Friday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 18, 2026

Luke 8, 1-3

Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources.  

During the three years of his public life, the Lord Jesus primarily preached the repentance of sins and the coming of the kingdom of heaven “from one town and village to another” within an area of less than forty miles long by less than thirty miles wide.  Between one and two hundred towns of any size existed there in Galilee at that time, with many more villages and hamlets, some inhabited by as few as fifty people.  Possibly one hundred thousand people lived in the region.  It is moving to think of the Lord limiting himself to this tiny corner of the world, away from the big cities such as Rome and Alexandria, going to the little out-of-the-way places to hunt for his lost sheep, if only to find one of them in any given village.  He does this methodically and thoroughly, as is clear from his sending his seventy-two disciples in pairs to all the towns and villages he would visit, teaching the Apostles how they are to work when they receive the Holy Spirit.

We catch some of the day-to-day routine of the Lord’s work in the verses from today’s Gospel reading.  The writers of the Gospels tell us of the most significant encounters, words, and miracles, but much of the work the Lord did could be summed up just as St. Luke puts it: “Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.”  He would have preached the same message in the various places where he stopped, healed the people who came to him for healing, and then moved on to the next town.  Jesus and his Apostles and the women who assisted them would have spent a lot of time walking in the countryside, on roads when there were roads.  Jesus would have led the way with Peter, James, and John close by, then the other Apostles and maybe some followers who had gravitated to him, and then the women.  Luke gives us the names of a few of the women, and mentions that Jesus had healed them in some way: “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, [and] Susanna.”  He also tells us that there were “many others” who “provided for them out of their resources.”  The Greek word translated here as “resources” means, more specifically, their “goods”, “property”, and “possessions”.  We know from the other Gospels that the mother of the sons of Zebedee was one of these, as well as the mother of the Apostle James the Lesser.  Not all would have had the “resources” of the steward of Herod Antipas at their disposal, but each did or gave what she could.  Their quiet dedication would prove more resilient than that even of the Apostles, for some of them were on Cavalry with the Lord and his Mother, marked where the Body of the Lord was buried, and came early on Easter Sunday to provide the anointing which they could not do as the sun set on Good Friday evening.  According to the Gospels, to these humble servants Jesus appeared before he appeared to anyone else. 

The tenacity of the faith of these holy women gives the good example that whoever we are, we do the work of the Lord wherever he goes, offering what we can for him out of our talents, abilities, and wealth, through each day.

Personal Note: I’m still recovering. It goes very slowly. I’m starting to eat solid food again, a little. Please continue to pray for me.

Thursday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 17, 2026

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 16, 2026

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 Lord refers to a children’s game of the time in order to point out to the people around him that they were not truly seeking to learn from him, particularly concerning his identity, so much as they were trying to impose an identity on him and so control his words and deeds.  The Lord rebukes them for this, and in so doing tells them that they are acting childishly.

“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.

The Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Luke 2, 33-35

Jesus’ father and Mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the downfall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

The commemoration of the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary became a subject of meditation, prayer, and preaching during the Middle Ages as a consequence of the renewed devotion to the sufferings of the Lord, especially fostered by the Franciscans.  An example of this devotion to Mary is the hymn Stabat Mater, now often sung during the observance of the Stations of the Cross.  We first see this feast honoring her sorrows celebrated in the 1400’s in Germany, and it became a universal feast in the 1600’s.  By this time, popular devotion recognized seven particular sorrows: the prophecy of Simeon; the flight into Egypt; the loss of the Child Jesus in the temple; the meeting of Jesus and Mary on the Way of the Cross; the Crucifixion; the taking down of the Body of Jesus from the Cross; and the burial of Jesus.

What came to be known as the first of her sorrows is recounted in the Gospel reading for the feast.  Following the harrowing journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem (the Virgin, heavily pregnant, is often pictured as riding on a donkey on this occasion, but most likely that is not true), the giving birth in the stable, the visit of the Magi, and the Infant’s circumcision and naming, Joseph and Mary took their Baby the short distance to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to God, as per the law regarding the first-born male.  They would have stood in line with dozens of other couples with their new-borns, with nothing to distinguish them.  At the point when it is their turn in the temple, the elderly Simeon approached them and took the Child in his own arms to announce that “this Child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted.”  The Greek text may be more literally translated as, This One is appointed for a sign [to be] spoken against.  The literal translation helps us to see that Jesus was not merely “destined”, as though by disinterested fate, but was “appointed” by a Superior to a station or position.  The Child was in fact appointed as a “Sign”, against whom people would speak, presumably those whose “downfall” was signified by his Nativity.  The Evangelists all use the Greek word we translate as “sign” to mean an event or an appearance that provides confirmation of a claim, or as an indication of supernatural power.  For instance, in Luke 11:16: “And others tempting, asked of him a sign from heaven.”  The Pharisees press Jesus to give them some physical proof of his divinity somehow greater than that which he had already shown them.  Or, in Luke 21, 7, when Jesus speaks to his disciples about the end of time: “Master, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign when they shall begin to come to pass?”  Jesus then warns them of “signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars” (v. 25).  

All this, the Virgin Mary heard and pondered.  And then Simeon told her that she would play her own part in the Lord’s “contradiction”, his Passion: “And you yourself a sword will pierce”.  The Greek helps us out again: And a sword will pass through your soul.  Now, the word translated as “sword” can also mean a “piercing sorrow”.  This “passes through” the Virgin’s psyche, which can mean “soul”, or, literally, “breath”, which takes us back to Genesis 2, 7: “The Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath [psyche] of life, and man became a living soul.”  That is to say, A piercing, mortally wounding sorrow will pass through your very being.  Her sorrow will be utterly unlike any sorrow any person has ever felt.  But this agony will have a purpose: “So that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”  In the Greek, the “thoughts” may be either good or bad.  The intimate connection of which Simeon speaks between Jesus, appointed as a Sign, and her suffering points to the fact that Mary did not suffer only on account of Jesus, but also with Jesus — tied to her Son in a way no other ever could be, through the purity of her faith in him as the Son of God.  And Jesus knew exactly how much she herself sacrificed on account of him and with him as he gazed down at her from the Cross and committed her to St. John’s care.  The thoughts of many hearts are “revealed” through Christ’s Passion and her suffering within it: those of the Apostles, those of the Sanhedrin, those of Pilate, of Judas, and the hearts of those alive today, for the Passion of Jesus reveals the extent of God’s love for man, and the story of the human race since that time is the story of how mortal men and women accept or reject it.

By living holy, penitential lives, we too may stand by Mary at the Cross of Jesus, looking up into the eyes through which infinite love cascades out to us, and prepare ourselves for our own resurrection.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Monday, September 14, 2026

John 3, 13–17

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.

On October 28 in the year 312, the general Constantine fought his rivals for the imperial throne at the Battle of Milvan Bridge.  According to the Church Father Lactantius, before the battle, Constantine received a vision of the Cross of Christ, and he was told that, “In this sign, you shall conquer.”  Subsequently, Constantine had the Cross marked on the shields of his soldiers.  After fierce fighting, the opposing general drowned in the Tiber River as he tried to escape, and Constantine emerged as the victor.  One of his first actions as emperor was to make Christianity a legal religion within the empire.  Later, his mother, St. Helena, went to Jerusalem and funded an excavation which resulted in the finding of Golgotha and three crosses, one of which was thought to be the Cross of Jesus Christ.  Another Father, writing around the year 400 tells us that these three crosses were touched to a woman who was deathly ill, and at the touch of the last, she fully and instantly recovered.  This was deemed proof for the true Cross.  A feast was later celebrated in honor of the Holy Cross on September 14, the date on which it was brought into the new basilica Constantine had built for it.  

Interesting legends surround the origin of the wood for the Cross.  One, from the Middle Ages, tells that it came from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from which Adam and Eve ate, committing the Original Sin.  The idea that the Lord was crucified on the hill in which Adam had been buried is perhaps connected with this.  Another, from the same time, has it that the wood came from the bridge over which the Queen of Sheba walked to meet King Solomon.

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.

The 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 13, 2026

Matthew 18, 21–19, 1

Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.” When Jesus finished these words, he left Galilee and went to the district of Judea across the Jordan.

In yesterday’s reading, the Lord Jesus explained to his Apostles what they are to do when one believer sins against another.  The Lord details a process by which the offender might reflect and then ask forgiveness.  St. Peter follows this with a question: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?”  Peter asks a good question.  His concern is that someone may take advantage of another believer’s willingness to forgive by continuously wronging him, as in stealing from him.  Jesus seldom gives yes or no answers to the questions posed him and he does not do so here.  He answers with a parable.  He wants the Apostles to understand forgiveness, which has its source in the forgiveness God offers.

The king in the parable is settling accounts with his servants, ministers of his court.  He finds that one servant owes him “a huge amount”.  St. Matthew actually records the amount Jesus gave, but the translator chose not to give this, which is unfortunate.  According to the Greek text, the servant owed “10,000 talents”.  Now, a talent was a weight of silver — approximately 125 pounds.  Checking the newspapers today we can see that silver trades for about $28 an ounce.  If we calculate from this the sum owed by the servant, we arrive at the stupendous figure of $560,000,000.  That is, over half a billion dollars.  We can imagine Peter’s jaw dropping upon hearing this.  Jesus includes a bizarre element  in his parables, and this is one.  It is, in fact a ludicrous amount of money because even if a king could have possessed it at that time, he would hardly have loaned it to a servant.  And if he had, what could the servant have possibly bought with it?  He would hardly have remained a servant.  But Jesus is making a point here.  A king had loaned an impossible amount of money to a servant and now he wanted it back, with interest.  The servant cannot repay it.  Has he wasted the money?  He seems to have lost it all, at any rate.  In such a case, the king quite lawfully ordered “him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt.”  

“The servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ ”  In a panic, the servant cried out for mercy.  We do not feel sympathetic towards the servant because of his foolishness, although we do for his innocent wife and children.  And we would not expect the king to have compassion on him, but the king does.  Jesus here features a second bizarre element: by forgiving this foolish servant his debt, the king seems to show himself foolish — he has just written off half a billion dollars.  Other servants, looking on, perhaps would have felt encouraged to seek large loans from this king as well.

This king, of course, is God, who is ever ready to forgive us our sins.  Our sins are enormous debts we incur — enormous because of their number and also because of the majesty of the One against whom we sin.  No acts we might undertake, no deeds we can do, can pay off this debt.  It only is forgiven if God forgives it.  If he does not forgive it, then in effect he hands the offender “to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt”, which is to say, never.  Now, the servant’s wife and children, that is, the sinner’s friends and associates, would not have joined him in prison in this event, but would have remained free to raise money for him.  In this case, however, their efforts would have been fruitless.  This is why prayers do not avail for the damned: those in hell did not approach the king for forgiveness while there was still time.  

Let us note what the servant does so that the king forgives his debt: he pleads earnestly for mercy, and he promises to make up for it.  Now, all is dependent on the merciful disposition of the king, but if we know that we have a merciful king, then we can hope for forgiveness if we apply to his mercy: we beg forgiveness from our heart, and we promise to make up for the harm we have caused as best as we can.  Implicit in this promise is one to never offend again in any way.

The Lord shows through this parable that if God graciously extends his mercy to us even though we can never pay him what we owe, that is, we cannot “make up” for our sins on our own, how gladly we ought to forgive one another.  The relief we should experience in the forgiveness of our sins by Almighty God should be so great that we hardly notice the sins others commit against us.

“Unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”  The Lord does not tell us to insist on an apology as a condition for our offering forgiveness, and in this way he tells us that the forgiveness does not necessarily affect the sinner, but always the one who is sinned against.  To forgive is to renounce revenge against one who has caused harm, and frees the one who forgives from the slavery to which vengeance always leads.  Significantly, Matthew points out that just after Jesus teaches this lesson, he embarks for Judea in order to die there for the forgiveness of our sins, and where he will give the greatest example of forgiveness: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23, 24), which he prayed as men crucified him.

If we meditate deeply on the forgiveness tendered by the Son, we will more readily forgive as well, and conform ourselves to him more and more.

Personal Note: I am scheduled for Mass tomorrow. I think I am doing a little better. My appetite is starting to revive.

Saturday in the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, September 12, 2026 

The Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary

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 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. “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.”  The Lord Jesus often taught by laying a foundation of everyday experience and proceeding to draw unexpected — sometimes shocking — observations from it.  The observation Jesus draws from the everyday experience of good and rotten fruit may seem straightforward to us, but probably caused some head scratching among his hearers, and may do so among us if we look carefully at what he says.  He begins by speaking of a “good tree”.  The Greek adjective can also mean “beautiful” and “worthy”.  There is a moral sense here, as in “a good husband”.  Normally when we think of a good object, as distinct from a good person, we only think of it as being useful or well constructed.  Assigning a moral tint to the tree implies an intention on its part.  Jesus does this because he means for the tree to stand for a person.  Now, if a good tree is one which has a good intention and is also “useful”, it will be able to produce good fruit.  The fruit may go bad on a tree if it is not picked while it is ripe, or because of insects, but when the tree produced it, it was “good fruit”.  Conversely, a tree which is not healthy or has a bad intention, as it were, does not produce good fruit, but “bad”, that is, “ugly”, “useless”, and “corrupt”.  It does this even when the weather has been good and the soil rich.  Jesus observes from this that, “Every tree is known by its own fruit.”  That is, a tree cannot be judged as “good” or “bad”, or, “healthy” or “unhealthy”, or even as “beautiful” or “ugly” until it shows its fruit, even if it looks healthy or good otherwise.  Besides this, the type of tree or plant it is may not be known until it puts forth its fruit.  A grapevine in mid-Winter looks like a dead bunch of weeds.  It becomes clear that it is a healthy grapevine when spring arrives and it becomes almost a different plant.  The Lord offers that, “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.”  Two women may look very much alike: they may look polished, capable, intelligent, and virtuous.  Their actions, however, reveal whether or not this is true.  As with the trees, a good person does not consistently produce wicked works, nor does the wicked person consistently produce good works.  The works tell the health or virtue of the person: “From the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”  This helps us to consider other people, but it especially helps us to consider the Lord.  All his works were performed to help other people — his Passion and Death most of all.  By meditating on the words and deeds of the Lord we learn of the goodness of his heart, and its beauty.

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command?”  This seems like a separate saying, but we can also understand it as the conclusion to the Lord’s remarks on the goodness or wickedness of the heart.  Not only is he truly “the Lord”, but he is a good Lord who has traversed the land of the Jews and performed countless miracles of healing, feeding, and exorcism.  His commands need not be feared.  Since he is a good Lord, carrying out his commands ought to be done simply to please him.

“I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them.”  These last couple of verses from the Gospel reading for today’s Mass echo the verses with which the Lord concludes his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7, 24-27).  It should not surprise us that the Lord used similar words in his preaching on different occasions.  He gives three steps in discipleship: a person comes to him, listens to him, and obeys him.  First, a person gets up and goes to Jesus.  Save for a few notable exceptions, the sick who sought cures either came to him or were brought to him.  Jesus most often taught outside the cities, so those who wanted to hear him had to go to him.  Coming to Jesus, then, involves an act of the will — a choice.  In coming to Jesus, a person gives up the activity in which he was engaged or changes his plans for the day, and opens himself to the Lord’s message.  This person then listens to his words.  The Greek word for “to listen” also means “to pay attention”, “to understand”, and “to obey”.  This listening is active and discerning.  It is learning what should be carried out.  It is not listening for entertainment or to obtain material for criticism.  The words of the Lord are not background music that one only hears snatches of when that person is not otherwise busy.  Listening is a preparation for full commitment.  Then comes the obedience.  The one who comes to the Lord and listens to him, “acts on his words” in obedience.  This shows a commitment to the Lord as well as trust, in that acting on his words will bring personal benefit to the one who does this.  

The people who heard the Lord say these words must have been thunderstruck by them.  He did not say, as the Pharisees, that these words must be followed because they were of the Law given to Moses by God; he is saying that his words must be obeyed because they come from him, Jesus of Nazareth.  And he further astounded the crowd in comparing the one who obeyed his words to a man who built his house on a stone foundation.  This brings to mind the comment of the Evangelist on a similar occasion that the crowds were amazed “because he spoke as one having authority” (Matthew 7, 29).  The crowds wondered, “Who is this?” in the same way that even the Apostles did.  We should wonder this too, and commit to our response for the answer we arrive at. And we pray on the Memorial of her Most Holy Name that the Virgin Mary our Mother may intercede for the graces we need to persevere in our love for Jesus Christ.

Personal Note: I think I’m a little better but the fatigue is still oppressive and limiting. Please continue to pray for me.