Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 11:28-30

“… my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

It’s a common mistake to confuse duty and virtue.  We easily take on daily duties, but sometimes we carry them out without faith that God can act through our simple efforts.  We can carry them out without hope that what God can accomplish through our efforts is much more than we can imagine, or for that matter, need to know.  To carry only the yoke of duty—without gracing our good works with the virtues—is to limit our efforts to the scope of our own understanding.

The difference between a yoke of duty that either chafes over the course of the years, or fits smoothly and firmly, is the virtues.  The virtues with which God graces the yoke of duty—both natural virtues such as fortitude, temperance, prudence, and justice, and the divine virtues of faith, hope, and love—are great strengths for our Christian life.

Our Lord Jesus asks that we reflect on the question of whom we serve in our lives.  Performing duties only for duties’ sake leads to great weariness.  To carry out our obligations in order that another might have life and might be drawn closer to God:  this is where we find rest, even in the midst of the workday.  The yoke of the Cross is the virtue of love, the greatest virtue, by which we recognize the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy that it is the Lord who has accomplished all we have done.

Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 11:25-27

“… no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

Today’s Gospel passage speaks to the power of divine revelation.  Jesus speaks directly to His Father, something rare in the four Gospel accounts.  Along with this exclamation, Jesus says, “no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

But that’s not the only reference to divine revelation.  In praising the Father, God the Son exclaims to Him that the reason for the Son’s praise is that “although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.”

God the Son rejoices because His Father has revealed hidden things to the “childlike”.  Here we have a complement to Jesus’ admonition that unless one becomes like a little child, he will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  This entrance must be connected to those hidden things that escape the vision of the wise and the learned.  The child has a capacity to see things as God wants them to be seen, and that includes the child who is God the Son, in all His divine humility.

Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 11:20-24

“‘Will you be exalted to heaven?  You will go down to the nether world.’”

“Teddy Bear Jesus” remains one of the more persistent myths within lands that are culturally Catholic (as distinguished from those that are Catholic by personal conviction, sweat, and blood).  This mythic figure became flesh and dwelt among us to tell us how wonderful we are, and that we just need to have more self-esteem.  As popular as this myth is within so much of the modern Western world, it has no basis in the New Testament.  Today’s Gospel passage offers a helpful antidote.

In your hand missal, the two sentences that Jesus addresses to Capernaum may be printed in italics, drawing attention to the fact that they are a quotation from the Old Testament.  Specifically, Jesus here is quoting a very “un-teddy-bear-like” passage from the fourteenth chapter of the Prophet Isaiah.

What has prompted Jesus in today’s Gospel passage to thunder tides of woe against the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum?  Here is the more specific point for our reflection today:  failure to repent.

Jesus has been preaching repentance because it’s a prerequisite for accepting the good news of the Gospel.  No Christian should think that he doesn’t need to repent because he’s already been baptized, accepted the Gospel, and been saved.  The gift of salvation first given in the Sacrament of Baptism certainly can be lost.  But most importantly, we should remember that the motive for Jesus’ reproaches is the same as the motive for His carrying the Cross:  love for each of us.

Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:34—11:1

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

There is a big difference between a bribe and a gift.  A bribe is something we give to another while demanding something in return.  A gift is an expression of love with no strings attached.  A gift-giver expects nothing in return, but merely gives the gift as a sign of love that already exists between the two.

Jesus gave His life on the Cross for fallen man.  He gave His life as a gift.  In turn, He calls His disciples to give a similar gift:  “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus is warning us that no one else should stand between ourselves and God.  Our gift of self must be complete.  This seems very self-evident, but can in fact demand a lot of us as Catholics.  Not even members of our family may be chosen above God.

This is a hard saying.  It would seem that Jesus expects us to pit ourselves against our family in order to choose Him.  But Jesus didn’t come to earth wanting to divide people, any more than He wanted to die on the cross for the sake of dying.  He knew, though, that there are some who refuse to choose God in their lives, and that these people can only find peace in their own hearts when they come to God.  Rather than look at Jesus’ words as pitting us against others, we realize that Jesus is telling us that if we want to draw others closer to God, we first of all have to firmly establish our own relationship with God.  Out of that relationship with God, we can work at drawing others closer to God again.

Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:24-33

“[N]ot one [sparrow] falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.”

Jesus preaches today about Our Father’s providential knowledge and will.  “[N]ot one [sparrow] falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.”  God knows all things.  We know this abstractly, but perhaps we fail to consider all that this truth of our Faith means.

When we say that God knows all “things”, what sorts of things are we talking about?  Facts that would win God a championship on trivia shows?  Certainly God knows all objective facts about science, history, etc.  But God’s knowledge is not trivial.

God’s infinite knowledge extends to what is most personal.  God knows every action you have ever done or failed to do.  God also knows every thought you’ve ever had, and every word you’ve ever said.  He knows the hopes and desires of every human heart.  He knows of every emotion you’ve ever felt, and of the circumstances that led to those emotions.

But in human earthly providence, knowledge leads to the will.  God’s knowledge of you, as complete as it is—more complete, in fact, than even your own self-knowledge!—leads God only to love you more.  At times, we hide ourselves from God, not understanding the depth of His providential knowledge and will.  When we submit ourselves completely to God, we are more flexible in serving as an instrument of His peace.

Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:16-23

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Today’s psalm especially draws out the spiritual themes of today’s Mass.  Psalm 51 is unique among the 150 psalms:  every Friday, it is the first psalm the Church prays at Morning Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours.

The psalm’s importance is understood better when we realize that the very first words the Church utters each morning in the Liturgy of the Hours come from this psalm:  “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.”  These words, the last sentence of today’s responsorial psalm, draw out a verse from today’s First Reading.  All week long we have heard the prophet Hosea bringing the wayward Israelites back to their covenant with the Lord God.  Today Hosea encourages them to make his words their own:  “We shall say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands; for in you the orphan finds compassion.”

The temptation to make idols out of the work of our hands is always before us.  Yet the Church calls us to humility.  When we pray the Liturgy of the Hours, our first prayer each day comes from God even before it comes from our lips:  “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare thy praise.”  Everything comes from the Lord, and everything is meant to return to the Lord.

Jesus Himself, only Son of the Father, is the embodiment of the wisdom expressed by the Psalmist and Hosea.  He is the embodiment of self-sacrifice.  His is the life that every disciple asks the Father for the grace to enter into.  Even in the midst of the wolves and snakes of the world, when we lay our sins at the foot of the Cross, Christ can act within us.

The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Deuteronomy 30:10-14  +  Colossians 1:15-20  +  Luke 10:25-37

“And who is my neighbor?”

In the year A.D. 529, Saint Benedict laid the foundation for one of the great monasteries in the history of the Church.  Monte Cassino, southeast of Rome, is both very accessible and very easy to spot as you journey towards it.  It sits on the crest of a small mountain, surrounded on three sides by valleys.

One of Father Benedict’s most famous rules for his monks is that “in the person of the stranger, Christ is served”.  Every person who knocks on the doors of a monastery is to be treated as if it were Jesus himself knocking on the door.  Every year on July 11th, the Church celebrates one of the feast days of Saint Benedict, the father of monastic life in the West.  St. Benedict exemplified in his life the invitation that Christ is making to the lawyer in today’s Gospel passage.  Christ makes this same invitation to you and me.

Members of the Benedictine religious order, like all members of religious orders, live lives that are marked by poverty, chastity, and obedience to their superior (that is, the Abbot of their community).  The Benedictines, however, take a vow which distinguishes them:  the vow of stability.  This vow makes Benedictine life different than the lives of religious such as Dominicans and Franciscans, who by the design of their founders were meant to be mendicants, begging for their daily bread as they travelled to and fro through Christian lands, and sometimes beyond.

Benedictines are “tied” both to each other and to the stranger who finds them.  Throughout the Middle Ages, Benedictine abbeys were beacons amidst the confusion and chaos caused by rulers and noblemen fighting each other and pagan tribes invading Christian lands in Europe and northern Africa.  These abbeys were not only centers of learning, but also served the poor of the area, including those who were travelling.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is about the same themes that Benedictine life illustrates:  being tied, being bound, and being wedded to others, no matter who that “other” may be.

As we reflect upon the Gospel Reading, we might imagine what was in this lawyer’s mind as he asked Jesus what he must “do to inherit eternal life”.  Likewise, it’s easy to guess what sort of answer he was hoping to hear when he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  Most likely he wanted Jesus to say something like:  “Anyone within a one-mile radius is your neighbor.”  In that case, the lawyer would have moved into a deserted area where he could buy four square miles, so that he could plant his house in the middle and have no one any closer than a mile to him.  In other words, the passage implies that the lawyer asked his question in order to isolate himself from others.  But Jesus’ parable only forces him—and us—into even closer contact with others.  Jesus does this by telling His parable about the Good Samaritan.

To us today, the phrase “good Samaritan” is a common part of Western culture.  A “good Samaritan” is someone who helps another in need.  This phrase, however, didn’t have that sort of meaning within the culture in which Jesus and the lawyer lived.  To them, the phrase “good Samaritan” was an oxymoron, like talking about a “square circle” or a “good devil”.  The idea of a “good Samaritan” was inconceivable to Jewish people of Jesus’ day, because the Samaritans lived at a distance from anyone like Jesus who worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem.  The idea that a Samaritan would help someone going down to Jerusalem was beyond belief.

So the brief moral of this parable is that the person who’s looking to limit his love doesn’t know what love is really about.  How, then, would you put the parable’s moral into practice?  While you may rarely have a stranger knocking on your door as a wanderer knocked on the door of a medieval abbey, you can expand your definition of “neighbor” by praying for someone you are not inclined to pray for.

God loves everyone, even if you and I do not always love everyone.  We need to realize, then:  if God loves someone, we should also, since we’re supposed to live in the Image and likeness of God.  If there’s someone whom we do not love, that says that we’re not living our lives in the same way that God does.

Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:7-15

“Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words—go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet.”

The Scriptures and Tradition of the Church use many images to describe God.  The reason for this wealth of images, of course, is the fact that God is infinite:  no one image does justice to the depth and richness of God who is love.  Likewise, there are many images used to describe the peoples whom, throughout salvation history, God has desired to draw to Himself.  The tribes of Israel and the Mystical Body of Christ are described by varied metaphors.

However, we also have to confess that it takes many images to describe God’s People for a another, very different reason.  There are so many ways in which God’s People sin, and fail to live up to the relationship to which He constantly calls us.  It takes many different images and metaphors to describe the infidelity of the People of God.  So it is in Hosea, as the prophet describes Israel with the image of a spouse, as well as the image of a child, capturing the ingratitude of one who fails to give thanks for the sacrifices that the father has made.

One of the metaphors that Hosea uses speaks to us especially as followers of Jesus.  Offering the Lord’s prophecy to Israel, Hosea says, “Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.”  The “child”—in the singular—is the nation gathered together and nourished through the Law and the Prophets, yet the Lord recognizes that “they”—all of them—were unfaithful to Him.

Even more so did our Heavenly Father offer His own divine Son for the sake of His people, only to be met with rejection.  The sacrifice of Christ Jesus is both healing and nourishment for the People of God.  This is an important reason to prepare for Holy Mass with great devotion:  spending time in private prayer and devotion, considering how many joys and sorrows we have to offer to God, that we might be both strengthened and healed.

Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:1-7

“Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Today’s Gospel passage speaks about reaching out to those who are hurt and sick.  We hear Jesus sending his twelve apostles to go out and heal “every disease and every illness.”  More than just a prophet, Jesus has authority not only to call back the repentant to Himself, but also to heal them.

When Jesus sends the apostles, His instructions are for them to go to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel”.  In our own day, there are many fallen-away Catholics, and of course we pray for them.  But we can do more for them than just pray.  With the sort of love that Jesus held in His Sacred Heart when He looked at the crowds and said, “the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few”, we can reach out to those who have fallen away from the Church.

We can offer gentle instructions to those who don’t know how to start again to live the Faith:  to begin again to receive the sacraments, the gifts of grace which come to us through the apostles and their successors.  It’s the bishops’ responsibility—and the responsibility of those priests who work under their bishops—to bring lost sheep back into the fold through the sacraments.  But often, it will be ordinary Christians who point those lost sheep in the right direction.