For Friday of the Fifteenth Ordinary Week of the Church Year

Matthew 12:1-8
Exodus 11:10-12,14

In the old law of God, anyone who did work on the Sabbath, such as collect firewood, or harvest food, was worthy of stoning to death.
Today in the Gospel is the Sabbath, but the followers of Jesus are so hungry they pull off heads of grain, and eat them raw straight from the stalk right there in the field.
Jesus pushes the protesting Pharisees for mercy, since his followers are hungry.
However, that is not all he does.
He uses what is happening to throw light on himself.

I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

The only thing greater than the temple is God himself; and the Lord of the Sabbath is God himself.
Jesus, the Son of Man, is here as God who is greater than the temple, and as God who is Lord of the Sabbath.
By upholding that, Jesus commits blasphemy, and now he too is worthy of stoning to death.
It is as if to say to the Pharisees: “You think my followers are bad, but I am much worse, and here’s how, and in your faces.”
He is not putting on a macho strut.
Rather, he is shielding his hungry followers, taking the punishment for sin upon himself, and upholding the truth that he is God.
He is the unblemished, male Passover Lamb, whose blood marks the temples of God’s mercy, kills the enslavement of sin, and gives freedom to the sinner.
The Body and Blood of Christ the Passover Lamb opens the way and strengthens us for our escape from the enslavement of sin.
In the Body and Blood of Christ, we eat and drink his freedom, but then either we use it, or we lose it.
We need to follow him— even forty years in the desert— on a road that obeys the New and Everlasting Covenant he made with us in his own Blood.
Our obedience to his Covenant is a road to his Promised Land and his Temple in the Heavenly Jerusalem.
There we shall celebrate with him an everlasting Sabbath of joy and life.

For Wednesday of the Fifteenth Ordinary Week of the Church Year

Matthew 11:25-27

Today we see Christ give thanks that childlike spirits have received knowledge of the Father and of the Son whom the Father has sent.
The childlike of the Gospel are open and keen for what God gives.
God chooses to let them know him, and he shapes them into living signs of himself.
The Son of God became a man of flesh and blood, and has the deepest and truest knowledge of the Father, and is the deepest and truest living sign of the Father.
Jesus is fully open to the Father, and he truly shows the Father.
From Jesus we can receive all the depth, reality and knowledge of God.
He says it in his Gospel today: ALL THINGS HAVE BEEN HANDED OVER TO ME BY MY FATHER.
Jesus, the Son of God, is open all the way to everything his Father gives him.
You and I, because we are sinners, are not yet fully open to the Father.
Jesus the Son of God, Jesus a man of flesh and blood, Jesus the sinless one, is the only man who has all knowledge of the Father, and is all knowledge of the Father.
God gives all of himself to us by way of his Son even in his Body and Blood.
In the Body and Blood of Christ, God gives himself to us, and opens himself to us.
Through the Body and Blood of Christ, God the Spirit pours upon us, cleansing, saving, completing, hallowing, glorifying, and restoring us as images and likenesses of God.
God does and gives his all, but we need to answer with our all.
To let in what can fulfill us more than anything else, we need to turn our backs on sin, turn our faces to God, open ourselves and offer ourselves to the Lord with lowliness, courage, and truth.

For the Fifteenth Ordinary Sunday of the Church Year

Amos 7:12-15
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:7-13

The Gospel today shows the stark beginnings of the work Jesus gave his apostles, but it also shows signs of the end of all things.
Stark beginnings.
Jesus sent his apostles out across the land, with walking sticks, the clothes on their backs, and his “authority over unclean spirits,” but with nothing else.
His apostles did three things that hint at the end of all things: they preached repentance or conversion, they “drove out many demons,” and they cured the sick.
At the end of all things, there will also be a new beginning to match these three things the apostles did.
The apostles of Jesus went out preaching repentance across the land.
At the end of all things, the repentant will never sin again, but will freely hold forever to God with unbounded joy, knowledge, and holiness.
The apostles of Jesus went driving out demons across the land.
At the end of all things, all that is evil and demonic will meet final and everlasting defeat.
The apostles of Jesus went out curing the sick across the land.
At the end of all things, all sickly and dead bodies of those faithful to God will rise to newness of health, glory, and life without end.
Here at the celebration of the Lord’s Word and Eucharist, we still have the work Jesus gave his first apostles: striving for conversion, driving off demonic evil, and seeking to save health and life.
This work in the here and now also makes really present all that is to come at the end, because in his Eucharist Jesus says he gives us now the covenant that is new and already EVERLASTING.
Celebrating his Word, his Body and his Blood here and now, we are also to be mindful of the end of all things, and be mindful of the new and everlasting beginning.
In the second reading from the Word of the Lord today is a song about the coming end and the everlasting beginning that we meet here in sacramental signs.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...
[he] has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,
... he chose us in Christ,
before the foundation of the world,
[he chose us] to be holy and without blemish before him.
In love he destined us for adoption to himself
through Jesus Christ,
in accord with the favor of his will,
for the praise and glory of his grace
that he granted us in the beloved.
In him we have redemption by his blood,
the forgiveness of transgressions,
in accord with the riches of his grace
that he lavished upon us.

It says “we have redemption by his blood.”
The Son of God, who sent his apostles to preach conversion, has himself converted to become a man of flesh and blood.
The Holy One converted so that he could be reckoned as a sinner.
God converted so that he could die among sinners, die in solidarity with sinners, and die for sinners.
He converted unto death.
The he converted death into life.
God rose from the dead still a man, so that he could be the beginning and the door for sinners to convert and rise from the dead into glory as sons and daughters of God.
He converts in his Eucharist, so that we might break his body with our bodies, and shed his blood into our blood, so that by his brokenness and by his wounds we might be healed.
We might be here seeking to be healed of some bodily suffering, or some emotional wound.
Even if we get healing, we will lose it again at the end of all things, if we have not repented, if we have not turned to God and been faithful to him.
It is not that God holds sin against us.
Rather, it is that we hold onto sin.
All the history of suffering, sickness, wounds, and death began with the original sin.
At the end of all things, God will put an end to all suffering, an end to all sickness, an end to all wounds, an end to death— and he will do so by putting an end to all sin.
However, he will not do it for us against our wills.
At the end of all things those who have chosen to hold onto sin, will hold their sin forever, because they have freely chosen to turn away from the giver of mercy, life, goodness and glory.
The end of the second reading from the Word of the Lord today tells us about faith, conversion, and the power that God gives us for everlasting freedom and glory.
In Christ, you:

have heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation,
and have believed in him....

In Christ, you:

were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
which is the first installment of our inheritance
towards redemption as God’s possession,
to the praise of his glory.

Do we want “our inheritance” of everlasting healing, life, and glory?
Then, with the apostles, all the angels and saints, let us join Christ and the Holy Spirit in driving the evil of sin out of our lives, and let us with stark faith turn [repent] and hold fast to God the giver of mercy and glory.

For Tuesday of the Fourteenth Ordinary Week of the Church Year

Genesis 32:23-33
Matthew 9:32-38

In the first reading from the Word of the Lord today we hear of name changes.
Jacob is now “Israel,” which means either, “He fights with God,” or, “God fights.”
It may also mean, “God rules.”
The man Israel then gave a name to the place where he had “seen God face to face, calling it “Peniel,” which means, “the face of God.”
Today in the Gospel, there is also naming, and also the face of God.
God in Christ is face-to-face with mankind, and he is “moved with pity for” mankind that he names “troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.”
We could change the image of sheep without shepherds to that of children without parents, and it would call forth the same pity.
“Troubled and abandoned”— like children without father and mother.
Jesus spoke as one of the children of mankind from the cross.

My God, my God!
Why have you abandoned me?

He did more than lament, for he also interceded on the cross.

Father!
Forgive them!
They do not know not what they are doing.

“Forgive them,” since it was not the Father who abandoned mankind, but mankind that abandoned the Father, and killed his Son.
Mankind that is “troubled and abandoned” lacks true shepherds, true fathers, and true mothers.
Rather than do it all himself, Jesus told his followers to “ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”
The Son of God is the foremost in the care of “troubled and abandoned” mankind.
Today his Gospel also tells us how he cares for mankind.
First, he restored the dignity of speech to a man that a demon had silenced.
Speech makes man like God and the angels, and puts man above sheep and all other animals.
Using the dignity of man’s speech:

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching...
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness.

Nonetheless, he always leaves mankind free to choose to abandon God again.
In his Eucharistic Body and Blood, he gives us “Peniel,” the face of God who wants to do good for us by the power of the Holy Spirit and the will of the Father.
From here, we need to uphold and carry the truth and goodness of God, spreading it abroad in all places, at all times, in all our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Otherwise, “troubled and abandoned” we shall stay.

For the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, July 3

Ephesians 2:19-22
John 20:24-29

Feast of St. Thomas Apostle
This Holy Gospel according to John starts off [Jn. 1:1] by getting right to the point about Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
AND THE WORD WAS GOD.

However, after that, no one in this Gospel says outright that Jesus is God until St. Thomas calls him, “My Lord and my GOD!”
Thomas had spurned the word of his fellow apostles that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead.
Yet, none of them and no one else had gone so far as Thomas finally did: “My Lord and my GOD!”
What the risen Lord God said to Thomas was also for the other apostles and for us.

Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.

The apostles saw, and they believed.
You and I have not seen, but we believe because we have received the word of the apostles.
We have taken their word about the Word who was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God.
Having taken their word, you and I have the apostles as our foundation.
Standing upon them, you and I become the Church.
The Word of the Lord in today’s first reading calls us “the household of God,” “a temple sacred in the Lord,” and “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit,” “with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.”
Whether apostles believing from seeing the Lord, or disciples believing from taking the apostles’ word, all of us must now give our word that Jesus is “My Lord and my God!”
The Eucharistic hymn, Adoro te devote, shows us the way of faith, hope, and love when it comes to meeting the risen Lord in his Body and Blood.

Sight, touch, and taste are mistaken about you.
Only hearing can be safely believed.
I believe whatsoever the Son of God has said.
Nothing is more true than Him Who Is the Word of Truth.

I do not set my eyes upon your wounds as did Thomas.
Nevertheless I say you are my God.
Always make me more and more
to believe in you,
to have hope in you,
to love you.

For the fulfillment of our joy, and out of love for the Word who is God from the beginning, it is our mission, together with St. Thomas and all the apostles, to proclaim Jesus “My Lord and my God!”

That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard,
which we have LOOKED upon and TOUCHED WITH OUR HANDS,
concerning the word of life—
the life was made manifest,
and we saw it,
and testify to it,
and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—
that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you,
so that you may have communion with us;
and our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
And we are writing this that our JOY may be complete. [1 Jn. 1:1-4]

For Tuesday of the Thirteenth Ordinary Week of the Church Year

Genesis 19:15-29
Matthew 8:23-27

In both readings today, the Word of the Lord tells of deadly doom.
In the first, two angels in the shape of men brought down from God a fiery hail of burning sulfur that overthrew and destroyed the towns and townsfolk of Sodom and Gomorrah for their great evil.
In the Gospel, a man scolds the wild wind and the besetting sea, soothing their awful might and saving his fearful followers from death.
His followers had called out to him in their woe, “Lord, save us!”
“Save us”— in their mother tongue: hoshi‘a-nna, hosha‘na, for short— “hosanna,” as we say it.
The syllable hosh points to “salvation” in Hebrew.
It’s part of the name Yehoshua that means “The Lord saves.”
Yehoshua is indeed the Hebrew name “Jesus.”
After he saved them from deadly shipwreck in a storm, they asked, “What sort of man is this whom even the winds and the sea obey?”
They had already answered their own question.
“LORD, save us!”
“The Lord saves”— the meaning of Yehoshua, the name of “Jesus” in their mother tongue!
They called on his name, thus naming what “sort of man” he is.
However, after he saved them, they wondered what to name the “sort of man” he is.
Between the fearful cries and the amazed questioning of his followers, he rebuked the winds and the seas, but he rebuked his followers also.
“Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
Fear or faith— perhaps much that happens inside us throughout life bounces between fear and faith.
The Lord clearly wants our faith to be great, rather than little.
“Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
In the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Christ, the Lord and Savior in his open and intimate depths is with us, calling us to faith.
The Word of the Lord here today, in both the Old and the Gospel, tells of his mighty justice on the one hand and his saving might on the other.
If we deny the one, we cheapen the other, and overthrow the Lord down into our own comfort zones, thereby making a false idol in the image and likeness of our own preferences.
Even though he hands himself over to us in his Eucharistic Body and Blood, let us not take his majesty for granted, but worship and love and believe him for both his open, intimate depths and his surpassing, transcendent mysteries.
The Psalms are the voice of great faith in the Lord who saves.

Come and see what God has done:
he is terrible in his deeds among men.
He turned the sea into dry land;
men passed through the river on foot.
.... we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us forth to a spacious place.
I will come into your house with burnt offerings;
I will pay your my vows,
that which my lips uttered
and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. [From Psalm 65]

Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up;
God is our salvation.
Our God is a God of salvation; and to God,
the Lord, belongs escape from death. [From Psalm 67]

From the heavens you did utter judgment;
the earth feared and was still,
when God arose to establish judgment
to save all the oppressed of the earth.
.... Make your vows to the Lord your God,
and perform them [From Psalm 75]

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

For the Thirteenth Ordinary Sunday of the Church Year

Mark 5:21-43

[Preached for Children Receiving Their First Holy Communion]

There is more than one story in the Gospel today.
These stories today are about the power of believing in Jesus or the power of faith in Jesus— Jesus Christ.
In one of the stories, there was a woman who had been sick for twelve years.
She believed in Jesus.
She had faith in Christ.
She believed that if she could touch his clothes she would stop being sick.
So she came up behind Jesus and touched the back of his clothes in secret, and right away she was not sick anymore.
Christ knew that power had gone out from his own body because the woman had the power of faith.
She believed in Jesus.
If we believe in Jesus Christ, then we already have the power of faith.
The power of our faith works together with the power of Christ.
That’s why Jesus told the woman that her own faith had made her healthy again.
The power of Jesus Christ works together with the power of our faith.
There’s another story in the Gospel today, and this other story is also about the power of believing or faith.
A twelve-year old girl got very sick, and she died.
Her father believed in Jesus Christ, so her father had the power of faith.
Christ told her father to use the power of faith.
The “faith power” of the girl’s father worked together with the power of Christ’s body so that when Christ touched the dead girl, and told her to get up, she came back to life.
Christ did it because the girl’s father had the power of faith.
So these two stories in the Gospel today are about the power of faith that we have because we believe in Jesus Christ.
These two stories are also about the power that comes out of the Body of Christ.
The power of the Body and Blood of Christ always works together with the power of our own faith.
In Communion, in the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ, Christ touches us with his power.
Even though we don’t see him, we believe in him, we have faith in him,
That is how we touch his power.
The power that is in the Body and Blood of Christ works together with our faith-power.
It helps us to love God and to do what he wants.
It helps us to do good for other persons around us.
It helps us to find happiness.
Because our own faith-power works together with the power of Christ, one day he will come back to us here on earth.
When Christ comes back, even if we are already dead, he will wake us up and bring us back to life.
With his power and our own faith-power, he will change us so that we shall never be sick, and nothing shall ever hurt us, and we shall never die, and we shall be happy forever together with God and all the saints.
In the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ, we receive Christ and his power.
We need to promise him that we believe in him, and that we want to work with him.
Then, we need to keep our promise, so that the power of Christ helps us.
Let’s promise him right now that we believe in him.

“We believe in one God....”