Fr Kevin Kilgore

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Gospel: Luke 13: 31-35

Some Pharisees came to Jesus and said,
“Go away, leave this area because Herod wants to kill you.”
He replied, “Go and tell that fox,
‘Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow,
and on the third day I accomplish my purpose.
Yet I must continue on my way today, tomorrow, and the following day,
for it is impossible that a prophet should die
outside of Jerusalem.’

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you,
how many times I yearned to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
but you were unwilling!
Behold, your house will be abandoned.
But I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say,
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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There’s a small chapel located just outside the walls of Jerusalem, designed in the shape of a teardrop, called Dominus Flevit. Latin for, “Jesus wept.” 

It marks the spot where today’s Gospel passage unfolded. As the Lord gazed upon the holy city of Jerusalem, he wept.

Jesus wept because he was rejected by his own people. He wept because Jerusalem, teeming with life, was void of faith in him. He wept because their city was on the verge of destruction. 

And he wept because of his impending crucifixion, the fruit of political trickery, ignorance, and intimate betrayal.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he says, “how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!”

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As he wept, Jesus left us with a rich image to ponder. 

Just as a mother hen instinctively protects her children by hiding them under her wings, so the Lord came to shelter, to nourish, to feed, and to protect us from the snares of evil.

In spite of being rejected, those wings are still open to us today – not because we are worthy, but because we are his, no less than a baby chick belongs to its mother.

As the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

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All of this to say, there is nothing that you and I can ever do to make God stop loving us; it is simply not in his nature.

While we may not feel worthy of him at times, God’s wings of welcome are always spread open, leaving us a single question to ponder: Will we accept his love?

Yes, Jesus. Yes.

A thousand times, yes.

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Image credits: (1) iBelieve.com (2) GroupBibleStudy.com (3) QuoteFancy

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Gospel: Luke 6: 12-16

Jesus went up to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew,
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew,
Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

The Gospel of the Lord.

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I wonder why it took Jesus an entire night spent in prayer with his Father to choose the Twelve Apostles.

Did he have other people in mind? Did he know their flaws? Could he sense their hesitation and fear? Did he pray their faith in him would not fail?

Maybe the Lord struggled to accept what would happen to these men if they did say “yes.”

As is always the case in the bible, whenever someone says “yes” to God, their entire future changes in ways that that person never could’ve imaged. 

Think of Mary, who became the virgin Mother of God. Saint Joseph, who became the foster father of Jesus. Or figures from the Old Testament like Moses, who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt into the desert to be tested for 40 years.

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Saying “yes” to God means the impossible suddenly becomes possible.

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Today we celebrate the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude. 

Tradition states that they were cousins of Jesus, who became his Apostles and eventually worked together to spread the Gospel as far east as Persia, where they were martyred some 30 years after the resurrection. 

Simon was sawed in half. Jude died after being struck with an ax.

The fact that 10 of the 12 Apostles preached the Gospel until they were silenced by death became one of the earliest arguments for the truth of the resurrection. 

What else would inspire these men to leave their homes and their families, traveling to the ends of the earth, enduring unimaginable forms of persecution and torture, if they had not been utterly convinced that Christ was raised from the dead?

It would’ve been far easier for them to return to their lives as fishermen.

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So, what does this mean for us?

While none of us may be called to be a missionary or a martyr, God does have a plan for each of our lives. Finding out what that plan is – even down to granular daily decisions like who we bring into our lives – requires doing what Jesus did in today’s Gospel.

Spending time in prayer.

May we find a few quiet moments each day to echo the words of the prophet Samuel: “Speak, LORD, your servant is listening.” 

And live accordingly.

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Image credits: (1) publishpeace.net (2) Christianity.com (3) Amazon.com

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Gospel: Luke 13:18-21

Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like?
To what can I compare it?
It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.
When it was fully grown, it became a large bush
and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”

Again he said, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God?
It is like yeast that a woman took
and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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There’s a story of an early Christian hermit, who dedicated his life to prayer while living in the desert. His name was Telemachus. One day while deep in meditation, Telemachus felt the Lord calling him to Rome.

So, he left his simple desert cell, made his way to Rome, and eventually to the Colosseum, where he witnessed gladiators fighting to their death, while bloodthirsty crowds cheered them on.

He was horrified.

Telemachus literally threw himself into the arena and tried physically separating one gladiator from another. Enraged, the crowds hurled stones at him until he was pounded to death.

When the emperor got word of the story, he was so moved this hermit’s sacrifice that he eventually ended the gladiator games.

Telemachus became like the mustard seed in today’s Gospel. He was a single person, but he changed an entire culture – and many lives in the process.  

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That’s also the story of Jesus, whose singular death on the cross changed the course of human history. 

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It’s also the story of the Church.

The Church began with twelve imperfect men and a band of women, each of whom dedicated their lives to sharing the Gospel. 

Two-thousand years later, that small community of believers has exploded into more than 1 billion people around the world.

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So, what might this say to us?

God is constantly at work, but often his plans start small – with a child born in Bethlehem at Christmas, a hermit leaping into the Colosseum, a person saying “yes” to God and following him into the unknown. Suddenly, the world is changed. 

May we see ourselves like tiny mustard seeds – insignificant on our own, but when empowered by grace, a force to be reckoned with. 

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Image credits: (1) YouVersion (2) CEPAD (3) Desert Streams Ministries