Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Genesis 15:1-12,17-18  +  Matthew 7:15-20
June 23, 2021

   “By their fruits you will know them.”   

Twice in today’s Gospel passage Jesus uses this phrase:  “By their fruits you will know them.”  Jesus is speaking here about “bad fruit”, by which one can know false prophets.

In our own day, part of the scandal that members of the Church—laity and clergy alike—face is that considerable “bad fruit” has been borne by bishops and priests of the Church that Jesus founded.  How can one reconcile that such men who are validly ordained seem by their fruits to be false prophets?

Without taking away from any of the harsh reality that Jesus is describing in today’s Gospel passage, we’re mindful to read each passage in the context of the entire Gospel.  We’re mindful of Jesus’ Parable of the Barren Fig Tree [Luke 13:6-9], where the gardener (a symbol of our Savior) makes this plea:  “Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.”  These words give hope for reformation in the lives of those who have been truly called by God to service in His Church, but who have truly failed to bear fruit.  The Truth who is Christ can bring redemption to all, just as He will bring just judgment to all.

Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Genesis 13:2,5-18  +  Matthew 7:6,12-14 
June 22, 2021

“How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life.”

Coming to the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, today we hear Him offer several brief proverbs.  It would be difficult to thread them all with a common theme.  We could take any one of them and, brief as it is, commit it to memory and recite it throughout this day for reflection.

Of these proverbs, the second is best known.  The “Golden Rule” is taught to children early in life.  Of course it demands an ability to step back from a situation and reflect on it from outside.  This is difficult if someone is used to acting impulsively, without reflection.

Perhaps today, though, we could reflect on the Golden Rule in a different light.  Reflect on the Golden Rule as Jesus lived it; or rather, as He died by it.  Reflect on the Golden Rule in the light of the crucifix.  What Jesus did to you (or rather, for you) on the Cross is what Jesus would have you do for Him.  This is what He calls you to, in fact, as a member of His Church:  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” [Matthew 16:24].

St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious
Genesis 12:1-9  +  Matthew 7:1-5
June 21, 2021

“The measure with which you measure will be used to measure you.”

Pondering the mystery of Christ, we find that God calls us to imitate Christ in our moral lives along the same line that we accept Christ:  first, in humble faith; then, with a burning desire to extend God’s love to those beyond our immediate reach.  Thus in the Ten Commandments we are called to serve both God and neighbor.

The first three command us to love God completely, above all others; the last seven command us to serve our neighbor as we love God.  Yet growth in the spiritual life is measured by the extent that we see the first three as intertwined with the latter seven.  We are called to love our neighbor as we love God.  Better yet, we are called to love our neighbor as God loves us.

In today’s Gospel passage we hear Jesus commanding us to forgive our neighbor.  “The measure with which you measure will be used to measure you.”  We should be mindful that our sins, as infinite offenses against Almighty God, will not permit us finally to enter into His Presence unless we are shown infinite mercy by Almighty God.  So we ourselves must forgive others if we ourselves hope to live in God’s sight.

Saturday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time [I]
2 Corinthians 12:1-10  +  Matthew 6:24-34
June 19, 2021

“You cannot serve God and mammon.”

These famous words from Jesus mark a clear divide between Heaven and earth, and between the spiritual and the material.  But to consider these words of Jesus seriously, we need first to address an underlying assumption.

The culture that surrounds modern persons in the West presumes that each person is his or her own boss.  Modern Western culture teaches children from an early age that they are not meant to serve anyone or anything.  In fact, both God and mammon serve me and my needs!

However, while the modern person may believe such ideas, so strongly reinforced as they are by modern culture, Jesus is offering a caution.  In fact, most of today’s Gospel passage is about the dangers of believing that mammon can serve oneself.

What begins in one’s mind as the idea of mammon serving oneself eventually ends in the servitude of the self to mammon.  The slave that mammon is thought to be becomes the master of the self.  This is the crippling servitude that Jesus is diagnosing, so to speak, through the examples He offers in this passage.

That we might live authentically, Jesus invites us to enter into a relationship with God as our Lord and Master.  This relationship of serving God is radically different than that in which one ends up serving mammon.  In the relationship that Jesus invites us to, through serving God, we become His “friends” [see John 15:15] and His “beloved children” [Ephesians 5:1].

Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time [I]
2 Corinthians 11:18,21-30  +  Matthew 6:19-23
June 18, 2021

   “… where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”   

Today’s Gospel passage from the Sermon on the Mount seems to have two distinct sections.  Nevertheless, a connection suggests itself.  The first section concerns wealth of different types.  The second concerns the human eye and light.  So what does human vision have to do with human wealth?

In the first part of today’s Gospel passage we hear one of the more famous of Jesus’ sayings:  “where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”  The truth of this saying is so plain that it would surely be recognized by persons of all types of religious faith (or even by those with little or no faith).  It’s not strictly a religious saying, even though it’s spoken by the Son of God.  It’s a saying about human nature.  The medieval principle puts it somewhat differently:  “grace builds upon nature.”  God wishes for our sake that He be our treasure, but we are free to choose something merely human to serve as our treasure (or rather, as it turns out, for us to serve).

Whatever we choose as the treasure of our life, there will our heart gravitate.  There will we spend the energies of our heart, mind and soul.  But how does one go about choosing one’s treasure?  This is where the second half of today’s Gospel passage comes into play.

How does someone choose his treasure?  Is this process of choosing purely random and spontaneous?  Or does it come about by virtue of where we train the gaze of our soul?  Part of Christian realism is believing that knowledge comes through the human senses.  What we choose to look at has a profound influence on whether we choose something earthly as the treasure we will serve, or whether we choose God’s self-sacrifice of Jesus in the Eucharist as our treasure.  Spend at least five minutes today, then, looking at a crucifix and reflecting upon Jesus’ self-gift as given specifically for you.

The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Job 38:1,8-11   +   2 Corinthians 5:14-17   +   Mark 4:35-41
June 20, 2021

“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

In this Sunday’s Gospel Reading, it’s asked about Jesus, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”  Yet those who ask this are not strangers.  They were disciples:  people who were close to Jesus, and to whom Jesus had dedicated a lot of His time.  It’s because of Jesus’ dedication that their question seems strange.  Shouldn’t they know better?  Shouldn’t they have some idea that Jesus is more than just a teacher?

In this, these disciples are you and me.  In their ignorance of who Jesus really is, we can see a likeness of ourselves.  This is one of the sources of so much trouble, agitation and discord in our own lives.  The problem isn’t with Jesus.  The problem is with us.  These disciples ask, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Strike one, and strike two.  These disciples make two mistakes here.  Not only are they mistaken in thinking that Jesus is nothing more than a teacher.  In fact, that’s the lesser of their two mistakes.  The worse mistake is what they accuse Jesus of when they ask, “Don’t you care that we are perishing?”

Do you ever say something like this when you pray to God?  Do you ever say to Him, “Don’t You care?”  “Why aren’t You doing something?”  “Don’t You see what’s happening in my life?”

Of course, all of these questions really boil down to the same question:  “Don’t You love me, God?”

What naturally follows is our saying to God, “If You did love me, You never would have allowed things to get this bad in my life.”  Or in other words, we might pray:  “I can’t do anything about this mess, but You surely can.  Since You’re choosing not to help me, You must not love me.”

For the disciples in the boat as they are tossed and pitched about, the same dynamic is at work.  They need to answer these two questions:  “Who am I?” and “Who is God?”  Yet the first question has to be answered first before seeking an answer to the second.

The same dynamic is at work as you are pitched and tossed about in the storm that we call “life”.  In our prayers, we wonder and we ask whether God cares for us.  As we ask this question about God’s love, we in turn wonder who we are, and whether our own lives have meaning.  After all, if God does not love me, what hope—what future—does my life have?

There is only hope—there is only a future for us—if our lives are rooted in Christ.  The answer to the question of the storm-tossed disciples is given by Saint Paul in the Second Reading.  The answer to the questions of our daily lives is given to us by Saint Paul.

As he reflects, looking back in time many decades after Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension, Saint Paul could see what the storm-tossed disciples could not.  Saint Paul proclaims in the Second Reading:  “… even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.  So whoever is in Christ is a new creation:  the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”

The storm-tossed disciples saw only a Teacher.  They could not see a Savior.  They only knew Christ according to the flesh:  that is, with earthly eyes.  They did not see Christ with eyes of faith.

Nor did they look at their own lives with eyes of faith.  If they had, they would have seen more than just storm-tossed, weary, frightened people.  They would have seen themselves as people loved by God:  people loved by a God who protects His beloved from anything that can truly harm them.

In fact, there is a third strike made by the storm-tossed disciples when they cry out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  The third strike is thinking that they are perishing.

If the Lord is with you, you will not perish, for the Lord is life.  If you live your life in Christ, there is nothing you cannot endure.  Christ has not made us for this world.  He’s made us for a life that journeys through this world, drawing others into the peace of God’s presence even in the middle of storms.

Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time [I]
2 Corinthians 11:1-11  +  Matthew 6:7-15
June 17, 2021

   “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”   

Putting the Gospel passages from recent weekday Masses in context, we see the theme of God the Father emerge.  These passages come from the Sermon on the Mount.  Two days ago the Church proclaimed the last section of Matthew 5, the last phrase of which is Jesus’ command to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Yesterday’s Gospel passage concerned the performance of “righteous deeds”, for which God the “Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

In today’s Gospel passage this theme comes to a head with Jesus teaching His Church to pray the “Our Father”.  This is the only “recited prayer” (or as this type is sometimes called, “vocal prayer”) that Jesus gave to the Church.

Many saints have commented on the “Our Father” by pointing out that Jesus had no need to teach any other prayer, because this prayer contains all that one might need or want to say to the Father.  Of course, other prayers are commended to us by the Church because they expand upon the phrases of the “Our Father”.  We who are slow and weak to believe use other vocal prayers, but those that are authentic lead us to the embrace of God the Father.

Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time [I]
2 Corinthians 9:6-11  +  Matthew 6:1-6,16-18
June 16, 2021

   “And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”   

Today’s Gospel passage is—to the verse—the same passage that we hear every year on Ash Wednesday.  The Church proclaims it today, in the middle of a week in Ordinary Time, because the cycle of Gospel passages for weekday Mass tends to go sequentially through a Gospel account.  This is different than the cycle for Sunday Mass, in which the Gospel passage more often jumps throughout the course of the Gospel account.

We are currently hearing from St. Matthew’s Gospel account at weekday Mass.  A week ago Monday we began hearing from the fifth chapter of Matthew, where the evangelist begins recording the Sermon on the Mount.  Today we begin hearing from Chapter 6.  The Sermon on the Mount continues through the end of Chapter 7, which we will hear at weekday Mass through a week from tomorrow.

Because today’s Gospel passage contains a wealth of spiritual teaching, you might benefit from reflecting on just one third.  In each of these three sections Jesus teaches us the right way of carrying out spiritual works.  But notice that each third ends the same way, with Jesus noting that when the act is performed from the heart—that is, with divine charity—“your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you”.  These acts are ultimately about our relationship with God our Father.

Childers, Milly; Girl Praying in Church; Leeds Museums and Galleries; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/girl-praying-in-church-38914

Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time [I]
2 Corinthians 8:1-9  +  Matthew 5:43-48 
June 15, 2021

   “… pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father ….”   

Today’s Gospel passage is from the first third of the “Sermon on the Mount”.  This “inaugural address” is recorded in full only in Matthew, in Chapters 5-7.  Today’s Gospel passage forms part of a series in Chapter 5 of five contrasts between the commands of the Law and Jesus’ commands to love.  Each contrast uses a variation of the form, “You have heard it said… but I say to you.”

The contrast presented in today’s Gospel passage is the last of these five.  You could argue that Jesus saved the hardest for last!  How are we to love our enemies?  The simple answer is:  “As Jesus did on Calvary.”

We might begin by asking how our enemies got to be our enemies in the first place.  In our case, we ought to be mindful that we sinners often gain enemies because of our own sins.  So one way to shorten the list of our enemies is to sin less.

Jesus, of course, was sinless, but still had plenty of enemies.  In fact, Jesus had enemies for just the opposite reason that sinners do:  because of His unwillingness to compromise with evil.  To whatever extent we may, through God’s grace, bear holiness in our own lives, we too will win enemies for this reason also.  We must love all our enemies unto the Cross.