Year: 2024

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Gospel: Matthew 11: 28-30

Jesus said:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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Some years ago, a story went viral about a lost sheep named Shrek.

Shrek lived an otherwise ordinary life until he became separated from his shepherd. For six long years, he wandered the hills of New Zealand alone, often resting at night in cold, rocky caves.

Without his shepherd to shear his wool, Shrek’s coat ballooned to sixty pounds, six times the average weight a sheep normally carries. That’s enough wool to make 20 adult suits!

After he was found, it took Shrek’s shepherd about 20 minutes to shear all of that excess wool. Imagine that – six years of weight lifted in a matter of minutes.

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There’s something arrestingly human about that.

Like Shrek, how often do we carry around unnecessary weight? We hide our emotions, bottle them up, push them down. We can lug around years of unnecessary guilt, shame, grief, or fear. 

As a result, we end up carrying five or six times the weight we actually need to. Why not just let it go?

“Come to me, all of you who are heavy burdened,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “and I will give you rest.”

Like removing pounds of unnecessary wool, Jesus can shear what weighs us down.

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This is not only true in prayer, but also in confession, when the Lord forgives – and forgets – our sins.

May we allow the Shepherd to do what he does best – feed, defend, and shear his sheep.

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Image credits: (1) Bandcamp (2) Shrek the Sheep (3) Ibid.

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Gospel: Matthew 11: 25-27

At that time Jesus exclaimed: 
“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to the childlike.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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A number of studies have suggested that the primary reason why Catholics do not share their faith is out of … fear.

There’s the fear of inability, the feeling that we do not know enough about our faith in order to explain it convincingly to others.

The fear of rejection. Deep down, aren’t we all afraid of being turned down? How much deeper does that fear run when we try sharing our faith, the deepest part of ourselves?

And the fear of failure. Such a fear leads to a variety of missed opportunities – not only in terms of relationships, our career, or life-experience, but also in bringing others to Jesus. 

Yet we all want to draw our loved ones closer to the Lord.

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So, how do we overcome this?

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While some may find it hard to understand Scripture, or difficult to explain its relevance to our daily lives, the best evangelists are the ones who simply live their faith. 

Think of people like Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day. They did nothing extraordinary in the world’s eyes – they clothed and fed the poor. Yet who has not been inspired by their example?

Or Saint John Vianney. He had to overcome multiple obstacles in order to be ordained a priest. He would’ve been the first person to tell you how difficult Latin and theology came to him.

Yet he transformed a large swath of Catholic Europe just by sitting in the confessional for 16 hours a day.

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While fear is something we all experience – certainly when trying to share our faith – some of the world’s greatest evangelists were ordinary people who changed people’s hearts, not by eloquence or persuasive arguments, but by love.

They were the “childlike,” the innocent ones, whom Jesus blesses in today’s Gospel.

This is, perhaps, what God is asking from all of us – to share the Good News by living simply and loving deeply. As the old saying goes, “Actions speak louder than words.”

Be kind. Love your neighbor. God will do the rest.

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Image credits: (1) Inc. Magazine (2) Cato Institute (3) Linton Free Church

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Gospel: Matthew 11: 20-24

Jesus began to reproach the towns
where most of his mighty deeds had been done,
since they had not repented.
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst
had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.
And as for you, Capernaum:

Will you be exalted to heaven?
You will go down to the nether world.

For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom,
it would have remained until this day.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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A few years ago, the average cost of raising a child in America rose to a quarter of a million dollars. If you had two children, half a million. Four? Over a million. Today it’s even higher.

That’s excluding luxuries like beach vacations, private schools, and college tuition.

It’s nearly impossible – and ludicrous – for a child to imagine repaying their parents for every penny and dollar spent.  Not to mention the “intangibles” parents give: love, peace, security, hope, and wisdom.

While we cannot repay our parents in dollars and cents for our childhood blesssings, we can do two things: 

Say, “Thank you.” 

And pay it forward. 

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In today’s Gospel, Jesus chastises several towns he visited after performing miracles of healing and forgiveness.

While he wasn’t expecting to be repaid in terms of dollars and cents – he couldn’t be – Jesus did expect the townspeople to repent, to be thankful, and to pay his goodness forward.

But to his chagrin, they take him for granted by returning to their old ways of life as if the Lord was never there. 

“Woe to you!” he says. 

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Like the townspeople of Chorazin and Bethsaida, Jesus has done good things for us – both as individuals and as a community.

In what ways do we pay it forward? 

Maybe we extend his forgiveness to a neighbor after being forgiven ourselves. 

We feed the hungry after being fed by Christ. 

We intercede on another person’s behalf knowing both the Spirit and this community intercede for us.

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Much like children who cannot repay their parents, we cannot repay Jesus for his goodness to us. But we can pay it forward.

How might I do that today?

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Image credits: (1) LinkedIn (2) Quora (3) Syverson Strege