Sept 11 Monday:
The context: Today’s Gospel describes miraculous
healing performed by Jesus one Sabbath as a public violation of Sabbath laws,
in order to prove that God’s intention for the Sabbath was for His people to
do good and to save life rather than to do evil or to destroy
life. The incident and the reaction: Ex 20:8 and Dt 5:12 instructed the
Jews to keep the Sabbath holy. But the scribes and the
Pharisees had amplified God’s law on the Sabbath, misinterpreting it and making
it burdensome for the common people through man-made laws. Jesus wanted to demonstrate
in public the original intention of God in declaring the Sabbath holy. For Jesus,
the Sabbath was a day of rest on which Israelites were meant to adore God, to
learn and teach His laws, and to do good to/for others. Hence, Jesus took the
liberty of healing a man with a withered hand in the local synagogue
immediately after the worship service, thus infuriating the scribes and the
Pharisees.
Life messages: 1) Our Catholic “Sabbath”
observance of participating in the Eucharistic celebration on Sunday is meant
to recharge our spiritual batteries for doing good to/for others and avoiding
evil. 2) Our Sunday observance is further meant to be an offering of our lives
to God on the altar, to praise God, to thank Him for His blessings, to ask
God’s pardon and forgiveness for our sins, to present our needs before the
Lord, and to participate in the Divine Life by receiving Holy Communion. 3) It
is finally a day to spend with the members of the family and to help our
neighbors in the activities of our parish and neighborhood. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
Sept 12 Tuesday: (The Most Holy Name of Mary)
The context: Today’s Gospel passage gives a
short account of the call of the Apostles and of the preaching and healing
mission of Jesus. Jesus was the first missionary, sent by His Father with the
“Good News” that God his Father is a loving, merciful, and forgiving Father Who
wants to save everyone through His Son, Jesus. Today’s Gospel describes how
this First Missionary selected and empowered twelve future missionaries as
Apostles to continue his mission.
Special features: Jesus selected very ordinary people, most
of them hard-working fishermen with no social status, learning, or political
influence. Jesus was sure that this strange mixture of people would be very
effective instruments in God’s hands. Matthew was a hated tax collector serving
the Roman Empire, while Simon the Cananaean was a Zealot, a fanatical
nationalist or terrorist of those days, determined to destroy Roman rule by any
means. The others were mostly professional fishermen with a lot of good will,
patience, and stamina. It was only Jesus‘ love for them and their admiration
and love for Jesus that united them. Jesus selected them after a night of
prayer and gave them His own Divine powers of healing and exorcism and made
them a key part of His own Messianic mission of preaching the “Kingdom of God.”
Life Messages: 1) God wants to show us that a
calling for ministry, or a vocation to priestly or religious life or family
life, is an initiative of God. 2) As Christians we have the same mission that
Jesus entrusted to his Apostles. 3) We fulfill this mission of preaching the
word of God, primarily, by living out Jesus’ teachings and by promoting and
helping world-wide missionary activities of the Church.
(https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
Sept 13 Wednesday: (St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and
Doctor of the Church):
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 interpreted by Jesus himself. This parable was
intended as a double warning: to the hearers to be attentive to, and to the
Apostles to be hopeful about, Jesus’ preaching in the face of growing
opposition to the Master and his ideas. Jesus wants all of us to open our
hearts generously to the word of God and then to put that word into practice.
The sower is God, the Church, the parents, the teachers, and we ourselves. 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 & the 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 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). The soil
filled with weeds represents those who are addicted to evil habits and evil
tendencies, those whose hearts are filled with hatred or jealousy, and those
whose greed focuses on acquiring money by any means and on 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 , 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/)
Sept 14 Thursday: (The Exaltation of the Holy
Cross):
Introduction: We celebrate this feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross for two reasons: (1) to understand the history of the
discovery and recovery of the True Cross and (2) to appreciate better the
importance of the symbol and reality of Christ’s sacrificial love, namely, the
cross in the daily life of every Christian.
History: The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy
Cross is one of twelve “Master feasts” celebrated in the Church to honor Jesus
Christ, our Lord and Master. This feast is celebrated to memorialize the first
installation of the remnants of the true cross of Jesus in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre at Mount Calvary, September 14, AD 335, and its reinstallation
on September 14, AD 630. The original cross on which Jesus was crucified was
excavated in AD 326 by a team led by St. Helena, the mother of the first
Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine. The emperor built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
on Calvary, it was consecrated on September 14, AD 335, and the remains of the
cross were installed in it by Archbishop Macharias of Jerusalem. After three
centuries, the Persians invaded Jerusalem, plundered it of all valuables and
took with them the relic of the Holy Cross. In AD 630, Heraclius II defeated
the Persians, recaptured the casket containing the holy relic, and reinstalled
it in the rebuilt Church, which was destroyed by Muslims in 1009. The crusaders
rebuilt it as the present Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1149. The largest
fragment of the holy cross is now kept in Santa Croce Church in Rome. The first
reading today (Nm 21:4b—9) describes how God healed the complaining Israelites
through the brazen serpent. The second reading Phil 2:6-11) reminds us that
Jesus, “humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross,” In today’s Gospel, answering the question raised by
Nicodemus, Jesus cites the example of how, when the Israelites were in the
desert, the impaled brazen serpent (representing the healing power of God),
which God commanded Moses to raise, saved from death the serpent-bitten
Israelites who looked at it (Nm 21:4-9). Then Jesus explains how He is going to
save the world by dying on the cross.
Life messages: 1) We should honor and venerate
the cross and carry it on our person to remind ourselves of the love God has
for us and the price Jesus paid for our salvation.
2) The cross will give us strength in our sufferings and
remind us of our hope of eternal glory with the risen Lord. With St. Paul, we
express our belief that the “message of the cross is foolishness only to
those who are perishing” (1Cor 1:18-24), and that we should “glory in
the cross of Our Lord” (Gal 6:14).
3) We should bless ourselves with the sign of the cross to
remind ourselves that we belong to Christ Jesus, to honor the Most Holy
Trinity, and to ask the Triune God to bless us, save us and protect us from all
danger and evil.
4) The crucifix should remind us that we are forgiven
sinners and, hence, we are expected to forgive those who offend us and to ask
for forgiveness whenever we offend others or hurt their feelings. (Fr.
Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/).
Sept 15 Friday: (Our Lady of Sorrows or Mother of
Sorrows)
Today we remember the spiritual martyrdom of the Mother of
Jesus and her participation in the sufferings of her Divine Son. Mary is the
Queen of martyrs because she suffered in spirit all Jesus suffered during His
Passion and death, her spiritual torments were greater than the bodily agonies
of the martyrs, and Mary offered her sorrows to God for our sake. The principal
Biblical references to Mary’s sorrows are found in Lk 2:35 and Jn 19:26-27.
Many early Church writers interpret the sword prophesied by Simeon as Mary’s
sorrows, especially as she saw Jesus die on the cross. In the past, the Church
celebrated two feasts to commemorate separately 1) the spiritual
martyrdom of the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout her life as the mother
of Jesus and 2) her compassion for her Divine Son during his
suffering and death. The devotion to the Seven Dolors
(sorrows) of Mary honors her for the motherly sufferings she endured during the
whole life of Jesus on earth. This devotion started with a vision given to St.
Bridget of Sweden in the thirteenth century. In 1239 the seven founders of the
Servite Order took up the sorrows of Mary who stood under the Cross as the main
devotion of their religious Order. Originally, this day was kept on the Friday
before Good Friday. It was Pope Pius XII who changed the date of the feast to
the 15th of September immediately after the feast of the Triumph of the
Cross. (The nineteenth-century German mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich
claimed to have received a vision in which Mary actually kisses the blood of
Jesus in the many sacred places on the way of the cross. In his film, The
Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson, inspired by this vision, pictures
Claudia, Pontius Pilate’s wife, secretly handing Mary cloths to collect the
blood of Jesus from the streets of Jerusalem).
The seven sorrows: There are seven times of great suffering
in Mary’s life. These events remind many parents of their personal family
experiences of sorrow and mourning for their dear children. 1) Hearing the
prophecy of Simeon, 2) Fleeing with Jesus and Joseph into Egypt to escape
Herod’s soldiers sent to kill Jesus, 3) Losing the Child Jesus in Jerusalem, 4)
Meeting Jesus on the road to Calvary, 5) Standing at the foot of Jesus’ Cross,
6) Receiving the Body of Jesus as it is taken down from the Cross, and 7) The
burial of Jesus.
Life message: 1) On this feast day let us pray
for those who continue to endure similar sufferings that they may receive from
God the strength that they desperately need to continue to carry their
spiritual crosses. Let us try to enter into the sorrowing hearts of the mothers
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Nigeria and other
terrorist-haunted nations and the mothers in the United States and other
countries grieving for their children, soldiers and civilians alike. 2) Let us
also remember with repentant hearts that it is our sins which caused the
suffering of Jesus and Mary. [“At the
cross her station keeping, / Stood the mournful
mother weeping, / Close to Jesus to the last. // Through her heart, his sorrow
sharing, / All his bitter anguish bearing, /
Now at length the sword has passed.” (Stabat
Mater)] (Fr. Tony) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
Sept 16 Saturday: (St. Cornelius, Pope and St.
Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs)
In today’s Gospel passage, taken from Jesus’ high-priestly
prayer, Jesus prays in particular, for those disciples who are sharing the meal
with him. Jesus prayed for the victory, unity, protection, and consecration of
his disciples. (i) Jesus prayed that they might find victory by
living out their Christianity in the rough-and-tumble of life. The disciples
must win the world for Christ by living out their Christianity within the
world. They must bear witness to Christ through their transparent Christian
lives, reflecting Christ’s love, mercy, forgiveness, and spirit of humble
service. (ii) Jesus prayed for the unity of
his disciples. The world cannot be evangelized by competing Churches, and that
is why Jesus prayed that his disciples might be as fully one as He
and the Father are One. Christian unity is determined by whether and how well
we love one another, and whether we reflect the love of God in Christ for the
world. (Eph 4:4–6: … one body and one Spirit, just as you were called
to the one hope that belongs to your call; d5one
Lord, one faith, one baptism;e6one
God and Father of us all, Who is above all and through all and in all).(iii) Jesus
prayed for His Father’s protection for his disciples from the
attacks of the Evil One. If the disciples of Christ fall, it is because they
try to meet life with their own strength alone, and do not remember the
presence of their protecting God and seek His help. (iv) Jesus
prayed that his disciples might be consecrated in the truth. (a) GOD
alone IS TRUTH, and ‘Consecrate’ means to set apart for a special task
(Jer 1:5; Ex 28:41), namely to live out and to bear witness to His
TRUTH in our lives; (b) ‘Consecrate’ also means to
equip a man with the qualities of mind, heart, and character which are
necessary for that task. God has chosen us and dedicated us for His special
service of loving and obeying Him ourselves and of bringing
others to do the same. c) He has not left us to carry out that great task with
only our own strength, but by His grace He fits us for our task, if we place
our lives in His hands.
Life message: 1): We need to understand,
appreciate, cooperate with, and pray with and for each other: The denominations
are a reality.There is no use in our blaming each other for the historical
events which caused these divisions in Christ’s Body. What we can do is to
learn sympathetically about the doctrinal similarities and differences among
the members of our Christian community and learn to love each one and cooperate
with the members of all denominations in all ways possible. 2) Let us pray
fervently that God may show us how to proceed in building true and lasting
Christian unity without sacrificing TRUTH, the basic Christian principles and
teachings.
Fr. Tony (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
