July 20 Monday: St. Apollinaris, Bishop, Martyr: Mt
12:38-42:
The Jews asked for a sign from Jesus because they were
guilty of one fundamental mistake. They desired to see God in the abnormal;
they forgot that we are never nearer God, and God never shows Himself to us so
much and so continually as in the ordinary things of every day. That is why
Jesus calls those demanding “a sign” from him, “an evil and
adulterous generation,” a description that, in modern times is not
literally true, for as breakers of God’s Covenant with them, we would call them
“apostates.” Jesus, however, was harkening back to the Old Testament
prophetic picture of the relationship between Israel and God as a marriage
bond, with God as the offering husband and Israel the grateful, freely
consenting bride. When, therefore, Israel, the “bride” was
unfaithful to her Spouse, and gave her love to other gods, the nation was said
to be adulterous and to go a-whoring after strange gods.
Jesus says that the only sign which will be given to this
nation is the sign of Jonah the prophet.. The point is that, to the Ninevites,
Jonah himself was God’s sign, and Jonah’s words were God’s message. Jesus is
saying, in effect, “You are asking for a sign — I AM God’s sign! You have
failed to recognize me. The Ninevites recognized God’s warning in Jonah; the
Queen of Sheba recognized God’s wisdom in Solomon. In me there has come to you
a greater wisdom than Solomon ever had, and a greater message than Jonah ever
brought — but you are so blind that you cannot see the truth and so deaf that
you cannot hear the warning. And for that very reason the day will come when
those people of old time who recognized God and joyfully obeyed Him when they
saw Him will be witnesses against you. For you had a much better opportunity to
recognize God than they did, yet they recognized God and obeyed Him at once,
where you fail to do either stubbornly refusing refuse to do either.” Jesus is
God’s sign and message, just as Jonah was God’s messenger and message to the
Ninevites, and Solomon was God’s wisdom to the Queen of Sheba.
Life message: Let us check our reaction when we
are confronted with God in Jesus Christ. Is that reaction bleak hostility, as
it was in the case of the Scribes and Pharisees? Or, is it humble acceptance of
God’s warning and God’s truth as it was in the case of the people of Nineveh,
and of the Queen of Sheba? The all-important question is: “What do I think of
the Christ?” and what wil do about it?” May God grant that we may accept him
forever as our Lord and Savior!
July 21 Tuesday: St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Bishop, Doctor
of the Church: 
Mt 12:46-50:
The context: When Jesus became a strong critic
of the Jewish religious authorities, family members brought Jesus’ Mother with
them to take charge of Jesus and bring him back to to Nazareth by force in
necessary. They assumed that he had to be “out of His mind,” would
be arrested and killed, and they would suffer with him. Jesus replied to the
message that his relatives and his mother were outside and wanted to see him,
by saying, simply, 48 …“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And
stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and
my brothers!” Though this response can seem to us to suggest that
Jesus ignored the request of the family and Jesus’ Jesus’ Mother, who had
traveled so far to see him, 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 whole group a new lesson in their relationship with God. Life
Message: 1) 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. This changes
the order of all our relationships, showing us that true kinship is not just a
matter of flesh and blood but of Spirit and Truth. God’s gracious gift to us is
His adoption of us as His sons and daughters through Baptism. This gift enables
us to recognize all those who belong to Christ as our brothers and sisters.
Everyone who does the will of the Father, that is to say, who obeys Him, is an
adopted child of the Father and, thus, “Family” to us. 4) We are blessed to be
called to join Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, who fulfilled the will of his
Father and “loved us to the end” (Jn 13:1), and to do the same
in our turn for all of us for whom God died.
[Brothers and sisters of
Jesus: The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus did not have blood brothers
and sisters. In the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, no special words
existed for cousin, nephew, half-brother, or stepbrother; so, they
used the word “brother” in all these cases. The Greek translation of the
Hebrew texts used the word adelphos in these cases.
In addition, other Gospel passages clarify these relationships between James,
Joses, Judas, and Simon. James the Less and Joses, as well
as Simon the Cananaean (or Simon the Zealot) and Judas
Thaddeus were the sons of Mary the wife of Clopas (Tradition
holds him to be brother of Joseph) (Mk 15:40, Jn 19:25), and James the
Less was also identified as “the son of Alphaeus“ (Lk 6:15), a
synonym of “Clopas.” James the Greater and John were the sons of Zebedee with a
mother other than our Blessed Mother Mary (Mt 20:20ff). After the birth of
our Lord, although the Gospels do not give us many details of His
childhood, no mention is made of Mary and Joseph ever having other
children. Never does it refer to the “sons of Mary” or “a son of Mary,”
but only the son of Mary. By this time, St. Joseph has died. As a
“First-born, with no“blood brother,” Jesus entrusted his Mother Mary from
the cross to the care of St. John, the Beloved Disciple. ]
July 22 Wednesday: St. Mary Magdalene: Jn
20:11-18:
The context: Today’s Gospel presents the great
recognition scene in the New Testament in which 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, frequently occurs in the narratives of John’s
Gospel. [See, for example, the conversations Jesus had with Nicodemus (ch. 3),
and the Samaritan woman (ch.
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 his body had been stolen. Her attention was concentrated
on the empty tomb. Her tears of intense grief could also have blurred her
vision. Once Mary had recognized Jesus, he gave her a message to be conveyed to
his Apostles — Jesus would leave them and ascend to his Father. Mary Magdalen
the first to see the Risen Christ and the first to tell the apostles about the
Lord’s resurrection. Mary’s message to Jesus’ disciples, “I have seen
the Lord,”(Jn 20:18),” became the basis and essence of later preaching
and Christians’ witness-bearing. St. Thomas Aquinas once remarked that one old
lady (una vetera), might have more Faith than a host of learned
theologians.
Life messages: 1) Just like Mary Magdalene, we
too may fail to recognize the presence of the risen Lord in our neighbor
because of our preoccupations, spiritual blindness, or evil habits. But we can
be open to experience the presence of the Risen Lord in our lives through our
prayer, our Sacramental life, periods of Adoration of Jesus in the Holy
Eucharist, and our meditative reading of the Bible. These all enable us to bear
witness to the Risen Lord in our daily lives. 2) It is our powerful conviction
of the Real Presence of the Risen Lord, both in the Eucharist and in our lives,
which gives us the strength to fight temptations and to serve our brothers and
sisters in corporal and spiritual works of mercy. (Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 23 Thursday: St. Bridget, Religious: Mt
13:10-17:
The context: Jesus’ disciples wanted to know why
he spoke in parables to the common people but explained to his disciples the
parables’ implicit and hidden meanings.
Reasons: Jesus gives two reasons for using parables. 1) The
so-called intellectuals, like the scribes and the Pharisees, were proud. Filled
with themselves, they left no space for God’s word in their hearts. That is one
of the reasons why Jesus started speaking to the common people who were humble
with receptive hearts, using their simple language and telling them stories and
parables based on their lives. 2) The secrets of God’s kingdom are meant for
people with open minds and large receptive hearts, not for proud intellectuals
who are closed to them.
Blessings: Then Jesus congratulates his apostles and the
common people on their good fortune in seeing and recognizing the long-awaited
Messiah, hearing his words and experiencing his company.
Life messages: 1) We are more blessed than Jesus’
first-century audience because we have his message in written form, and the
Holy Spirit, guiding the Church and its Magisterium, to interpret it for us. 2)
We find the risen, living Jesus, alive and fully Present, in the Holy
Eucharist, in the confessional, in the Holy Bible, and in the praying
community. Hence, let us read the Bible and listen to the teaching of the
Church with open minds and welcoming, responsive hearts. Fr. Tony (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 24 Friday: St. Sharbel Makhluf, Priest: Mt
13:18-23:
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 25 Saturday: St. James, Apostle: Mt
20:20-28:
The context: Today we celebrate the feast of St.
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” (Mk:3:17), 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)
on the Samaritan village which had refused to give Jesus permission to cross
through their village because he was going to Jerusalem (Lk 9:51-56). Jesus
refused the offer. Later, James was known as James the Greater to distinguish
him from James the Less (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 his 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, 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” (Mt 20:28;
Mk 10:45; Jn 13:10-17) St. James 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”
Lk 1:38) That is why Pope is called “the servant of the servants of
God” (Gregory the Great, d. AD 604) and the priesthood of our
pastors is called “ministerial priesthood”(CCC: 1547) 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 servants of us all, just as Jesus
was for the Apostles and disciples, for our Lord loved and served us all
Fr. Tony (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
