Category: Uncategorized

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Gospel: Matthew 13: 10-17

The disciples approached Jesus and said,
“Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?”
He said to them in reply,
“Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven
has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.
To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
This is why I speak to them in parables, because
they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:

You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.
Gross is the heart of this people,
they will hardly hear with their ears,
they have closed their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and be converted
and I heal them.

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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Pope Benedict once said that, “Christianity is like a stained-glass window.”

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From the outside, stained-glass windows look dark and dusty. They’re impossible to understand.

You must enter inside, where the light shines through the windows, in order to see their beauty.

In churches, stained glass windows often tell a story – something that happened in the bible like the birth of Jesus or the resurrection.

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Christianity can be understood in a similar way; it’s like a stained-glass window. To outsiders, different truths of our faith don’t seem to make sense.

How could Jesus suffer, die, and rise from the dead? How can the Eucharist be the Promised Presence of Christ? How can God be One in Three Persons? 

But once we enter into the faith, we begin to understand.

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This is essentially what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel. He refers to different tenets of our faith as “mysteries.”

We have to believe all things are possible before our eyes are opened, allowing us to understand them.

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I’m sure many of us still have questions. Why did this happen? Or how could that happen?

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The best way to understand, Jesus says, is to treat your question like a stained-glass window. If you stand outside skeptically, then you’ll never understand.

But if you enter into the wisdom of the Church, read what the Saints have written about it, spend time in prayer, and open your heart to receive the Truth.

Then the light of understanding will come.

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Image credits: (1) Chartres Cathedral (2) Dreamstime.com (3) Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

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Gospel: Matthew 13: 1-9

On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea.
Such large crowds gathered around him
that he got into a boat and sat down,
and the whole crowd stood along the shore.
And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying:
“A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil.
It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep,
and when the sun rose it was scorched,
and it withered for lack of roots.
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it.
But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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I received my first bible when I was thirteen.

“You’re a teenager now,” my grandmother said to me. “Half-way to being all grown up! It’s time for you to start reading the bible. Start with the Gospels: there’s Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

It seemed like such a simple fact: there are four Gospels. My grandmother knew each of them by name. Back then, I doubt I could’ve even named one.

Three years went by, then I finally cracked that book open. A year later, I had read the bible from cover to cover…and it changed my life. 

In the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “When I found your words, I devoured them. They became my happiness and the joy of my heart.”

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Today we celebrate the feast of Saints Anne and Joachim, the grandparents of Jesus.

Just as my grandmother planted a seed of faith in my heart that later changed my life, I wonder what difference Jesus’ grandparents made on him.

What seeds of wisdom did they plant? What difference did they make in his childhood? What memories of them did he carry throughout his life?

We don’t know. 

But we do know this: God wanted the experience of having grandparents. 

It’s part of the strange, mysterious truth of the Incarnation – our belief that, in Jesus, God became flesh and lived among us.

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Today, on this feast of Saints Anne and Joachim, we pray for all grandparents, both living and deceased.

May their good works go with them, and may the seeds of faith they have planted – like my grandmother gifting me with a bible – bear fruit in the lives of future generations.

Saints Anne and Joachim, pray for us!

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Image credits: (1) Pintrest (2) Jesus’s Grandparents, Illustrated Prayer (3) Semi-Delicate Balance

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Gospel: Matthew 20: 20-28

The mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons
and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.
He said to her,
“What do you wish?”
She answered him,
“Command that these two sons of mine sit,
one at your right and the other at your left, in your Kingdom.”
Jesus said in reply,
“You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”
They said to him, “We can.”
He replied,
“My chalice you will indeed drink,
but to sit at my right and at my left, this is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard this,
they became indignant at the two brothers.
But Jesus summoned them and said,
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,
and the great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.
Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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“Can you drink the cup that I will drink?” Jesus asks his Apostles in today’s Gospel.

“Of course!” they say.

The Apostles are imagining themselves sharing a gilded chalice with the Lord at a royal banquet in Jerusalem. They believe that Jesus will soon be crowned king, and the Apostles will constitute his inner circle.

In a sense, they’re both right and wrong.

The Apostles are right in the sense that they will drink from the “cup” of the Lord. But this mysterious “cup” is a reference to his suffering and death – not an earthly coronation as the Apostles are imagining.

We hear a final reference to this “cup” in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus prays, “Father, let this cup pass from me. But not as I will, but your will be done” (Matthew 26:39).

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The first Apostle to drink from the “cup” of the Lord’s suffering and death will be the Apostle James, whose feast day we celebrate today.

James was beheaded by the Roman Emperor Agrippa in the year 44 AD, about 10 years after the resurrection of Jesus.

Soon the others will follow. Matthew will preach the Gospel as far as Ethiopia, where he’ll be martyred. Some believe Thomas made it as far as India. Of course, Peter and Paul will die in Rome.

The only Apostle, aside from Judas, who will not be martyred is the Apostle John, who dies in exile on the Greek island of Patmos. But even that – living in exile – is a type of martyrdom.

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What might the story of the Apostles say to us today?

Often, we imagine our futures, much like the Apostles once did. And quite often, we’re wrong. Once we learn how to surrender and drink the “cup” of the Lord, our life is no longer our own.

God directs our path in ways – and to places – we would never have imagined otherwise. But our reward will always be the same: a seat in the kingdom of God, where, “neither moth nor decay can destroy” (Matthew 6:20). 

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Image credits: (1) Sherman Burkhead (2) National Catholic Register (3) Saints Feast Family