Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Genesis 28:10-22  +  Matthew 9:18-26
July 5, 2021

   “Courage, daughter!  Your faith has saved you.”   

In today’s Gospel passage are two people who see how God wants to be in their lives in time of need.  So many people turn to Christ in need.  When we are honest with ourselves, we know that we would like to ask Christ’s help for so many things in our lives.  It’s true that petitionary prayer—in which we ask for something from God—is not as selfless a form of prayer as adoration.  But God wants us to present our petitions to Him.

Consider the woman in the Gospel, who had suffered for so many years.  She interrupts Christ right in the middle of His trying to help someone else.  We should make that woman’s faith our own:  not simply her faith in Christ’s power, but also her faith in His patience and compassion.  There is no true need in our lives that we should not offer to God.

Is every petition answered as we wish, as are the petitions of this woman and the official?  Some Christians stop offering their petitions to God—or even stop believing in God—when He doesn’t provide the responses they want.  Growth in prayer includes the experience of accepting God’s “No”’s, and learning in them to trust more deeply His providential Will.

St. Thomas, Apostle
Ephesians 2:19-22  +  John 20:24-29

“… bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”

The First Reading for the Mass of St. Thomas’ feast actually focuses on him very little.  It’s not uncommon for the First Reading on the feast of an apostle to be either written by him or at least refer to him in passing.  However, today’s First Reading from St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians does not mention Thomas.  Its focus is the Church.

What is the Church, and what is her relation to Christ?  One might argue that today’s First Reading was chosen for this feast because it refers to the Church’s “foundation of the Apostles and prophets”.  But St. Paul links these apostles and prophets directly to Christ.  This foundation is related to Christ who is the Church’s “capstone”.

This capstone—Christ—is the Church’s source of unity.  The last sentence of today’s First Reading uses the word “together” twice.  It’s through Christ that the Church’s members are “held together” and grow “into a temple”.  In Him the Church’s members are “built together” as “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”  You yourself are a member of this great work of God!  Give thanks today for God’s gift of the Church, and for the spiritual growth that God offers you through this “dwelling place”.

Friday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Genesis 23:1-4,19;24:1-8,62-67  +  Matthew 9:9-13
July 2, 2021

“I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Today’s Gospel passage presents to us the vocation of Saint Matthew.  The word “vocation” literally means a “calling”.  A vocation is something “vocal”, which comes from the Voice of God (or perhaps better, the Word of God).  That might not seem earth-shattering news.  But what we sometimes forget is that a Christian vocation is not announced by Christ to a Christian at a single initial moment.

Rather, a Christian vocation is “declared” to the Christian in an on-going, unfolding manner.  Of course it’s true that in the beginning, a specific form of vocation is articulated (whether marriage or life as a vowed religious, for example).  But that is only the beginning of Christ’s announcement of one’s vocation.  That is only the beginning of Christ’s guidance.

Throughout the course of living out one’s Christian vocation, the Christian must expect, listen for, and heed God’s Word.  Each of these is a different skill in the skill-set required to grow in one’s vocation.