Thirteenth Sunday of the Year

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." Matt. 10:37-42

If ever there was someone who wanted to put you to the test about your Christian faith, today's gospel text would make a perfect weapon. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate their father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even their life itself, cannot be my disciple.” So your Jesus wants you to hate your family – it says so right here. Now if you reply by saying that Jesus didn’t really say that or mean that, you create a whole lot of trouble for yourself. Would that not be true of anything the gospels quote Jesus as saying? Perhaps a little parable might help us here. Suppose you belonged to a family of a non-Christian religion. Your father is a strong, devote believer and he strictly demands that you follow this same religion and all its beliefs and practices. One day you come and announce that you are going to become a Catholic; you believe that Jesus is the son of God and that the Catholic Church is the true way to follow Christ. Your father tells you that if you do this, he will disown you, strip you of your inheritance and nothing more to do with you. And so you leave. In other words it is all or nothing. In today's society, the worst thing you can do is promote hate. Hate crimes are of the worst kind of evil. Here Jesus is using hyperbole; which is an exaggerated statement or claim not meant to be taken literally. Like when Jesus said “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.” Mk. 9:43 Jesus is not teaching hate, but he is teaching unconditional love. To be his disciple Jesus wants our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind with all our strength. The problem we face in the Church today is mediocrity – "I like some of the things the Church teaches but certainly not everything". In Matthew’s account of this issue Jesus is warning that to follow Him unconditionally will have its challenges.  “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Mtt. 10:36 Jesus wants our whole heart - first and above all. Half-hearted faith will never last in today's world. It slowly drains away until it is all gone. The choice is now in our hands. Dr. Brant Pitre has an excellent commentary on today's gospel passage. Go To: . . . LINK . . .

The Eleventh Sunday - 2026

In this Sunday's 2nd. Reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans we read: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us . . .  while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son . . .”  But why did Jesus have to die to save us? Could God not say from heaven: “Your sins are for given; come now and enter heaven and eternal life”? The problem with that is it fails to understand the nature of our intellect and free will, and the nature of sin; the power it holds over our souls. People in the bondage of sin are so by choice, and can no longer hear God’s voice from heaven. "Son of Man, you live in a rebellious house that has eyes to see, but they can't see, and ears to hear, but they can't hear, since they're a rebellious house. Jerimiah 12:2.  . . . so that, "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'" Mk 4:12 Let me offer an analogy. A person goes partying one night … becomes intoxicated … gets into a car and drives away at high speed … fails to negotiate a turn in the road … roles the car and ends up in the ditch, injured and hopelessly pinned in the over-turned car. Then the car becomes engulfed in flames. That person cannot save themselves, they are going to die a horrible death – and it is totally their fault. Now a stranger comes on the scene, climbs into the burning vehicle and calls to the trapped man, "here, take my hand, I can save you!" The rescuer frees the trapped person and pushes him out of the car to safety; but this can only be done in a way that makes the rescuer unable to get out himself … therefore, he must die in place of the trapped person. It’s the only way to save the one hopelessly trapped do to the choices they made. Sin entraps our souls and binds us to its deadly way, traps us in the state of eternal separation from God, from God’s truth, from eternal life. (Trapped like the person in the flaming car.) God must come to where the sinner is; first to break Satan’s hold over us by incarnating, making himself visible and recognizable on our terms. Then, one-on-one, offering us mercy, convincing us to reject sin and to accept forgiveness. Then God must lead us out of our hell of ignorance into the light of truth. Jesus, the Son of God is the only one who can do this. He must become one of us, to be with us where we are. That is the only way we can hear God’s voice. Satan tries to drive Jesus away from rescuing us by the threat of the Cross. He fails. Jesus’ love for us is greater than any fear Satan can employ, even death itself. Satan’s hold is broken, it remains for us to listen to the Voice of forgiveness and follow him out. We say Jesus died for my sins on Good Friday. Perhaps we more accurately should say, Jesus died BECAUSE of my sins. Because by my free choice I willing followed Satan into the hell of separation from God’s truth, it is only by Jesus entering into my death situation, to meet me there and convincing me of his love, can Jesus save me. Only from the Cross can we hear; “This day you will be with me in Paradise."

Corpus Christi Sunday - 2026

From a work by Saint Thomas Aquinas, priest O precious and wonderful banquet! Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine. O precious and wonderful banquet, that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion. It was to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper. As he was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he left it as a perpetual memorial of his passion. It was the fulfillment of ancient figures and the greatest of all his miracles, while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.  From the Office of Readings For Corpus Christi