June 22 Monday: St. Paulinus of Nola, Bishop St, John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr; St. Thomas Moore, Chancellor & Martyr Mt 7:1-5:
The context: In today’s passage, taken from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus condemns our careless, malicious, and rash judgments about others’ feelings, motives, behaviour or actions.
Reasons why we should not judge others: 1) No one, except God, is good enough, and only He has the right and authority, to judge us, because only He sees the whole truth, and only He can read the human heart. 2) We do not see all the facts or circumstances, nor the power of the temptation, behind a person’s evil deed. 3) We have no right to judge others because we have the same faults as the ones we are judging and often to a higher degree (remember Jesus’ funny example of a man with a wooden beam in his eye trying to remove the dust particle from another’s eye?) St. Philip Neri commented, watching the misbehavior of a drunkard: “There goes Philip but for the grace of God.” 4) We are often prejudiced in our judgment of others, and total fairness cannot be expected from us.
Life message: 1) Let us leave the judgment to God and refrain from being critical and judgmental. Let us remember the advice of saints: “When you point one finger of accusation at another, three of your fingers point at you.” Let us also heed the Jewish rabbi’s reminder, “He who judges others favourably will be judged favourably by God.” (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
June 23 Tuesday: Mt 7:6, 12-14),
The context: Today’s Gospel passage, taken from the Sermon on the Mount, speaks about the proper use of holy things, the Golden Rule we have to obey, and the less-traveled narrow way we have to take in our Christian lives.
1) Jesus advises his listeners to use holy things in a holy manner. The Jews had a statement in their Scriptures (“Do not put a golden ring in the nose of a pig or on the ears of a dog” Prv 11:22), parallel to Jesus’ statement, “Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine” (Mt 7:12) The Jews understood the injunction to mean the exclusiveness of their religion, which meant that they should not teach the Law to the Gentiles. The early Church interpreted Jesus’ statement in its earliest catechism,the Didache, to mean that only the baptized should approach the Eucharistic table. This view is reflected in the canons of the Oriental Churches, introducing a command in the text of the Mass before Eucharistic prayer, “Let the catechumens, hearers, and unbelievers quit,” and a serious warning before Holy Communion, “Holy things are for holy people.” 2) The statement of the Golden Rule, “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them” (Mt 7:12), is Jesus’ positive contribution to ancient and negative Jewish principles, meaning that real Christianity consists in doing good to others by loving service and works of mercy. 3) Enter by the narrow gate:Supplementing the instructions given by Moses (Dt 30:15-20), Joshua (Jos 24:15), and Jeremiah (21:8), Jesus challenges his followers to “enter by the narrow gate and take the hard way that leads to life.”
Life message: 1) Let us learn to reverence and respect holy things in a holy manner. 2) Let us do to others what we wish them to do to us. 3) Let us choose Jesus’ narrow way of sacrificial love and humble service. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
June 24 Wednesday: Nativity of St. John the Baptist: Luke 1:57-66:
The context: Today’s Gospel describes the birth and naming of St. John the Baptist, the last Old Testament prophet. He was given the mission of heralding the promised Messiah and of preparing the Chosen People to welcome that Messiah by preaching to them repentance and the renewal of life. John was born to the priest, Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth in their old age. Today’s Gospel passage describes John’s birth, Circumcision, and Naming ceremony.
A miraculous birth and an event of double joy: His elderly parents rejoiced in John’s birth, as he was a gift from God in their old age. Since the child was a boy, all their neighbors rejoiced with them, and the village musicians celebrated the birth by playing their joyful music. The Naming followed the baby’s Circumcision, and Elizabeth insisted that the child should be named John (which means “the Lord is gracious”), the name given him by the Archangel Gabriel when he spoke to Zechariah. Appealed to by the gathered people, the mute Zechariah approved that name by writing, “His name is John.” At that action of obedient surrender to the Lord God, the priest’s speech was restored, and he loudly proclaimed the praises of God for blessing him with a son and Israel with her Deliverer, Whose herald his son would be.
Life messages: 1) We need to pray for our parents and be thankful to them for the gift of life, the training, and the discipline they have given us, and the love and affection they have lavished on us. Let us ask God’s pardon if we are, or were, ungrateful to them, do/did not take proper care of them in their illness or old age or ever inflicted pain on them. 2) We need to remember and pray for our godparents who sponsored us in Baptism, which made us children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, heirs of Heaven, and members of Jesus’ Mystical Body, the Church.
3) We should have the courage of our Christian convictions as John the Baptist did, and we should become heralds of Christ as the Baptist was, by our transparent Christian lives.
(Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
June 25 Thursday: Matthew 7:21-29:
The context: Today’s Gospel is the concluding part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus gives us two warnings: 1) that we must match our profession of Faith with actual obedience to the will of God, and 2) that we must build our life on the firm foundation of his teachings. Jesus warns us against hypocrisy and challenges us to make a radical commitment to his word by putting it into action.
Criterion for entrance to Heaven: In the first part of the Gospel for today, Jesus asserts that fidelity, both in Faith and in its practice, is what gives one admission into the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is speaking about the future leaders in his Church who will prophesy, cast out demons, and accomplish deeds of power in the cause of Christ without stopping to reflect on how well they are obeying Jesus and living according to his ideals. Fine words and self-praise, can never be a substitute for fine deeds. We may deceive men with our words, but we cannot deceive God who reads our hearts. That is why the Apostle James advises us in his epistle, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves (James 1: 22).
The obedient wise man and the non-obedient fool: Jesus contrasts a wise man who practices what he believes with a fool who does not practice his religious beliefs, using the images of one man who built his house on firm rock and another who built his house on loose sand in summer, right in the rainy season flood-plain of a river.
Life messages: 1) We need to build our family on a strong foundation: There can be no great marriage and no great family without a solid foundation, and that foundation begins with the husband and wife doing and being the love of Christ for each other and for their children. The members of the family must love one another the way Jesus wants us to love, to forgive each other as he teaches, and to become servants of one another the way Jesus was to everyone.
2) We need to synchronize our living with our profession of Faith: The test of our Sunday worship is the effect it has on us during the rest of the week in our homes and workplaces, and the way it influences our relationships with friends and neighbors. The great test is the care, consideration, and sensitivity we show to our neighbors, many of whom would otherwise lack affection, words of encouragement, and forgiveness. Fr. Tony (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
June 26 Friday: Mt 8:1-4:
The context: Today’s Gospel describes Jesus healing a leper as soon as he had finished his Sermon on the Mount and come down the mountain. In those days, all skin diseases were considered leprosy, and leprosy was known to be highly contagious. Hence “lepers” were separated from their families and considered socially and ritually unclean. In addition, they were treated as sinners who had been punished by God with a contagious disease. The punishment given to Miriam, the complaining sister of Moses (Nm 12:9-10), to Gehazi the greedy servant of the prophet Elisha (II Kgs 5: 27) and to the proud king Uzziah (Chr 26:19) supported this Jewish belief. As a general rule, when a Jewish leper was healed (from any of the skin diseases considered as leprosy), he had to go to the local priest to have him confirm that the healed one was now clean and was permitted to mix with the general public.
Jesus rewards the trusting Faith of a humble leper: It is such a leper who had the courage to approach Jesus in public with trusting Faith in Jesus’ power to heal him. In all humility he knelt down and said to Jesus, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” Jesus violated a social taboo by touching the leper as he healed him with a single command, “I will; be clean.”
Life message: 1) We all need healing from our spiritual leprosy. Although we may not suffer from physical leprosy, we all suffer from the “spiritual leprosy” of sins. It is sin that we carry with us that keeps us unclean. Jesus, our Savior, wants to heal us. Since Jesus is not afraid to touch our deepest impurities and knows all of them better than we do, let us not try to hide them, nor fear to confess them in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Just as the lepers cried out to Jesus for healing, let us also ask Jesus every night before we go to sleep to heal us from the spiritual leprosy of sin, and let us approach Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation whenever we are in a state of grave sin.
June 27 Saturday: St. Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop, Doctor of the Church: Mt 8:5-17
The context: Following the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus laid out the program for his Messianic Mission to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, he headed for Capernaum, healing a leper on the way. Entering the town, he was met by a Centurion who presented the problem of his dying servant in great pain. A man of Faith, this pagan asked for nothing, like Mary at Cana, being content with simply stating the case and leaving the rest to Jesus. Jesus responded at once, saying he would come and heal the servant. But the centurion displayed great humility, which underlined his Faith that Jesus was from God, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” It was the Centurion’s citation of the chain of command that governed his own life as the basis of his request, “Just say the word and my servant will be healed,”that so amazed Jesus, for this pagan had more genuine Faith in him than anybody he had yet met in Israel, the land which called the Lord God their God and worshipped Him in the Temple daily.
Following the dismissal of the Centurion with the assurance that what he believed would be done for him (at that very moment as it turned out), Jesus retreated to the house of Simon Peter, found Simon’s mother-in-law seriously ill with a fever that had put her in bed, and immediately, “touched her hand, and the fever left her.” Here we see that God in His mercy does not require a request to pour out His mercies on us; in other accounts, the apostles had brought Jesus to the woman, thus making silent intercession for her, and the healing followed. In both cases, in was the Faith of the people making intercession of the one in need that opened the door for Jesus to perform the healings. And that explains why, when we pray in Faith for others, even without their knowledge, God can, and sometimes does, respond with a miracle.
The next scene occurred after sundown, when, technically, the Sabbath was finished. All the people who had heard about Jesus brought all their sick and possessed from their homes to Simon Peter’s house and laid them on the ground, begging for healing for their dear ones. Jesus obliged, and, Matthew reports, “…he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick…” adding the telling proof of Jesus’ Messianic identity for those who may have missed the point, “…to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: ‘He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.’”
Life messages: 1) The Centurion serves as our model of power rightly managed, with respect and obedience, of Faith in God, of love for those who serve us, and of humble appreciation for the greatness of God and His love for, and willingness to help, those in need, even though they are not part of His Chosen People.
2) Jesus’ humble readiness to answer with compassion the needs of all who asked, even pagans, models for us what our interactions with everyone we encounter should look like and be, especially we are serving those most in need.
3) Let us approach the Lord with the Centurion’s humble, loving trust when we receive Holy Communion by really praying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”
