16th Week: July 22-27:
July 22 Monday: Saint Mary Magdalene:
The context: Today’s Gospel presents the great recognition scene in the New Testament when Mary Magdalene, at the tomb early in the morning, was not able to recognize the Risen Jesus until Jesus called her by name. Gradual recognition, or misunderstanding, as a stage on the path to belief and understanding occurs frequently in the narratives of John’s Gospel. [See, for example, the
conversations Jesus had with Nicodemus (ch. 3), and the Samaritan woman 4).] In today’s passage, we find it once again: Mary thought at first that Jesus was the gardener.
Mary Magdalene failed to recognize Jesus because of her false assumption that Jesus’ dead body had been taken away from the tomb. Her attention was concentrated on the now-empty tomb. Her tears of intense grief could also have blurred her vision. Once Mary heard Jesus call her by name, she recognized him, exclaiming “Rabboni!” Jesus told her, “… go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”Mary obeyed at once, her introduction to the apostles being, “I have seen the Lord,”with Jesus’ message following. This procedure and message became the basis and essence of the later preaching of the apostles and of all Christian witness-bearing. St. Thomas Aquinas said that one old lady (una vetera), might have more Faith than a host of learned theologians.
Life messages: 1) We need to be open in mind and heart to experience the presence of the Risen Lord in our lives through our prayer, our Sacramental life, and our meditative reading of the Bible. These all enable us to bear witness to Jesus, the Risen Lord. 2) Jesus, risen from the dead, is truly alive and present under the appearances of the consecrated Bread and Wine. 3) Jesus, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, is also present, in our souls, and so in our daily lives; it is the indwelling TriUne God Who gives us the strength to fight temptations and to serve our brothers and sisters in corporal and spiritual works of mercy with love. (Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 23 Tuesday: [Saint Bridget, Religious]:
The context: As Jesus became a strong critic of the Jewish religious authorities, family members brought Jesus’ Mother with them when they came to take Jesus to Nazareth by force. Perhaps they did so because they feared that he was “out of His mind,”would be arrested and put to death — and so would they! Jesus’ plain statement: Today’s Gospel episode seems to suggest that Jesus ignored the request of the family and Jesus’ Jesus’ Mother, who had traveled such a long distance. But everyone in the audience knew how Jesus had always loved and, working as a carpenter, had taken care of Mary. Besides, Jesus’ plain answer, “My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it,”was indeed a compliment to Mary who had always listened to the word of God and obeyed it. Jesus was declaring “Blessed are those who have heard and kept the word of God, as she is faithfully doing” (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, 58). Jesus was also using the occasion to teach the congregation a new lesson in their relationship with God. Being a disciple of Jesus, a Christian, means, first and foremost, being in a relationship of love and unity with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and with all who belong to God as His children. Jesus changes the order of relationships and shows us that true kinship is not just a matter of flesh and blood. God’s gracious gift to us is His adoption of us as His sons and daughters. This gift enables us to recognize all those who belong to Christ as our brothers and sisters. Our adoption as sons and daughters of God transforms all our relationships and requires a new order of loyalty to God and to His kingdom. Everyone who does the will of the Father, that is to say, who obeys Him, is an adopted brother or sister of Christ, and is like Jesus who fulfilled the will of His Father.
Life messages: 1) Let us be aware of our status and responsibility: By Baptism we become the children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus and members of the Heavenly family of the Triune God. Hence, we have the obligation to treat others with love and respect and to share our love with them by corporal and spiritual works of mercy. 2) Let us also be hearers as well as doers of the word of God as Mary was.
Fr. Tony (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 24 Wednesday; [Saint Sharbel Makhlūf, Priest]: The context: Today’s Gospel passage gives us the parable of the sower, the seeds sown, and the yield depending upon the type of soil. It is the first parable of Jesus in the New Testament about the Kingdom of Heaven. It is also a parable Jesus personally interprets for the Apostles. This parable was intended as a warning to the hearers to be attentive, and to the apostles to be hopeful receivers, living out Jesus’ teachings and ideas. The sower is God, while the Church (with the parents in their homes), is the teacher. The seed sown is the high-yielding word of God, which has a cutting edge like “a sharp sword” (Is 49:2), “two-edged sword” (Heb 4:12), and a purifying and strengthening power like “fire and hammer” (Jer 23:29).
Soil type and yield: The hardened soil on the footpath represents people with minds closed because of laziness, pride, prejudice, or fear. The soil on flat rock pieces represents emotional types of people who go after novelties without sticking to anything and who are unwilling to “put down roots” surrendering their wills to God. The soil filled with weeds represents people addicted to evil habits and evil tendencies and those whose hearts are filled with hatred, jealousy, and greed. They are interested only in acquiring money by any means and in enjoying life in any way possible. The good and fertile soil represents well-intentioned people with open minds and clean hearts, earnest in hearing the word and zealous in putting it into practice. Zacchaeus, the sinful woman, and the thief crucified on Jesus’ right side, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Francis Xavier, among others, fall into this category of the good soil.
Life message: Let us become the good soil and produce hundred-fold yields by earnestly hearing, faithfully assimilating and daily cultivating the word of God we have received, so that the Holy Spirit may produce His fruits in our lives. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 25 Thursday: Saint James, Apostle: The context: Today we celebrate the feast of James the Greater, Apostle. James was the son of Zebedee the fisherman and Salome, the sister/cousin of Jesus’ mother, and the brother of John, the Evangelist and Apostle. James was one of Jesus’ inner circle of three disciples who had the privilege of witnessing the Transfiguration, the raising to life of the daughter of Jairus, and Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. He is in the first three of every list of the apostles in the four Gospels. Jesus called James and John “boanerges,” or “sons of thunder,” probably because of their volatile character and high ambitions: they once offered to “call down fire from Heaven”— the power he had given them for their mission journeys — on the Samaritan village which had refused Jesus permission to cross through their village because he was going to Jerusalem. Jesus refused the offer. Later, James was known as James the Greater to distinguish him from James the Less (the son of Clopas), who was leader of the Church in Jerusalem and wrote the Epistle that bears his name. James the Greater was probably the first apostle martyred — by Herod in 44 AD, in that Tetrarch’s attempt to please the Jews (Acts 12:1-3).
The Gospel episode: The incident described in today’s Gospel shows us how ambitious, far-sighted, and power-hungry James and his brother John were in their youth with their impulsive and hot-tempered Galilean blood. They asked their mother to ask Jesus to make them the second and third in command when Jesus established his Messianic Kingdom after ousting the Romans. They must have been shocked when their request prompted Jesus to make a third prediction of his passion and death, promising them a share in his sufferings. Jesus told the apostles that it was only the spirit of service which would make his disciples “great,” because he himself had come “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” St. James the Greater is the patron saint of Spain.
Life messages: 1) The leaders in Jesus’ Church must be the servants of all as Mary was (“Behold the handmaid of the Lord“). That is why Pope is called “the servant of the servants of God” and the priesthood of our pastors is called “ministerial priesthood.” 2) Our vocation as Christians is to serve others sacrificially, with agápe love in all humility, without expecting anything in return, and our spiritual leaders must be humble, loving, selfless, and serviceable, just as Jesus was, for our Lord loved and served us all Fr. Tony (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 26 Friday: Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary: The context: Today’s Gospel passage gives us Jesus’ interpretation of the parable of the sower, seeds sown, and the yield depending upon the type of soil. This parable was intended as a warning to the hearers to be attentive, and to the apostles to be hopeful, about Jesus’ preaching in the face of growing opposition to his teachings and ideas. The sower is God Who sows His word through the Church, parents, friends, and teachers. The seed sown is the high-yielding word of God which is “a sharp sword” (Is 49:2), “two-edged sword” (Heb 4:12), and “fire and hammer” (Jer 23:29).
Soil-type and yield: The hardened soil on the footpath represents people with minds closed because of laziness, pride, prejudice, or fear. So, “the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart.” The soil on flat rock pieces represents emotional types of people who go after novelties without sticking to anything and are unwilling to surrender their wills to God. “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ez 11:19). Jesus interprets this to mean a man “who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.” The soil filled with weeds represents people addicted to evil habits and evil tendencies and those whose hearts are filled with hatred, jealousy, or the greed that makes them interested only in acquiring money by any means and in enjoying life in any way possible. Jesus tells us “…this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.” The good and fertile soil represents well-intentioned people with open minds and clean hearts, earnest in hearing the word and zealous in putting it into practice. For Jesus, “….this is he who hears the word and understands it; he indeed bears fruit, and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” Zacchaeus, the sinful woman, the thief on Jesus’ right side, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Francis Xavier, among others, fall into this category of the good soil.
Life message: Let us become the good soil and produce hundred-fold yields by earnestly hearing, faithfully assimilating and daily cultivating the word of God we have received, so that the Holy Spirit may produce His fruits in our lives.
Fr. Tony (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 27 Saturday: The context: Today’s readings give us the warning that we should not be in a hurry to eliminate the “weeds” or so called “bad people” from the parish or society or the family on the basis of unwarranted or hasty judgment, because our compassionate God patiently waits for them to be converted into good people. The parable of the wheat and the weeds: The weeds among the wheat in the parable are a variety of tares known as “bearded darnel.” They resemble wheat plants so closely that it is impossible to distinguish the one from the other except when the heads of fruits appear. By that time, their roots are so intertwined that the tares cannot be weeded out without plucking the wheat out with them. At the end of the harvest, tares and wheat must be separated by hand, through examining the color difference between darnel and wheat grains. The darnel grains must be removed, not only because they are not wheat, but because they are slightly poisonous.
Why we should be tolerant and patient instead of treating “weeds” as lost cases: The parable tells us why we should not treat others as “weeds,” i.e. evil or wicked. 1) Each one of us is a combination of wheat and weeds; as the saying goes, “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us”.[James Truslow Adams from website: www.brainyquotes. com] Since it is impossible for us to judge people as evil or good, we must learn to be kind to them relying on the power of God to convert them. 2) Many people who do evil are converted at a certain time in their lives because of the grace of God. Our God awaits repentant sinners, giving them the strength to acknowledge their weakness and come to Him for Mercy. 3) Since the good example and the fervent, ongoing prayers and penances of practicing Christians can influence and occasion the conversion of people who do evil, it is the duty and the joy of all Christians to live exemplary lives and to treat them with love, compassion, and the spirit of forgiveness. Hence, let us grow up as healthy wheat in God’s field, leaving the weeds for Jesus to take care of. 4) There will be a separation of weeds and wheat, good and bad fish (13:47-50), sheep and goats (Matthew 25:31-46). But this separation will take place at the end of the world, on God’s timetable not ours. Hence, let us leave the judgment to God. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
