  “God” becomes the word for “a living thing”, a creature rather than the Creator.  The scribes, at least, would have understood this deeper meaning.  To remove the yod would completely invalidate the Law because it would remove “God” from its center and replace him with a creature.  But the Law came from God, and had service to him at its core.  Jesus says that no part of the Law will pass away until “all things have taken place”, that is, until the end of the world: “until heaven and earth pass away”.

“Whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”  These are the commandments of which those in the old Law were but signs.  Note, the one who “obeys and teaches”.  The believer must learn to obey first and then teach.  The example of obedience is itself the best way to teach.  The one, on the other hand, who breaks “even the least of these commandments” and teachers others to do so by word or example, shall be called “least” in the kingdom of heaven, which is to say, he will not be found there.

Jesus announces his commitment to “fulfill” the Law at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount.  Next he will show what he means by this.  No one had ever spoken like this before, not the Prophets, not the Pharisees, not even John the Baptist.  This is because only the One who instituted the Law could fulfill it, could complete it.

Tuesday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 10, 2025

Matthew 5, 13-16

Jesus said to his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lamp stand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”

Jesus continues his Sermon on the Mount with these words, having just taught the beatitudes, an epitome of how they are to live, by telling his disciples that they are salt.  Jesus does not use a simile here.  He says, “You are the salt”, not You are like salt.  That is, “salt” is a figure that has its fulfillment in the disciples of the Lord.

Throughout history we find people using it to prepare as well as preserve food, to cleanse wounds, and to melt ice, among other things.  There is also a story in the Holy Scriptures that tells how the Prophet Elijah healed the waters of Jericho: “And the men of the city said to Elijah: ‘Behold the situation of this city is very good, as you, my lord, sees: but the waters are very bad, and the ground barren.’ And he said: ‘Bring me a new vessel, and put salt into it.’ And when they had brought it, he went out to the spring of the waters, and cast the salt into it, and said: ‘Thus says the Lord: I have healed these waters, and there shall be no more in them death or barrenness.’  And the waters were healed unto this day, according to the word of Elijah, which he spoke” (2 Kings 19-22).  It seems to me that the Lord Jesus was referring to the salt in these verses when he spoke to his disciples.  We can understand the “new vessel” here as signifying the Church of the new covenant made in the Blood of Christ.  The salt, that is, the disciples, are contained in the Church.  The members of the Church are then cast into the deadly “water”, and by the grace of God they make it healthful.  The deadly water is the souls of worldly people which are dead without grace, and which cause death by luring others to their way of life.

We can also understand the “salt” as the believer strengthened by the Lord’s teaching and preserving the souls of sinners by aiding in their conversion.  The “salt” also cleanses the wounds caused by sin, as the Good Samaritan cleansed the wounds of the man who was attacked by robbers.  And “salt”, the compassionate believer, melts the heart of the obstinate sinner with his or her examples of kindness.  We see in this last a way to understand the light on the lamp stand and the city set on the mountain.  Faith is given to us that we might render it to others so that they might come alive, be healed, preserved, enlightened, and defended against the assaults of the devil.