Saturday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 8, 2023

Matthew 9, 14-17

The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

“The disciples of John approached Jesus.”  Jesus began his public ministry  after John the Baptist was arrested, according to Mark 1, 14-15.  If this is true, then the disciples of John, who remained together and continued his work, came to Jesus while John was lying in prison.  They came to him not at John’s request, as they did later, but on their own.  Their question seems genuine and their motive was curiosity.  They knew that John had pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God and that some of John’s followers had joined with Jesus.  “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?”  John’s disciples do not say why they and the Pharisees fast “much”.  The way the Lord answers the question, they fast in order to prepare for the coming of the Messiah or, as a component of their prayer that God send the Messiah.  The Lord’s answer, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”, gently urges them to consider whether the Messiah has in fact come, and that it is he.  He does not make the claim to be the Messiah, the Bridegroom, but rather sets before them what is necessary for them to figure this out for themselves. Jesus refers to himself as “the Bridegroom”, as John had already spoken of him to them: “He who  has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled” (John 3, 29).  We should notice that John and Jesus carefully avoid using the loaded term “messiah”.

“The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”  That is, the present time is the time for feasting but a time will come when it is fitting to fast.  The bridegroom will be “taken away from them”, that is, he will die.  We, his”friends”, fast between the time of the Lord’s Death and his second coming.  This fasting is a means of preparation through penance as well as part of our prayer for God’s Kingdom to come.

“No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.”  This saying seems separate from the verses that precede it.  The Lord uses a bit of common knowledge in order to make a point about grace.  The old cloak is a person not reborn in baptism, a person without faith.  The “unshrunken cloth” is grace.  Grace cannot help a person to understand a mystery of the Lord or to perform a virtuous act who is not baptized and have faith.  There is no capacity to receive grace.  Such a person is like someone without hands trying to catch a ball thrown to him.  “For its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.”  The person who strives to understand a mystery of the Lord without grace or perform a virtuous work without it will find on frustration and misunderstanding.

“They pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”  One who is baptized is a “new skin” capable of holding the new wine of grace and is capable of understanding and believing in the mysteries of our Faith, which the Lord has taught us.  An enormous difference exists between a person who is baptized and one who is not.  He can know and do that which is beyond the ability of the unbaptized.  He can know and please the Lord Jesus Christ.

 Friday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 7, 2023 

Matthew 9, 9-13

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

“As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.”  Saints Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story of Matthew’s call by the Lord Jesus to follow him, but it is only in the first Gospel that the tax collector  is named as Matthew.  Like most of the Apostles, the tax collector used two names: his Jewish name (Levi) and his professional name for use in dealing with Greek-speaking Gentiles (Matthew).  It is interesting to note that although this is true of the Apostles and many who dealt in Galilee, Jesus was known only by his proper Jewish name.  This may reflect that the inhabitants of Nazareth had little to do with Greek-speakers since their town was located in a fairly remote part of the territory.  Most importantly, however, the Lord’s identity was carried in the name which the Angel Gabriel told both Mary and Joseph to give him: Jesus, from the Hebrew Yeshua, meaning “God saves”.  Now, Matthew, the author of the Gospel, uses his professional name in speaking about himself as the tax collector.  He does this in his list of the Apostles and also here as if to distance himself from his past yet at the same time acknowledging it: I was Matthew, but I am Levi.  This would explain why Luke, who did not know him as a tax collector, only refers to him as “Levi the son of Alphaeus”.  

It is also Luke who tells us that, “Levi made him a great feast in his own house: And there was a great company of publicans and of others that were at table with them” (Luke 5, 29).  Matthew makes a more casual mention of the meal: “while he was at table in his house” and he comes right out and identifies the “others” as “sinners”.  This “great feast” would have taken place at midday, when the biggest meal of the day was taken in that time and place.  If the great feast occurred the very day that Jesus called Matthew to follow him, the call would have taken place in the morning.  But it is not clear from the text whether it was the same day or a following day.  Much depends on how much time it took to prepare a banquet of this kind.  The Gospel indicates that Matthew’s house had some size to it because of the size of the feast and the reference to the great company of the tax collectors “and others” present.  Now, that the posture taken at banquets was that of reclining on a couch also tells us of the space available in his house.

“The Pharisees saw this.”  A really big feast would have attracted notice in Capernaum, a town of about 1,500 people at the time.  We might wonder how the Pharisees, who detested the tax collectors, would have entered the house to see who was invited.  Perhaps they only walked about the dining hall and did not join in the eating, or they milled around before the food was served.  “And said to his disciples.”  The Pharisees do not dare to accost Jesus but seek to peel away the confidence of his Apostles.  “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  They are not actually interested in their answer.  Their words also act as a taunt.  It brings to mind the serpent saying to Eve, “Why has God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?” (Genesis 3, 1).  

“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.”  The Pharisees May have spoken loud enough purposely so that Jesus would have heard them.  If so, their question would have disturbed and silence the gathering.  The Pharisees would have felt safe and entitled to do so because of their status in society.  The Lord answers them directly, defending himself, outlining his mission, and dismissing them.  This brings to mind the Lord’s final answer and dismissal of Satan when the devil tempted him: “Begone, Satan: for it is written: The Lord your God shall you adore, and him only shall you serve.”  Here too, the Lord speaks shortly and sharply and employs the Scriptures: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6, 6).  

“I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  The Greek word translated here as “call” means “to invite”.  The Lord has a double-meaning here.  First, the “sinners” were the ones invited to Matthew’s feast.  The invitations Matthew sent out would have been made on the Lord’s behalf so it is as though Jesus had invited each personally as the guest of honor, and he could certainly have not received anyone who did not appeal to him.  The Pharisees were uninvited and so were not welcome at the feast.  Jesus calls attention to this fact.  But the Lord has a deeper message for them.  He has come into the world in order to invite all to the Kingdom of God.  Not all, of course, would respond.  Those who knew themselves to be sinners would respond with repentance and so accept the invitation.  Those who considered themselves righteous would do no penance.  But we are all sinners: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3, 23).  Those who do not repent and do penance will not be received into the eternal feast in heaven.

 Thursday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 6, 2023

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.

“Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town.”  Earlier in his Gospel, St. Matthew had informed us that “And leaving the city Nazareth, [Jesus] came and dwelt in Capernaum on the sea coast” (Matthew 4, 13).  St. Luke connects the Lord’s near-murder in Nazareth with his settling in Capernaum, a town which he later rebuked for its lack of repentance even after he had lived there and performed many miracles there: “And you, Capernaum, shall you be exalted up to heaven? You shall go down even unto hell. For if in Sodom had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, perhaps it would have remained unto this day” (Matthew 11, 23).  This, in turn, brings to mind how St. John lamented that the Lord “came unto his country, but his own people received him not” (John 1, 11).  “People brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher.”  We see how Matthew continues his practice of summarizing the deeds of Jesus so that they serve, in his Gospel, to underline his words, and to show the divine approval of them.  For, St. Mark gives a vivid description of how the paralytics friends could not get the man to Jesus for healing because of the crowds outside the house and so they went round the back, hoisted him to the roof, and let him down with ropes before the Lord.  It is fascinating to see the Evangelists working according to their purposes.  They are not editing some previously written text but understanding what they had seen and heard in different ways.

“When Jesus saw their faith.”  They show their faith and the Lord sees it and rewards it.  Faith is to be shown, not to be locked up secretly within one’s heart.  In this case, the friends of the paralytic believed in Jesus as a healer.  Their faith was not perfect, since he had not yet revealed himself as the Son of God, but it was enough for this healing.  “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”  The Greek word translated here as “courage” is a verb meaning something like, “Be of good cheer.”  It may have been used to translate the Hebrew greeting shalom.  The Lord thus greets the man who is paralyzed and then immediately says to him that his sins are forgiven.  We might wonder that the Lord heals his paralysis by forgiving his sins.  The paralysis may have been caused by some sin of his, or it could be the sign of the sin within him.  In fact, the Jews at that time believed that bad things happened to people when they committed sin.  We can see this in the question the Apostles ask Jesus when they see a man born blind: “Rabbi, who has sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (John 9, 2).  But while then Lord replied that the man’s blindness was not the result of sin, here he seems to indicate that this man’s paralysis was.  The Lord was in fact pointing to the man’s physical condition as a sign of his spiritual condition.  And it is fitting that the man should be “paralyzed” spiritually by sin, for that is one of sin’s effects: it “cripples” a person’s ability to live virtuously and in the grace of God.  Without good physical health a person cannot walk, and without the life of grace, no one can please God.  The Lord sees that just as eager as the man is to walk again, so he is eager to be forgiven his sins, and so the Lord says to him, “Your sins are forgiven.”  

“This man is blaspheming.”  That is, since only God can forgive sins, Jesus must be making himself out to be God.  And if Jesus were only a human being and not the incarnate Son of God, they would have been right to think he was blaspheming.  Matthew is showing us that Jesus is teaching that he can forgive sins, and then he shows Jesus proving that he can do this with the man’s healing.  The healing is the sign that his sins have been forgiven just as his paralysis was the sign of his sin.  We learn from Mark’s Gospel that the Pharisees were so infuriated by the Lord’s claim to forgive sins that they began to plot against him from that time.  They overlooked or denied the miracle, performed before their very eyes, in their personal hatred for Jesus.  “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”. Not only did Jesus perform an instantaneous cure of the man’s paralysis, but the Lord told him right away to stand up and to carry his stretcher back home with him.  Not only can he walk again, but he can perform some service with his regained ability to walk.  He did not have limited ability, but the health he had before he became paralyzed.

“When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe and glorified God who had given such authority to men.”  Not even Moses forgave sin.  The people must have been staggered that one walked among them who forgave sin.  And there were no expensive sacrifices and onerous journeys to Jerusalem, no vows that had to be fulfilled.  Jesus looked into the man’s heart, saw his contrition, and forgave him.  It was as simple as the cure.  There were no potions to take, no special long prayers to make, no lengthy period of convalescence.  Later, the Lord will share this authority with his Apostles, who shared it in turn, until the present day when Catholic priests have the authority to forgive sins.  The heavy guilt of a lifetime can be lifted away in a few moments in the Sacrament of Penance.

 Wednesday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 5, 2023

Matthew 8, 28-34

When Jesus came to the territory of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him. They were so savage that no one could travel by that road. They cried out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding. The demons pleaded with him, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.” And he said to them, “Go then!” They came out and entered the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea where they drowned. The swineherds ran away, and when they came to the town they reported everything, including what had happened to the demoniacs. Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.

The location of several cities and towns mentioned in the Scriptures remain unknown today.  “The territory of the Gadarenes”, one such locality, is usually placed by scholars on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.  The names of certain towns in this direction have spellings that seem derivative of “the Gadarenes”, and if any of them is to be identified with the town St. Matthew mentions in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus and the Apostles would have had to sail almost due south and then east, length-wise across the Sea.  This would seem to be confirmed by St. Mark, who speaks of sailing through “the strait” to a land facing Galilee.

St. Matthew spends seven verses to report on this miracle, by far the briefest of the accounts written by St. Mark (20 verses) and St. Luke (13 verses).  This is likely because for Matthew, the miracles validate the preaching, which is more important to him because, as a Jew, he saw the Lord as the successor of Moses, whose Law completes the Law given to Moses by God for Israel.  And so he gives over a significant portion of his Gospel to accounts of the Lord’s preaching as well as several parables.  The miracles are important too, of course, but they serve a function in relation to the body teaching: that of signifying the approval of the Father for what his Son has taught.  Mark and Luke, with their different approaches, provide a great many more details.  Matthew gets to the essence of the miracle right away.

St. Matthew also speaks of “two demoniacs” while Saints Mark and Luke speak only of one.  This could be because this was how he remembered this event.  It was still dark, and he heard the words, “What have you to do with us, Son of God?”  Matthew may not have had a good view of what was happening and he assumed from the use of “us” that more than one possessed man was present.  It is also possible that there was one possessed man and he was thrashing about so wildly that it seemed to Matthew, who was witnessing this, that there were two men.  It could also be that Mark and Luke, listening to the accounts of eyewitnesses, thought that only a single man was possesses.  Due to the greater detail in their reports, however, it seems safe to conclude that there was only one man.

“Two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him.”  Mark says, more specifically, that they/he “ran and adored him” (Mark 5, 6).  We might wonder why a demon would drive the person it possesses to the Lord rather than away from him, but at this point Satan still does not realize who Jesus is and desperately wants to find this out and defeat him, for whoever it is, he threatens his power.  The demoniacs were “coming from the tombs” because they made their home there.  The forces of evil, whether human or supernatural, are attracted to death and they engage in self-destructive actions, whoever else they harm.  “They were so savage that no one could travel by that road.”  St. Mark provides more detail: “No man could bind [them], not even with chains. For having been often bound with fetters and chains, [they] had burst the chains, and broken the fetters in pieces, and no one could tame [them]. And [they were] always day and night in the tombs and in the mountains, crying and cutting [themselves] with stones” (Mark 3, 3-5).

“What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?”  The demoniacs address the Lord as “the Son of God” in order to tempt him to reveal himself.  By “Son of God” they mean a prophet or other righteous man.  Satan could not conceive of a love so great that God would become man in order to save the human race and so it is beyond him that Jesus was divine.  The demoniacs also tempt him to reveal his mission to them by demanding to know if he has come to torture them “before the appointed time” — before the end of the world when their torment shall increase.  The Lord, however, treats them with the contempt which they deserve and does not answer them.

“Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding.”  Traditionally, this had been the land allocated to the tribe of Gad at the time the Hebrews enter the Promised Land under Joshua, but the Israelites there had long ago been deported by the Assyrians and they never returned.  Other conquered peoples were moved there and remained afterwards so that the whole land was inhabited by the Gentiles.  This is how swine came to be herded in that place.

“If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.”  Matthew does not include how Jesus commanded the demon’s name and how the demon told him it was Legion, for many of them were present.  Legion pleads with the Lord not to send them back to hell where they will be mocked by the other demons for failing.  It would be better to inhabit the lowly swine than to be sent back.  “Go then!”  The Lord commands the demons to go into the swine in order to teach the Apostles the horror of the demonic power, which he prepared them for by allowing them to experience the power of the storm on the sea.  “They came out and entered the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea where they drowned.”  Jesus had saved the Apostles who believed in him, thought their faith was weak, from the fury of the water.  Now he lets the swine who have been possessed by the demons be destroyed in it.  Thus, the Lord shows that he will save those who believe but allows those to be lost who are committed to evil. 

“The swineherds ran away, and when they came to the town they reported everything, including what had happened to the demoniacs.”  The day was dawning.  The swineherds gaped and then panicked, running the distance to the town.  They told what they had seen and heard in hurried, confused words, trying to make sense of it themselves.  As Gentiles, they had very little conception of demonic possession and they could not have understood what Jesus had done.  But the evidence of the two men sitting on the ground, coherent but as if waking suddenly from a hard sleep, and the bodies of hundreds of pigs in the water and on the coast, spoke to the violence that had taken place.  “Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.”  We do not know how these Gentiles came to decide that the cause of the stampede of the swine lay with Jesus.  The formerly possessed men, now in their senses, probably remembered little of the exorcism.  It does not seem likely that the swineherds could have known, from their field, what was going on between Jesus and the possessed men.  The Lord might have stepped apart from the Apostles to meet the oncoming crowd.  But once the crowd decided that Jesus had done something to terrify the pigs so badly that they went to their deaths in the sea, they begged him to leave.  They do not see the miracle of two men delivered from Satan; they feel threatened themselves.  They do not know Jesus, they have never heard of a messiah.  All they know is that some new and powerful force has come upon them.  

These townspeople are the Gentiles around us today. We pray for them as we bear them witness of Christ and his saving power that they may welcome him into their lives.

 Tuesday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 4, 2023

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?”

July 4 marks the memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal, and it is also the feast of the Old Testament Prophets Hosea and Haggai.

Matthew places the miracle of the calming of the sea just after he records the Sermon on the Mount, which leads to the idea that this occurred early in the Lord’s Public Life, even before Matthew was called to be an Apostle (cf. Matthew 99, 9). Mark also places this event early in his Gospel.  Luke places it later, even after the sinful woman anoints the Lord at the Pharisee’s house.  Probably Jesus performed this miracle later in his career than earlier.  It should be recalled that Matthew has less interest in strict chronology than in theme, and his account of the miracle fits in the aftermath of the healing of the centurion’s slave, of Peter’s mother-in-law, and a statement that Jesus cured a great many people who suffered from illness or demonic possession.  St. Mark wrote his Gospel from St. Peter’s reminiscences, so according to the order in which Peter spoke of his experiences with Jesus.  

In Matthew’s Gospel, the miracle of the calming of the sea comes as part of a series of miracles showing the Lord’s authority and power: power over both the natural and supernatural worlds.  This, in turn, shows the Father’s approval of his Son’s teaching contained in the Sermon on the Mount, which preceded this series of miracles. 

“As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him.”  St. Mark gives a specific time when the Lord got into the boat to cross the Sea of Galilee: it was on the evening of the day on which he told the Parable of the Sower.  Both Matthew and Luke are less definite.  In their Gospels, Jesus embarked on the boat after some time had passed since the events that were described as coming before.  “Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves.”  The Greek word translated here as “violent storm” is seismos, which can also mean earthquake.  This was an unusually violent storm.  The Greek word translated here as “swamped” means “to be enveloped” or “to conceal”.  The Greek gives a vivid sense of a fishing boat at sea suddenly blasted by a storm of ferocious power.  The Apostles could hardly have seen each other in the blinding rain and their attempts to bail proved pitiful.

“He was asleep.”  Considering how the boat was being hurtled about by the waves and the rain and sea were capsizing it, we ought to marvel that the Lord slept.  The fact that he slept bears testimony to his exhaustion from his relentless efforts in preaching and healing.  We should marvel more that he kept this up every day for three years.  We will never know how much our Redeemer suffered for us.

“Lord, save us! We are perishing!”  This cry may have been motivated more by panic than by faith, but it does amount to a prayer.  It is a prayer we ourselves have uttered probably more than once.  “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”  It is as though the Lord expected them to simply ride out the storm in all its fury.  And that is what he did expect.  They should have kept bailing and struggling, and he would have protected him.  The Lord wills for us to take some part in our own salvation and so he urges us on to perform good works and to grow in our faith.  If we do this, he will protect us.  The Lord rebuked the Apostles for having little faith in order to teach them that their faith had not attained the fullness that they may have thought.  He makes it clear to them that they have as yet far to go.

“Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm.”  As sudden as the squall had arisen, so suddenly did it end.  The Apostles, as they gazed around, may have thought of how God bounded the sea in the beginning: “Who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?  When I made the cloud the garment thereof,

and thick darkness a swaddling-band for it, and prescribed bounds for it, and set for it bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shall you come, but no further: and here shall your proud waves be stayed?” (Job 38, 8–11).

We can understand this miracle as telling us to keep calm when the circumstances of life turn against us, or when we are persecuted for our faith, but also when we suffer inner turmoil and confusion.  Even when it seems the Lord is absent or asleep, he is there, protecting those who trust in him.

 The Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle, Monday, July 3, 2023

John 20, 24-29

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

The key to understanding St. Thomas’ doubt comes by his total commitment to Jesus: “Thomas therefore, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples: Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11, 16).  Here, Thomas shows the strength of his belief in Jesus, and that Jesus had the words of eternal life so that there was no one else to whom he could go (cf. John 6, 69).  Jesus had just arrived in Galilee after the Jews had tried to kill him in Judea, but his friend Lazarus had just died and he wanted to return there to console the dead man’s sisters.  

The doubting at the news of the Resurrection is the response of a full heart that has broken.  Thomas does not doubt that Jesus has risen because his faith was weak but because he had believed so utterly, and his faith was smashed by the Lord’s Death.  He must have felt it as almost a betrayal of his faith, for the Lord had not done anything to defend himself in the Garden of Gethsemane and had even stopped Peter from defending him during his arrest.  At the time of the Lord’s Death, Thomas did not go back to the house where the other Apostles had taken refuge.  Perhaps he wandered the streets of Jerusalem or even began to make his way back to Galilee.  His great hopes dashed, there seemed little reason for keeping company with those other men.  But he did return to the house, the house of Mary, the Mother of Mark, where the Last Supper had taken place a few nights before.  Perhaps he realized that he could not go back to his previous life.  He did not know what lay ahead, but he knew that he could not go back.  

The news of the Resurrection from the excited, ecstatic Apostles struck him as hysteria.  But he would not let his hopes blaze up again, not even a little, lest he be crushed again.  No, he would not believe unless he touched the Lord’s wounds.  (The fact that he knew the Lord had been pierced in the side points to a contact with an eyewitness after the Lord’s Death — perhaps St. John).  Still, Thomas remained with the Apostles the next long week, hope flickering in his heart despite his attempts to stifle it.

“Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  The Greek tense of the verb is the present, so the sense is, “Be believing”, Believe now and always.  The text does not tell us whether Thomas followed through with the Lord’s bidding him touch him.  We can imagine that Thomas, his mouth open and shaking slightly from his emotion, drew near enough to the Lord so as to touch him, and perhaps he did, his index finger reaching out haltingly to the wound in the side, which the Lord offered him, drawing aside his tunic.

Whether he touched his wound or not, Thomas’ response to the Lord’s word, “Believe”, is recorded for us: “My Lord and my God!”  Previously, he had believed in Jesus as the Messiah promised by the Pharisees; now he believes in him as his God.  

The Lord shows Thomas special love in his showing himself to him in this way.  Jesus could merely have appeared to the Apostles, this second time, as before, without making this offer to Thomas, or he could have rebuked Thomas for his lack of faith without showing his wounds to him.  Jesus appearing to Thomas as he did shows how much Jesus treasured him and the faith he had previously possessed.  It provided incentive and fortitude for Thomas throughout the long missionary journeys he would undertake on the Lord’s behalf in the future.  But it also gives testimony to us of the reality of the Lord’s Resurrection, Body and Soul.  He is a God who can be touched, and a God who will go to great extremes in his humility to prove himself worthy of our belief.

 The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 2, 2023

Matthew 10, 37–42

Jesus said to his Apostles: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple — amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”  To clarify this verse a little we can consider an alternative translation from the Greek: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me does not deserve me.”  That is, does not deserve his friendship.  God does not owe us his friendship.  He offers it to us out of his love for us.  Friendship with him does not benefit him but benefits us immensely in every way.  The Lord’s saying that “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” does not go against the generosity of his offer, but enables a person to grow in his capacity to receive the Lord’s friendship.  We must desire his friendship with all our hearts in order to ready ourselves for it.  Loving him more than father or mother or children or one’s spouse does not mean we stop loving these others.  In fact, by placing him first in our lives we love other better.  We love them for their own sake and not for our sake.  We also love them for the Lord’s sake, for he loves them too.  And by loving him more than anyone else in our lives we simply reciprocate, to a small degree, his love for us, for in giving himself up to a brutal Death for our sake, he showed that he loves us more than himself.  And we are not innocent lambs that he should die for us.  St. Paul reminds us: “For why did Christ, when as yet we were weak . . . die for the ungodly?  For hardly for a just man will one die: yet perhaps for a good man some one would dare to die. But God commends his charity towards us when as yet we were sinners” (Romans 5, 6-8).

“And whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”  This “cross” can rightly be understood in various ways.  Certainly, the Lord is speaking of a commitment to love and follow him unto death, just as the Lord himself did.  In speaking of loving him more than mother and father, he means the intensity of love for him.  In speaking of taking up one’s cross, he means the perseverance of this love.  We might say that the Lord is speaking of the “width” and “length” of love.  The “cross” also means anything that hinders us in our work in spreading the Gospel or in living a virtuous life.  It is not a suffering which we have caused ourselves through wicked actions: “For one is approved if, mindful of God, he endures pain while suffering unjustly.  For what credit is it, if when you do wrong and are beaten for it you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval” (1 Peter 2, 19-20).  In taking up his cross, one gives up one’s life — or, “loses” it: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  The lover of Jesus gives up his life in order to receive life with the Lord.  To “lose” one’s life means to hold the Lord above all people and things and to follow him wherever he leads, conforming our will to his.  This can be accomplished only with the help of grace, for which we must pray.  We can compare “leaving” this life for the Lord with the Hebrews leaving Egypt.  They left a land and life they knew, “when we sat over the fleshpots, and ate bread to the full” (Exodus 16, 3), for a land of which they knew only through the promises of Moses, a land supposedly flowing with milk and honey.  At times, on their journey there they regretted having left the familiar if hard life in Egypt, but they rejoiced when they arrived and they could see what they had given everything up for.

“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”  If, through grace, we are conformed to Christ and he gives us a share in his life, we become his ambassadors, his other selves, just as he represents the Father.  We then spread the Gospel through our works, words, prayers, and even by our presence.  Those who are attracted  by these are attracted to Christ.  They “receive” him.  In order for them to receive him they need us to go to them, even as we needed God to come down from heaven to save us.  In going to them, we show that we are committed to Jesus above all things, that we love him more than life itself, and we carry out his will no matter who or what tries to hinder us.