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13th Sunday |
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Dear Preachers:
SUMMER APPEAL It is that time of the year again when we reach out to you for help. Our weekly e-mailings now go to almost 6,000 recipients. Our webpage, “Preacher Exchange,” had 11 million “hits” last year. We have kept these Spanish and English resources free so those in poorer parishes and the developing world can have access to them. Judging from the emails I get, that is exactly what is happening. We can’t continue this service without your help – so will you?
Every day our community prays for our benefactors. And so you and your loved ones will be remembered at our daily Eucharist and prayer during these summer days . Thank you.
Send tax deductible checks to:
“First Impressions” Dominican Friars 3150 Vince Hagan Dr. Irving, Texas 75062-4736
Or: For an online donation go to: https://www.preacherexchange.com/donations.htm When we see someone we have not seen for a while, we often ask, “What’s new?” As we approach today’s Gospel, one we have heard many times, Jesus is asking something new of us – or perhaps something deeper.
His words are challenging. He asks us to love him more than father, mother, son, or daughter. Is he serious! Even more, he asks us to take up our cross and lose our life in order to find it. He is not speaking only to new disciples; he is addressing those who have been following him for a long time – like many of us gathered for prayer today.
His question to us today may not be new, but it remains very much in the present tense: “After all these years, am I still first in your life?” Most of us have been coming to church for many years. Have we gradually settled in, allowing comfort, routines, opinions, possessions, or even family concerns to take the central place that belongs to Christ?
Then there is the uncomfortable question Jesus puts before us: Are we still willing to carry our cross? The cross may no longer be dramatic persecution. It may be putting everything aside to care for a spouse or a dependent adult child; forgiving old hurts or remaining faithful when prayer seems lifeless. Jesus is asking whether we will continue walking with him even when discipleship is costly.
And in his name, as his disciples, are we still open to the stranger and the needy? The Gospel passage ends not with heroic deeds but with simple acts of hospitality – a welcome and a cup of cold water. We are reminded that holiness is often found in ordinary kindness and generosity.
Here is another question for us older disciples: Do we trust Jesus enough to let go as we grow older, experience losses, face health challenges, grieve loved ones, and eventually surrender our own lives? Jesus says that those who lose their life for his sake will find it. He invites us to place our future in God's hands. For the regular churchgoer, this Gospel is not a call to do more things but to renew our first love – Jesus. He is asking us to trust him and follow him wherever he leads.
Hearing his words anew today, I want to ask myself: What currently occupies my heart more than my relationship with Christ? And as I look ahead to the coming week, to whom can I show Christ's love through a simple act of welcome or kindness?
This Gospel is not addressed only to new disciples, nor is discipleship something we accomplished years ago. Rather, being Jesus' disciple is a choice we must make again each day. Even though we have been following him for a long time, he continues to say, “Follow me.”
When Jesus says, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it,” it sounds like a contradiction. But he is speaking about two different ways of living. The person who tries to “find” life by making self-preservation, comfort, security, success, reputation, or personal advantage the highest goal will eventually discover that such a life is too small. In trying to save oneself at all costs, one can lose what matters most: a relationship with God, love for others, and the deeper purpose for which God created us.
By contrast, the person who “loses” life for Christ's sake is willing to place faithfulness above self-interest. This does not usually mean physical martyrdom. For most Christians, it means daily acts of self-giving: forgiving when it is difficult, serving without recognition, speaking the truth when it is unpopular, remaining faithful to commitments, caring for the vulnerable, and following Christ even when it costs something.
Jesus is teaching a paradox: life becomes fullest when it is given away in love. The more tightly we cling to ourselves, the less alive we become. The more we entrust ourselves to God and spend ourselves for others, the more we discover the life God intends for us.
The saints discovered the truth of Jesus' words. They did not become less themselves by giving their lives to Christ; they became more fully themselves. In God's kingdom, the path to life is not grasping but giving; not holding on but trusting; not self-centeredness but love.
Jesus is not asking us to hate life. He is inviting us to stop making ourselves the center of life. When we lose ourselves in love for God and neighbor, we finally find the life we have been searching for all along.
What does St. Paul mean when he tells the Roman community that those “who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death”?
For Paul, baptism unites us with the saving events of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. We die to our old way of life, dominated by sin, selfishness, and separation from God. Through baptism we are buried with Christ, symbolizing the end of our old existence. With Christ we rise to a new life, already sharing in the power of his resurrection.
The power of sin no longer has the final claim on us. As Paul says, we are to “think of yourselves as dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.” This does not mean Christians never sin again, but that our fundamental identity has been changed.
Baptism is not simply something that happened years ago at the font. It is a way of life. Every day Christians are called to die to whatever diminishes life – resentment, greed, pride, and indifference – and to rise to a new way of living marked by faith, hope, love, mercy, and service.
Perhaps Paul is asking us the same question Jesus asks in today's Gospel: Are you following me only when it costs little and is convenient? Or are you willing to die to self so that Christ may live more fully in you?
The Christian life is not merely about believing certain truths; it is about participating in Christ's death and resurrection every day. In losing ourselves for his sake, we discover the new life that God has been offering us from the beginning.
Click here for a link to this Sunday’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062826.cfm
The homily is to be a personal word. So, after we have sketched out the movements of the homily, but before we begin to write, we might ask ourselves, “How will I emerge as a person of faith and love in this homily? By definition, preaching is communication from a person of faith to people of faith. Still, the only way your people will know you as a person of faith is by your sharing your faith. Sunday preaching differs from the “witness talk” of a retreat or revival, to be sure, but the effective preacher finds ways of confirming that it is personal faith that fires the homily.
----Stephen Vincent de Leers, WRITTEN TEXT BECOMES LIVING WORD: THE VISION AND PRACTICE OF SUNDAY PREACHING. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004) ISBN- 0-8146-2759-5 paper, $17.95.----page 185.
“Justice and judgment are the foundation of your throne; love and loyalty march before you.” --Psalm 89:15
I have been reflecting on three words recently: Compassion, Conscience, and Courage. As we celebrate “liberty and justice for all” this 4th of July, it is fitting we consider them. When I studied civics in school, it was taught that with each of our freedoms comes duties and responsibilities. One of the major Social Teachings of the Church repeats this: we have duties and responsibilities to one another, to our families, and to the larger society. Freedom does not give us the license (liberty of action or thought) to do or say anything we please. Tempering the exercise of freedom with compassion, conscience, and courage will yield a more just life.
On compassion, our late Pope Francis writes: “Compassion is to endure with the other, to suffer with the other, to draw near to the one who is suffering. A word, a caress, but given from the heart; this is compassion” (2/8/17). Our freedom must always have a loving, empathic concern for others and their freedom.
On conscience, the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes (16), states: “Deep within their consciences, men and women discover a law which they have not laid upon themselves and which they must obey. Its voice, ever calling them to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, tells them inwardly at the right moment: do this, shun that. For they have in their hearts a law inscribed by God. Their dignity rests in observing this law, and by it they will be judged. . .By conscience, in a wonderful way, that law is made known which is fulfilled in the love of God and of one’s neighbor.” Exercising our freedom means thoughtful examination and balancing others’ freedom with ours.
Finally, on exercising courage when compassionate, Pope Leo offers this: “Compassion,” Pope Leo stresses, “takes form through concrete actions,” because in order to help someone, “you cannot stay at a distance.” To be compassionate, you have to get involved and be prepared to “even get dirty, perhaps take risks.” (5/2025 General Audience). And that takes courage. Without courage, we will not step out of our personal box in order to help create a more just, free world.
Truly acting with compassion, conscience, and courage will manifest God’s justice and judgment and form our lives as ones of love and loyalty in freedom before the One who created us.
Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC
Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run. “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home. From today’s 2 Kings reading:
One day Elisha come to Shunem where there was a woman of influence, who urged him to dine with her. Reflection:
During the first part of our celebration today we, like the Shunemite woman welcomed God’s Word into our “home” – we made room for it in our hearts. As Scripture reminds us, the Word blossoms there with a promise of new life. God sends prophetic people to speak the Word to us, but remember, prophetic people don’t always fit into official categories; they aren’t always bearing an institutional stamp of approval. Yet, God often comes to us in the other and through people who are strangers.
So, we ask ourselves:
• Who comes bearing the Word of God to me? • Do they comfort, or challenge me with their message?
POSTCARDS TO DEATH-ROW INMATES
“One has to strongly affirm that condemnation to the death penalty is an inhuman measure that humiliates personal dignity, in whatever form it is carried out.” ---Pope Francis
Inmates on death row are the most forgotten people in the prison system. Each week I am posting in this space several inmates’ names and locations. I invite you to write a postcard to one or more of them to let them know that: we have not forgotten them; are praying for them and their families; or whatever personal encouragement you might like to give them. If the inmate responds, you might consider becoming pen pals.
Patrick Steen #0388640 (On death row since 8/28/1998) Robert Steen #0584095 (9/3/1998) Rodney Taylor #0472274 (10/23/1998)
Central Prison PO Box 247, Phoenix MD 21131 (While the prison is in Raleigh mail for inmates is processed at this address)
For more information on the Catholic position on the death penalty go to the Catholic Mobilizing Network: http://catholicsmobilizing.org
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