15th Week: July 15-20:
July 15 Monday (Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church):
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 his ideals. He concludes his great
“missionary discourse” with an instruction to his twelve Apostles on the cost
and the reward found in their commitment to be his disciples. 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 disciple. “I
have not come to bring peace, but a sword”: Jesus clarifies that he
came to give people lasting peace, not temporary, worldly peace — the simple
absence of war and the freedom from all conflicts in the family and society.
Our role is to keep fighting against our evil habits and addictions, using the
spiritual sword of the word of God which is “lively and active, sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of
joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart”
(Heb 4:12). “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, not only
suffering death rather than betraying him, but also that daily, 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 in Christ.
Life message: 1) We need to be hospitable and
generous: Hospitality enables 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. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
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 and
overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, it lies three miles south of Haifa in modern
Israel. 1 Kgs 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. Elijah 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. St. 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
the order Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI) still later in
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 metallic 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. (Fr. Tony)
July 17 Wednesday: The context: Jesus knew that
ordinary people with large, sensitive hearts, rather than proud intellectuals
like the Scribes and the Pharisees, 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 prays loudly, joyfully thanking God his
Father and praising Him for revealing Himself to the simple-hearted, thus
condemning intellectual pride. A person who is full of self-centeredness fails
to perceive supernatural things as real.
Jesus’ unique claim to be God’s perfect Reflection: “No
one really knows the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son wishes to
reveal Him” (Mt 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 learn how to
know and love God better by studying Jesus’ revelation about God his Father. We
do this 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. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 18 Thursday[USA: Saint Camillus de Lellis,
Priest]: 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 singly to pull
the plow by our own unaided power. We are yoked together with Christ to work
with him using his strength. Jesus is inviting each one of us to be yoked with
him, to unite our life with him, our will with his will, our heart with his
heart. 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 from 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 which bring to us, and
to others through us, new life, new energy, and 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. (Fr. Kadavil) (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 19 Friday: The context: Today’s Gospel
passage gives us 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 and blowing away the chaff.
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
counterarguments 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 Sm 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 (Nm 28:9-10). (3) God desires that we
practice mercy: Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea to tell the accusers God’s
words: “I want mercy, not sacrifice” (Hos 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 and through
worship service for the Non-Catholics; 3) a day parents should use for teaching
religious Faith and Bible lessons 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. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
July 20 Saturday: [Saint Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr):
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 there was more work of preaching
and healing that needed to be done. So, withdrawing to a less-known place to
avoid a premature arrest, Jesus asked people not to give publicity to their
miraculous healings. Further, Jesus wanted to avoid being labelled a false
messiah or revolt-inducer against the Roman empire, allegations the hostile
religious and political leaders of Israel longed to make and substantiate.
Matthew interprets this temporary withdrawal of Jesus from the crowd as a fulfilment
of Isiah’s Messianic prophecy about the “Suffering Servant” (Is
42:1-4). It teaches the apostles and the people that the Messiah’s
role is to use crushing power to subdue people but to offer sacrificial service
to uplift them. Is 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
also teaches that 1) the Messiah will be anointed with God’s Spirit; 2) the
Messiah will teach justice to the Gentiles in showing them how to give to God
what is due to Him and to men what is due them; 3) the Messiah will preach
gentle and forgiving love; 4) the Messiah will bring God’s healing love of hope
and encouragement to the Gentiles, even though their Faith and witnessing may
be 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 the pains and suffering inflicted on us by others. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
