July 15 Monday (St. Bonaventure, Bishop, Doctor of the
Church): Mt 10:34–11:1: 34 “Do not think that I have come to bring
peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come
to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and a man’s foes will be those of
his own household. 37 ..11:
The context: Jesus makes the controversial
statement that he has come to inaugurate a series of divisions in families and
in the society as a whole between those who accept him as Lord and Savior and
those who oppose him, his ideas and ideals. Then he concludes his great
“missionary discourse” with an instruction to his twelve Apostles on the cost
and the reward found in the commitment to be his disciple. The first half of
these sayings of Jesus is about the behavior expected from his disciples, and
the second half is about the behavior of others towards the disciples.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me….” : What Jesus means is that all
loyalties must give place to loyalty to God. In other words, we
cannot condone immoral practices even in members of our family. Jesus is not
speaking against the family, but rather reminding us that we are part
of the larger family of our fellow-Christians and, hence, we have more
responsibilities. We must be ready to lose our lives for Christ: By “losing
one’s life” Jesus means that we must stop living for ourselves
alone. Instead we must spend our lives for others and care for those
who are sick and hungry. We are to give hospitality to strangers in
Jesus’ name. (“offering a cup of cold water”): There are four main links in the
chain of salvation: i) God who has sent Jesus with His message, ii) Jesus who has
preached the “Good News,” iii) the human messenger who preaches Jesus’ message
through his words and life, and iv) the believer who welcomes the message and
the messengers. Hence, giving hospitality to a preacher or a believer is
the same as welcoming Jesus himself. The basis of all hospitality is that we
all belong to God’s family, and that every person is our brother or
sister.
Life message: 1) We need to be hospitable and
generous: Hospitality allows us to encounter the presence of God in others,
usually in those in whom we least expect to find Him, and to share our love
with them. We become fully alive as Christians through the generous giving of
ourselves to others. (http://frtonyshomilies.com/)
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July 16 Tuesday (Our Lady of Mount Carmel): Mt
11: 20-24): Mount Carmel is a mountain in northern Palestine about
twenty miles from Nazareth, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, three miles
south of Haifa in modern Israel. 1 Kings Chapter 18 describes how the prophet
Elijah’s prayer on Mount Carmel for rain was answered and how he defeated the
450 pagan priests of Baal on the same mountain. He challenged them to bring
fire from Heaven to burn the sacrificed bulls placed on the altar, and he
proved that only Yahweh was the true God. According to the most ancient
Carmelite chronicles, the Order had its origins with the disciples of the
prophets Elijah and Eliseus on Mount Carmel. They lived very ascetic lives in
caves on Mount Carmel honoring the “Holy Virgin” of the Messianic prophecies
who would give birth to the promised Messiah. When the Apostles
started preaching Jesus, the pious ascetics of Carmel accepted the Christian
Faith. In the 13th century, a group of pilgrims who followed the Crusaders was
impressed by the lifestyle of the disciples of Elijah. Hence, they set up a
religious community on the western slopes of Mount Carmel and started living
very ascetic lives. This was the beginning of the modern Carmelite Order, whose
members started leading a contemplative life under the patronage of Mary,
honoring her as the Mother of God and Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The
people began to call them Friars of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount
Carmel. Pope Honorius III approved the order’s rule in 1232 (or 1236?) .
Since the Turks had started conquering Palestine by 1235, the hermits decided
to go back to Europe, where they built monasteries in Cyprus, Italy, France,
and England. Simon Stock, an English Carmelite, became the superior of all the
Carmelites in 1247. He helped the order expand and adapt to the times,
patterning the order on the Dominicans and Franciscans. The feast of Our Lady
of Mount Carmel was instituted first for the Carmelites in 1332 to commemorate
the 100th anniversary of the approval of the rule of the Carmelite
Order. The Order of Discalced Carmelites of the Blessed Virgin
Mary of Mount Carmel (OCD) resulted from 16th century reforms of the Carmelites
by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and later by reforms made by
the order Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI) in the Kerala
State of India
Our Lady of Mount Carmel and the Brown scapular:
According a popular legend, Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock on July 16, 1251,
and gave him the Brown Scapular with the following words: “This will be for
you and for all Carmelites the privilege, that he who dies in this will not
suffer eternal fire.” Mary promised her protection to all those who would
wear the blessed habit and lead a life of prayer and sacrifice. Pope St. Pius X
(1903 -1914) declared that that the common people could have the same blessings
if they would wear the metal scapular medal carrying the picture of Our Lady of
the Scapular on one side and the Sacred Heart on the other. The feast of Our
Lady of Mount Carmel challenges us both to imitate the simple and ascetic life
of the Blessed Virgin Mary with her trusting Faith in God and her humility, and
to seek her guidance and maternal protection in our Christian lives. (http://frtonyshomilies.com/)
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July 17 Wednesday St. Camillus de Lellis, Priest,
U.S.A.): Mt 11: 25-27: 25 At that time Jesus declared, “I
thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these
things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; 26 yea,
Father, for such was thy gracious will. 27 All things have been delivered to me
by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the
Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
The context: Jesus knew that ordinary people
with large, sensitive hearts, rather than proud intellectuals, were able
accept the “Good News” he preached. Such people would inherit
Heaven rather than the learned and the wise who prided themselves on
their intellectual achievements. Hence, in the first part of today’s
Gospel Jesus prayed in thanksgiving to His Father, praising God for revealing
Himself to the simple-hearted, and thus condemning intellectual pride. A person
who is full of self-centeredness fails to perceive supernatural things.
Jesus’ unique claim of God’s perfect reflection: “No
one really knows the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son wishes to
reveal Him” (Matthew 11:27). The claim that Jesus alone can reveal God
to men forms the center of the Christian Faith. John records Jesus’ claim in
different words which He spoke at the Last Supper: “He who has seen me
has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). What Jesus says is this: “If you want
to see what God is like, if you want to see the mind of God, the heart of God,
the nature of God, if you want to see God’s whole attitude to men–look at me!”
Life message: We need to know and love God better by
studying Jesus’ revelation about God his Father. We do it by daily reading the
Holy Bible, especially the Gospels, by meditating on the passages read and by
applying them to our lives. The more we study the Bible, the more we learn
about the Triune God, and especially about Jesus our Savior. This knowledge
will help us to love Jesus more, experience his presence in our daily lives,
see his face in everyone around us and surrender our lives to Jesus by
rendering humble service to everyone around us. (http://frtonyshomilies.com/)
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July 18 Thursday: Mt 11: 28-30: 28 Come
to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.29 Take my
yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The context: In today’s Gospel, Jesus
offers rest to those who labor and are burdened, if they are
ready to accept his easy yoke and light burden. For the
Orthodox Jew, religion was a matter of burdens, namely, 613 Mosaic
laws and thousands of oral interpretations, which dictated every aspect of
life. Jesus invites the overburdened Israel, and us, to take his yoke upon our
shoulders. In Palestine, ox-yokes were made of wood and were carved
to fit the ox comfortably. The yoke of Christ can be seen as the sum of our
Christian responsibilities and duties. Jesus’ yoke is light because it is given
with love. It is the commandment to love others as Jesus did.
Besides, the yoke of Christ is not just a yoke from Christ
but also a yoke with him. So we are not yoked alone to pull
the plow by our own unaided power. We are yoked together with Christ to work
with him using his strength. By saying that his “yoke is easy,” Jesus
means that whatever God sends us is made to fit our needs and our abilities
exactly.
The second part of Jesus’ claim is: “My burden is
light.” Jesus does not mean that his burden is easy to carry, but
that it is laid on us in love. This burden is meant to be carried in love, and
love makes even the heaviest burden light. By following Jesus,
one will find peace, rest, and real refreshment. We are burdened with many
things: business, concerns about jobs, marriage, money, health, children,
security, old age, and a thousand other things. Jesus is asking
us to give him our burdens and take on his yoke. By telling us, “Take my
yoke . . . and you will find rest,” Christ is asking us to do things the
Christian way. When we are centered in God, when we follow God’s commandments,
we have no heavy burdens.
Life messages: 1) We need to be freed from
unnecessary burdens: Jesus is interested in lifting off our backs the burdens
that drain us and suck the life out of us, so that he can place
around our necks his own yoke and his burden, that bring to us, and to others
through us, new life, new
energy, new joy. 2) We need to unload our burdens before the
Lord. One of the functions of worship for many of us is that it gives us a time
for rest and refreshment, when we let the overheated radiators of our hectic
lives cool down before the Lord. This is especially true when we unload the
burdens of our sins and worries and evil addictions on the altar and offer them
to God during the Holy Mass. (http://frtonyshomilies.com/)
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July 19 Friday: Mt 12:1-8: 1 At that
time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were
hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the
Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not
lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David
did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the
house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him
to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you
not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the
Sabbath, and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is
here. 7 And if you had known what this means, `I desire mercy, and not
sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of man is
lord of the Sabbath.”
The context: Today’s Gospel passage gives Jesus’
teaching on the purpose of the Sabbath and on its proper observance. This was
his response to a criticism and a silly accusation made by Pharisees against
his disciples who, on a Sabbath, to satisfy their hunger, plucked ears of grain
from a field and ate the grains after removing the husks by rubbing the grains
between their palms. The Pharisees accused them of violating Sabbath laws by
performing three items of work forbidden on Sabbath, namely, harvesting,
threshing and winnowing.
Counter-arguments: Jesus gives three
counter-arguments from Holy Scripture defending his apostles. (1) Basic human
needs, like hunger, take precedence over Divine worship and Sabbath observance.
Jesus cites from the Scripture the example of the hungry David and his selected
soldiers. They approached Ahimelech, the priest of Nob, who gave them for food
the “offering bread” which only the priests were allowed to eat (1 Samuel
21:1-6). (2) No law can stand against Divine worship. That is why the priests
were not considered as violating Sabbath laws although they did the work of
preparing two rams for sacrifice in the Temple (Numbers 28:9-10). (3) God
desires that we practice mercy: Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea to tell
the accusers God’s words: “Iwant mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6).
Life messages: Like the Jewish Sabbath, the
Christian Sunday is to be 1) a day for rest and refreshment with members of the
family; 2) a day for thanksgiving and the recharging of spiritual batteries
through participation in the Eucharistic celebration (for Catholics); 3) a day
parents can use for teaching religious Faith and reading the Bible to their
children; 4) a day for doing works of charity in the neighborhood and in the
parish; 5) a day for socializing with family members, neighbors and fellow
parishioners. (http://frtonyshomilies.com/)
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July 20 Saturday (St. Apollinaris, Bishop,
Martyr): Mt 12:14-21 14 The Pharisees went out and took
counsel against Jesus to put him to death. 15 Jesus, aware of this,
withdrew from there. And many followed him, and he healed them all, 16 and
ordered them not to make him known. 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken by the
prophet Isaiah: 18 “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom
my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he shall
proclaim justice to the Gentiles. 19 He will not wrangle or cry aloud,
nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; 20 he will not break a bruised
reed or quench a smoldering wick, till he brings justice to victory; 21 and in
his name will the Gentiles hope.”
The context: The confrontation between Jesus and
the Pharisees reached its climax with Jesus’ “blasphemous” statement: “The
Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The Son of Man is Lord
even of the Sabbath.” Jesus realized that he had more work of preaching and
healing to do before his death. So, he withdrew to a less known place to avoid
a premature arrest and asked people not to give publicity to his healing
ministry. Besides, he did not want to be labelled a false messiah or
revolt-inducer against the Roman empire. Jesus uses the occasion (quoting from
the “Suffering Servant” prophecy, Isaiah 42:1-4), to teach his disciples and
the people that his role as the messiah is not using crushing power to subdue
people but sacrificial service to uplift them. Isaiah 42:1-4 directly refers to
the conquering Persian king Cyrus (whom God used as His instrument to
discipline His people), but indirectly and in its full meaning, it refers to
the promised Messiah, Jesus. The prophecy teaches that 1) the Messiah will be
anointed with God’s Spirit; 2) he will bring justice to the Gentiles in the
sense that he will show them how to give to God what is due to Him and to men
what is due them; 3) he will preach gentle and forgiving love; 4) he will bring
his healing love of hope and encouragement to the Gentiles, although their
Faith and witnessing are weak as a reed or feeble as a flickering lamp.
Life messages: 1) Let us have the courage of our
Christian convictions in the face of opposition to our practice of the Faith.
2) Let us keep hoping in God and trusting in His mercy and justice in our pains
and suffering inflicted by others. (http://frtonyshomilies.com/)
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