Tag: Homily

Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

Jesus, on seeing a crowd rapidly gathering, rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it, “Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again!”

Today’s Gospel follows immediately after the Transfiguration and takes place as Jesus came down from the mountain with Peter, James, John. A man brings his possessed son to Jesus’ disciples, but they are unable to heal him. Jesus arrives and asks the father how long the boy has been possessed. The father responds that the possession has been ongoing since childhood and pleads with Jesus to help if he can. Jesus replies, “‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith” to which the father responds with a request for help in his own faith, crying out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” Jesus then commands the unclean spirit to leave the boy, and after throwing the boy into convulsions, he is healed. The disciples ask Jesus why they were unable to heal the boy, and he tells them that this kind of demon can only be driven out by prayer.

God, help me understand today’s Gospel in light of my own experiences. Although I have not been a witness to such a dramatic possession or healing as Mark describes, I can think of areas of my life that only prayer to the Father can heal. There are moments in life when, like the boy’s father, I cry out, “I do believe, help my unbelief.” God, when I feel hopeless and dead to your Spirit and goodness, help me with my unbelief and take me by the hand to raise me up.

Lord, thank you for the gift of your presence. Stay with me today and keep me from all that might separate me from you.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Readings

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew

Jesus said to his disciples: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus continues to speak to the disciples about the Old Testament teachings, bringing to fulfillment each one beginning with the words “But I say to you.” What Jesus proclaims reveals his divine authority to bring about the New Covenant. “You have heard that it was said,” Jesus says, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil.” And he says: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” What is the aim of all of this? What is its end? Jesus says, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Alone, with self-reliance as the only ally, this is an impossible task. But God makes being perfect possible.

God, help me understand that along with the command to achieve perfection, your perfect mercy accompanies me along the way. The way to become your children, Jesus says, is to pray for those who persecute us. The rest is not up to me. It is you, God, who make your sun rise on the bad and the good; it is you who causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Thanks be to God, that task is out of my hands!

Lord, let me keep in mind today’s Gospel acclamation: “Whoever keeps the word of Christ, the love of God is truly perfected in him.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Readings

Saturday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

In today’s Gospel, Mark relates the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus as he is present with Peter, James, and John. During the Transfiguration, Jesus’ clothes become dazzling white and then Elijah and Moses appear to Jesus, conversing with him. Terrified and struggling to find words, Peter suggests that they make three tents—one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. Then a cloud envelops them, which Matthew describes as a “bright cloud,” and a voice comes from it, the loving voice of God the Father. Suddenly, Mark tells us, the disciples no longer see anyone but Jesus alone with them. On their descent from the mountain, Jesus charges them “not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Today we have what the disciples did not yet have: the risen Christ among us. As God’s children, what does that call for so that we can hear the Father say to us what he said to his Son?

God, help me understand today’s Gospel reading. In it, Jesus answers Peter, John, and James when they ask him what rising from the dead meant. Their understanding of your word in the Scriptures informs them that Elijah must come first. Just as Elijah preceded Jesus to restore all things, so did John the Baptist. “Yet,” Jesus says, “how is it written regarding the Son of Man that he must suffer greatly and be treated with contempt?” As for John, King Herod had him beheaded. With all of this to take in, let me remember the loving words you spoke to your Son during the Transfiguration, giving him authority to be heard as the Word Incarnate.

Lord, overshadow me today with the bright cloud of your presence; in it, I want to be your beloved son. I can’t see you, but I know you are with me. “Faith is the realization,” Saint Paul says in the first reading, “of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” God, strengthen my faith today and let me hear your voice!

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Readings

Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.”

Speaking to the disciples as well as to the crowds, Jesus addresses all who would hear him. It is a universal message spoken for the salvation of the whole world. The counterintuitive instruction to deny oneself and lose one’s life for the sake of saving it calls all into authentic relationship with God. Once in that relationship, having reached out toward him, the cross becomes the way to salvation. What is the purpose of this life unless it is to gain eternal life with the Father who made us? As the psalmist says, “From his fixed throne he beholds all who dwell on the earth, He who fashioned the heart of each, he who knows all their works.” Jesus’ call to holiness is universal because it is the Father who made the heart of each of us.

Help me understand, God, what it means to pick up my cross today. It is too great a scope for me to imagine what that means in days or weeks or years to come. Give me the grace today to recognize my cross and pick it up. Loving Father, teach me the way to gain everlasting life rather than forfeiting it on passing things. Lord, guide me today and give me the courage to come after you.

Thank you, Lord, for the call to follow you. When you come in the Father’s glory with the holy angels, may it be that I lived a life worthy of that call.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

https://youtu.be/2W-KSOPWWBY

Readings

Thursday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Along the way to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They tell Jesus that some people say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others one of the prophets. Then Jesus asks them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter says to him: “You are the Christ.” Seconds later, Peter rebukes Jesus for saying that he must suffer and die (and rise after three days), and Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” I can only imagine how Peter felt—one minute in what must have been a mountaintop moment as he recognizes Jesus as the Messiah and the next minute brought right back down to earth: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

God, help me understand how to recognize my human limitations and to strive to think as you do. I’m not sure what it might mean to think as you do except to die to my limitations in this life so to rise with Christ. As Jesus says in Matthew about the conditions of discipleship: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” To consider discipleship in this way echoes what Jesus says would follow his Passion and death: the resurrection. To think as you think, God, is to know that death does not have the final word. There is great joy in that—something Peter himself would come to see when he saw the empty tomb and encountered the risen Christ.

Lord, help me hear your voice today, teach me to offer you my “prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world.” Throughout the day, let me hear you ask me, “Who do you say that I am?” I want to answer with complete trust: “You are the Christ.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

https://youtu.be/2W-KSOPWWBY

Readings

Wednesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

Putting spittle on his eyes Jesus laid his hands on the man and asked, “Do you see anything?” Looking up the man replied, “I see people looking like trees and walking.”

The people in Bethsaida bring to Jesus a blind man and beg Jesus to touch him. Jesus leads him outside the village to cure him. At first, the man sees only indistinctly. Then Jesus lays hands on the man’s eyes a second time, and he sees clearly. What did Jesus see in the people of the village? Were they coercing him into performing a miracle? And why did the man see only partially the first time Jesus laid hands on the man? Partial faith, partial sight. In the first reading from Genesis, Noah receive partial answers as he sends out birds to see if the floodwaters are receding. In both readings, what is partial becomes whole as Noah sees the fullness of God’s mercy and the blind man sees distinctly. Jesus sends the man home and tells him not to return to the village. It may be that to return to the village was to return to a place of little faith.

Thank you, God, for meeting me where I am at those times when my faith is less than complete. You constantly send forth your Spirit through your Son to strengthen me in unending love. As the Responsorial Psalm says, “May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call.”

Be patient with me, God, in the little faith I have. Just as you are patient with me, let me be at peace in you when I meet others today who seem to lack conviction in what is true and good and beautiful.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

https://youtu.be/2W-KSOPWWBY

Readings

Memorial of Saints Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

When he became aware of this he said to them, “Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”

Jesus responds to the disciples, who had brought only one loaf with them in the boat, first by saying, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And then: “Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread?” Is it possible that the disciples failed to recognize that Jesus could just as well provide for them as he had for the five thousand by breaking and sharing the five loaves? The leaven of the Pharisees and Herod—only a little bad leaven added to a large batch contaminates the whole. The limitations of tradition and customs—even natural law—can limit the ability to see God at work in creation and to cooperate with it.

God, I have little to give and often forget you; open my mind to understand today’s Gospel. Act in me through the Holy Spirit to see how your will is being done today.

Thank you, God, for your abundant gifts! I ask you to be present with me today by keeping your word. As the Responsorial Psalm says, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord; and my Father will love him and we will come to him.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

https://youtu.be/2W-KSOPWWBY

Readings

Monday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. He sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Then he left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus had just performed the Miracle of the Loaves, feeding a large crowd, when the Pharisees approach him. It’s not difficult to imagine Jesus getting out of the boat to talk with the Pharisees. It would also be understandable to see Jesus displaying frustration at the Pharisees, especially after performing the miracle with the loves and the fishes. Instead, Mark tells us, Jesus sighs and gets into the boat again to go to the other shore. The boat would seem to symbolize the Church here, where Jesus travels in it elsewhere to preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. We know from other Gospel passages that when Jesus wanted to pass through Samaria he was not welcomed and went by another way.

Help me understand, God, that there comes a certain restlessness of spirit from asking for signs from heaven that no number of signs will satisfy. Just as Jesus sighed from the depth of his spirit, do you sigh at me when I ask for something you have provided already but I fail to recognize? I don’t need to think long to realize that in whatever place I pass through that seems dry and deserted, you are there to sustain, as Jesus did with the loaves and the fishes. However grand my human aims and aspirations might be, you far surpass them in ways I sometimes fail to see; for that, Lord, how can I not give you thanks and praise? Help me know you are near.

God, thank you for hearing me! Be present with me today, not as a way to test you but because I know I need your grace to sustain me. Keep me in your care!

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

https://youtu.be/2W-KSOPWWBY

Readings

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues preaching the Sermon on the Mount. In the Gospel passage, he refers to the Ten Commandments in speaking to them about the law and its fulfillment. For each of the laws that he teaches about, such as You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment, he follows with the words and introduces his teaching by saying “But I say to you.” Jesus says to the disciples at the beginning of the passage: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” He goes on to address anger, lust, adultery, and falsehood. For each of these, Jesus does not offer his opinion but Truth and Wisdom itself, the Son of God, speaking of right relationships with the Father.

God, help me grasp the meaning of today’s Gospel as it applies to the choices I make today. The evil one excels at subtle deception. In his compassion, your Son looks deep into the human heart to teach the disciples—to teach all of us—where sin occurs. From within our hearts, choices lie before us, says Sirach, of fire and water, life and death, good and evil. As Jesus says about false oaths, “Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” By this, your Son guides us to depend on you through the Holy Spirit in discerning the mysteries of your kingdom and keeping your words.

From the Responsorial Psalm: “Instruct me, O LORD, in the way of your statutes, that I may exactly observe them. Give me discernment, that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

https://youtu.be/2W-KSOPWWBY

Readings

Saturday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark

His disciples answered him, “Where can anyone get enough bread to satisfy them here in this deserted place?”

These words of the disciples from today’s Gospel are in response to Jesus’ compassion for the crowd that had been following him for three days. He is afraid that on their long journey home the people will collapse along the way. Jesus replies to the disciples question: “How many loaves do you have?” They told him seven. Mark tells us that Jesus ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then, taking the seven loaves and some fish, he gives thanks, breaks the bread, and gives the food to his disciples to distribute. After the four thousand people ate and were satisfied, the leftover fragments filled seven baskets. Jesus satisfies and fills the crowd physically and spiritually. In response to the disciples’ question, “enough bread to satisfy,” Jesus goes far beyond expectation in his extravagant love and compassion for the crowd.

God, open my eyes and my mind to understand today’s Gospel. After Jesus fed the crowd, he dismissed them and went by boat with his disciples to the region of Dalmanutha. I can’t help seeing in Jesus’ dismissal of the crowd the same dismissal at the end of every celebration of Mass when the priest or deacon says, “Go, you are dismissed,” which translated from Latin is “Ite, missa est.” Thank you, God, for the Eucharist, for the supersubstantial bread to sustain me in this life as I strive to live in the light of your glory in the life to come. Let me be dismissed to know and do your will.

In restlessness, Lord, nothing is enough, nothing satisfies. Take the little I have, as you did the seven loaves, and do with it what you will. I ask for the grace today to know your will, to know you are present, placing me far beyond my own idea of what is enough.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

https://youtu.be/2W-KSOPWWBY

Readings