Thursday

16th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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There’s probably been a moment in all of our lives when we wished the Lord would get his message across loud and clear, backed up by all the pyrotechnics we see in today’s First Reading. The Old Testament is full of these moments, and as believers we know that God has spoken to us and the people of Israel in this way throughout history. With the coming of Jesus the moment came to pass from one stage of learning about God and fathoming his almost unfathomable mystery to another: God in the Son took up human nature and revealed himself to us in a human way. Why did he do this, and why does he continue to do so today?

Pyrotechnics and great wonders and signs can attract attention, but for many, they don’t help grow in a robust faith. If the Israelites had grown in faith and an understanding of God we would not have inherited an Old Testament full of cases of infidelity and disbelief, sometimes right after enormous signs of God’s power and presence. Sometimes those signs didn’t go beyond provoking a servile fear, and the minute the signs were absent, people started going back to their own way of thinking and acting. In today’s Gospel Our Lord tells us to see the difference between hearing something and listening, between looking at something and seeing it. The parables present something from daily life, but are also doorways to other spiritual and divine insights about God, the “knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven.” It’s not enough to look at the door: it has to be opened to discover what lies beyond. When we see parables in this way, when we see the Word of God in this way, we see something from which we can draw profound truths regarding ourselves, our world, and Our Lord, not just once, but constantly. But that requires we make an effort in faith to listen and see, an effort to open our hearts and open that door into the greater world Our Lord wants to reveal to us.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us open that door: to open our eyes that we may see, our ears that we may hear, and our hearts that we may understand His Word.

Readings: Exodus 19:1–2, 9–11, 16–20b; Daniel 3:52–56; Matthew 13:10–17.

15th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord invites us to rest by taking up his yoke and learning from him. It seems like a strange way to rest: not many people associate taking a break with taking on more work. Our Lord is trying to be encouraging while being realistic: the burdens of life do not go away by being a good Christian. Some may argue that being a Christian is more of a burden. Jesus is teaching us today that it is not so much a question of getting rid of burdens as learning to manage them in a Christian way and with a Christian attitude.

Adam and Eve decided to take all the “burden” upon themselves, and we all know how that turned out, not just for them, but for all of us. We take burdens upon ourselves for fleeting and passing things–success, pleasure, power–and then we’re surprised when life just becomes a grind because we’re looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places. Our Lord wants to teach us the burdens of life that are really worth taking on, and how to handle them better: a yoke is an aid to supporting a load and directing it more easily, so taking on the yoke Christ offers us will help us bear the loads of life with more virtue and less frustration.

Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us distinguish between the burdens that are self-inflicted and those that help us achieve the things for those we love that are really worthwhile. Let’s not be shy about taking up his yoke to help us handle life’s trials better.

Readings: Exodus 3:13–20; Psalm 105:1, 5, 8–9, 24–27; Matthew 11:28–30.

14th Week In Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord continues to teach the Twelve what it means to be an apostle and what an apostle. Every believer is called to be an apostle in his or her condition and state of life. Today Our Lord tells them the message they should preach in their travels: “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is the nucleus of Jesus’ preaching during his earthly ministry, and in other Gospel accounts he combines this message with an exhortation: “repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). It puts the listener on notice that an opportunity is near for conversion and faith. Every apostle has taken advantage of this opportunity: through baptism we have turned from sin and expressed our faith in the Gospel. For many of us this happened in our infancy and thanks to our parents; it began a work of God in us that blossomed into the believers we are today. It reminds us that it is a gift we were given, not something we earned.

We as apostles have an chance to share the gift. We can be instruments of presenting that opportunity to others as disciples of Christ: a message of conversion and faith. It is an opportunity for healing and for casting out the evil in our lives that afflicts us. Our testimony to how Jesus has healed us and cast out evil in our lives is a powerful motivation for others to welcome his message. We may not always see ourselves as direct instruments of God’s healing, or exorcists, but the power of God in our lives is a powerful testimony that helps others to believe that such a liberation from evil and sin is also possible for them.

Let’s thank Our Lord today for those people in our lives who brought us the message of salvation, and let’s ask Our Lord to show us how we can share that testimony in order to give others the opportunity to know Our Lord and be freed from sin.

Readings: Genesis 44:18–21, 23b–29, 45:1–5; Psalm 105:16–21; Matthew 10:7–15.

13th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel we’re reminded that sometimes we get stuck in life, or see our friends stuck, and no one can go it alone. How many times have we helped our friends or been helped by them in one of those moments? In today’s Gospel the paralytic is stuck both physically and spiritually. Sin drains us and paralyzes us to the point that we can’t get out of it alone. One of the saddest things of being a sinner is that sense of being alone and helpless. As believers, following Christ’s example, we try to help everyone who is stuck in life, especially our friends, but also by being a friend to the friendless when they really need someone. Sin also isolates, and sometimes the sinners themselves try to isolate themselves from others, but they can only get so far before they get stuck.

Jesus teaches us today to bring them to him, because he’s the only friend who can help us definitively get unstuck. The scribes and the crowds couldn’t believe that a man could be an instrument of forgiveness, since God alone forgives sins. They didn’t know yet that Jesus was God, but he himself in referring to himself as the Son of Man alludes to what we experience today in priests and bishops as ministers of the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick: God has given them the authority to spiritually heal on his behalf and as his istruments. Through these sacred ministers the sick and sinners are brought to Jesus to receive healing, spiritual, physical, or both, and the grace to face their trials in faith and trust.

If you’re struggling with illness, spiritual or physical, seek out Our Lord in the sacraments and don’t be afraid to ask your friends for help. If you’re blessed with good spiritual health, ask Our Lord to be that friend with the tact, prudence, and wisdom to bring those paralytics in you life to him.

Readings: Genesis 22:1b–19; Psalm 115:1–6, 8–9; Matthew 9:1–8.

12th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord teaches us that the real measure of the spiritual merit of our actions are whether those actions are in conformity with the will of God. Some would interpret that as depriving us of any free will or possibility of making decisions for ourselves, but as the First Reading shows us, God works with our decisions, even when they’re bad decisions: Sarai regretted the outcome of her suggestion to her husband that by today’s standards we know to be a bad one, but the Lord sent Hagar back to Sarai with a promise that she’d have a a great son and a many descendants. If God blesses in a bad situation that stemmed from bad decisions, we can only imagine how much he’ll bless us when we try staying united to him and doing what we think would be the most pleasing to him.

If we’ve never really spoken with him in prayer we’ll just be going through the motions. Prayer is not just reciting some words, it is also asking him for the grace to know him and his will for our lives. The solid foundation for the “house” of our lives is the will of God and knowing him. That provides a stability that goes beyond mortgages, health issues, even death itself. When we build on our knowledge of him and his will there’s nothing to fear from any storms in life that may buffet us, even when we’re broke, sick, in a difficult family situation, etc.

Let’s pray today for a deeper knowledge of Our Lord and his will in our lives in order to stay on a solid foundation.

Readings: Genesis 16:1–12, 15–16; Psalm 106:1b–5; Matthew 7:21–29.