Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord explains what it means to become a disciple. Once we make the decision to follow Jesus, then every other claimant to supremacy must fall away. Every one of us has something that we consider greatest. Perhaps it is money, material things, power, the esteem of others, your country, your political party, or your ethnic identity. Or perhaps it is your family, your kids, your wife, your husband.Video reflection by Monsignor James Vlaun (U.S.C.C.B.): Daily Reflection.
Now mind you, all of these are good things. However, when you place any of them in the absolute center of gravity, things go awry. When you make any of them your ultimate or final good, your spiritual life goes haywire. When you attach yourself to any of them with an absolute tenacity, you will fall apart.
This is what Jesus means in our Gospel for today: not that you should hate your family or country or wealth, but rather that you should detach yourself from them lest they become idols. And only if we do this are we truly ready for mission. If we try to do this work while we are stuck to any number of attachments, we will fail. Period.
"The Eucharist is an invaluable gift—our indispensable sustenance. It is precisely through her recognition & reception of this gift that the Church in the United States will find strength to carry on her charitable service to the wider society, especially in the areas of education, healthcare, & basic social services, while at the same time continuing her mission to evangelize."
—Pope Leo XIV (r. 2025-present)
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches the parable of the sower: “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… 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.”Video reflection by Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M. (U.S.C.C.B.): Sunday Reflection.
Imagine a crowd of farmers listening to this parable and shaking their heads at the farmer’s strange sowing. He would have been expelled from the seed sowers’ union for such irresponsible farming. Like the foolish sower, God’s love is so extravagant that it defies all of our expectations of what is reasonable.
The most important point of this parable is that we must imitate the foolish love of God. We must love not only those who love us, not only those who are like us and affirm us, but precisely those who are different and unresponsive. Our sun should shine on the good and bad alike.
"Superhighways, coast to coast,
Easy to get anywhere,
On the transcontinental overload,
Just slide behind the wheel,
How does it feel—
(When there's no destination) That's too far?
And somewhere on the way you might find out who you are, whoo!
"(Living in America) Ow!
Eye to eye, station to station,
(Living in America)
Hand to hand, across the nation,
(Living in America)
Got to have a celebration,
Rock my soul…
"You may not be lookin' for the promised land,
But you might find it anyway…"
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples not to fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Through the power of his being, he has linked us to the creative source of all existence. And in that “place,” loved in the Spirit by the Father and the Son, we are safe—even from those who would kill the body.Video reflection by Deacon Bernard Nojadera (U.S.C.C.B.): Daily Reflection.
But this means that our perspective can and must change. Most of us spend most of our lives defending ourselves against assaults on the “body”—keen, almost every waking moment, to protect our psyches, our emotions, our fortunes, our health, our reputations.
When we do that, we warp ourselves, turning our lives defensively inward, living in a very small spiritual space. But when we live out of the divine center, we breathe the air of real spiritual freedom. No longer cramped fearfully around the “body,” we can move into the wide expanse of the divine will, following God however he prompts us. And this state of affairs, this great soul, is simultaneously alluring in its beauty and terrifying in its demand.
"Whatever good work you begin to do, beg of God with most earnest prayer to perfect it."
—Saint Benedict of Nursia, O.S.B. (480-547, feast: 11 July)
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus predicts the persecution of his followers. A vast army of martyrs have in the course of Christian history given their lives for the sake of Christ and his gospel. They are from every culture, country, language, and background.“Viva Cristo Rey!”Video reflection by Jem Sullivan, Ph.D. (U.S.C.C.B.): Daily Reflection.
This is the army that stands opposed to worldly armies that do their work through violence, threats, and oppression. They witness to the power and authority of the risen Lord and therefore they are fighters—but they do not fight with the weapons of the world.
One might think of St. Peter himself, crucified upside down; or Felicity and Perpetua, thrown to wild animals; or of Thomas Becket, who resisted King Henry II’s attempts to manipulate the Church and was butchered by his henchmen; or Thomas More, who resisted another King Henry and paid for it with his head.
One might think of Paul Miki, the Japanese Jesuit, who was crucified for announcing the Christian faith; or Miguel Pro, who was shot to death for defying a repressive Mexican government, shouting as he was martyred,
"Boris Hoffman? You are now a citizen of the United States, so help you God…"
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus sends the Twelve to evangelize the countryside. To evangelize is to proclaim Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. When this kerygma, this paschal mystery, is not at the heart of the project, Christian evangelization effectively disappears, devolving into a summons to bland religiosity or generic spirituality.Video reflection by Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers (U.S.C.C.B.): Daily Reflection.
When Jesus crucified and risen is not proclaimed, a beige and unthreatening Catholicism emerges, a thought system that is, at best, an echo of the environing culture. Peter Maurin, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement, said that the Church has taken its own dynamite and placed it in hermetically sealed containers and sat on the lid.
In a similar vein, Protestant theologian Stanley Hauerwas commented that the problem with Christianity is not that it is socially conservative or politically liberal but that “it is just too damned dull”! For both Maurin and Hauerwas, what leads to this attenuation is a refusal to preach the dangerous and unnerving news concerning Jesus risen from the dead.
"Get ready for the jubilee,
(Hooray, hooray!)
He'll get three cheers from you and me,
(Hooray, hooray!)
Uncle Sam will prove he's still the champ,
He'll close up shop and break up camp,
And we'll all feel gay
When Johnny comes marching home!
When Johnny comes marching home!
When Johnny comes marching home!
When Johnny comes marching home!"
"Now this nation that I love has fallen under attack,
A mighty sucker punch came flyin' in from somewhere in the back,
Soon as we could see it clearly through our big black eye,
Man, we lit up your world like the Fourth of July!
"Hey, Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shakin' her fist,
And the eagle will fly and there's gonna be hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringin' her bell,
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you!
Oh, brought to you Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue!…"
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus summons apostles whom he shapes and sends on mission. Priests, through the centuries—from Augustine and Aquinas, to Francis Xavier and John Henry Newman, to John Paul II—are the descendants of those first friends and apprentices of the Lord. They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.Video reflection by Jem Sullivan, Ph.D. (U.S.C.C.B.): Daily Reflection.
Spiritual fathers are required especially in our time, when a rising tide of secularism threatens to overwhelm the religious impulse. We are wired for God; we will never satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts apart from God.
The secularist ideology teaches that sufficient amounts of wealth, pleasure, power, or honor will make us happy. Who will counter this? Who will speak to this culture of the beauty of God? Who will remind us that our lives are not about us? Who will break open the words of the gospel and spread out the banquet table of Christ’s body and blood? This is why we need priests.
Friends, today the Lord directs his disciples to ask the Father to send laborers for the work of evangelization. The Christian life is lived in between these two imperatives: conversion and mission.Video reflection by Deacon Arthur L. Miller (U.S.C.C.B.): Daily Reflection.
Having been seized by the beauty of revelation, our only proper response is a change of life and a commitment to become a missionary on behalf of what we have seen. In the scriptural tradition, no vision or experience of God is ever given simply for the edification of the visionary; rather, it is given for the sake of mission. No biblical figure is ever given an experience of God without receiving a commission.
Moses spies the burning bush, hears the sacred name of Yahweh, and is then told to go back to Egypt to liberate his people; Isaiah enjoys a mystical encounter with God amid the splendor of the temple liturgy and is then sent to preach; Saul is overwhelmed by the luminosity of the risen Jesus and is subsequently called to apostleship. As theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar says, “The beautiful stops the viewer in his tracks and then plants within him a desire to speak to others of what he has seen.”
"I've been everywhere, man,
I've been everywhere, man,
Crossed the desert's bare, man,
I've breathed the mountain air, man,
Of travel I've a-had my share, man,
I've been everywhere…"
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus demonstrates his miraculous power to heal the sick and raise the dead. He cured a woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years who came up behind him and touched the tassel on his cloak. And he took the hand of the official’s daughter and raised her from the sleep of death.Video reflection by Monsignor James Vlaun (U.S.C.C.B.): Daily Reflection.
Christianity is, first and foremost, a religion of the concrete and not the abstract. It takes its power not from a general religious consciousness, not from an ethical conviction, not from a comfortable abstraction, but from the person of Jesus Christ.
It is Christ—in his uncompromising call to repentance, his unforgettable gestures of healing, his unique and disturbing praxis of forgiveness, his provocative nonviolence, and especially his movement from godforsaken death to shalom-radiating resurrection—who moves the believer to change of life and gift of self.
And it is the unique Christ—depicted vividly in the poetry of Dante, the frescoes of Michelangelo, the sermons of Augustine, the stained-glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, and the sacred ballet of the liturgy—who speaks transformatively to hearts and souls across the Christian centuries.
"Country roads, take me home,
To the place where I belong…"
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about his relationship to the Father. Jesus, the Son, was sent by his Father in love. Thus there is in God a play of lover and beloved. But the lover and beloved are connected by the love they have in common. Therefore the God disclosed in Jesus is a family or community of persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.Video reflection by Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M. (U.S.C.C.B.): Sunday Reflection.
The ground of being is a communio of being and letting-be. From all eternity, the Father forgets about himself in love and generates the Son; and from all eternity, the Son forgets about himself and looks to the Father; and the mutual love of Father and Son is the Holy Spirit.
Active generation, passive generation; active spiration, passive spiration. Breathing in and breathing out; being and letting-be. God is like a set of lungs, or like a heart—taking in and letting out, a rhythm, a cadence, a back-and-forth of love.
This true God is one who does not insist on hoarding power or defining himself over-and-against. This true God is love, is a communion, a sharing, a family.
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us the parable of new wine and old and new wineskins.Saint Quote o' the Day
The new wine is the Good News, the Incarnation, the reconciliation of the divine and the human. But this powerful elixir cannot be contained in the receptacles of the old consciousness. As long as the ego reigns in the soul, the new wine will prove too strange, too foreign, too threatening—and it will be accordingly rejected.
Before the heady wine of the Gospel can be assimilated, there must be a scouring out of the spirit, a transformation of awareness and attitude, a metanoia. We should examine the stories of Jesus’s confrontations with the demons from this perspective. The demon within us realizes that he is the old wineskin that will be shredded by the inpouring of the new wine, and he consequently reacts in horror.
It is a helpful spiritual exercise to isolate those passages from the New Testament, those sayings and actions of Jesus, that make us most uncomfortable, since they will most effectively indicate how our souls have to be transfigured. They, much more than the passages we instinctively love, will show the path that metanoia must follow.
"Jesus comes to me every morning in Communion, & I return the visit by going to serve the poor."
—Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassatti, T.O.P. (1901-1925, feast: 4 July)
"Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having ghe right to do what we ought."
—Pope Saint John Paul II the Great (1920-2005, r. 1978-2005; feast: 22 October)
