July 24 2020
Friday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 JER 3:14-17
Return, rebellious children, says the LORD,
for I am your Master;
I will take you, one from a city, two from a clan,
and bring you to Zion.
I will appoint over you shepherds after my own heart,
who will shepherd you wisely and prudently.
When you multiply and become fruitful in the land,
says the LORD,
They will in those days no longer say,
“The ark of the covenant of the LORD!”
They will no longer think of it, or remember it,
or miss it, or make another.
At that time they will call Jerusalem the LORD’s throne;
there all nations will be gathered together
to honor the name of the LORD at Jerusalem,
and they will walk no longer in their hardhearted wickedness.
Responsorial Psalm JER 31:10, 11-12, 13
R. (see 10d) The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
Hear the word of the LORD, O nations,
proclaim it on distant isles, and say:
He who scattered Israel, now gathers them together,
he guards them as a shepherd his flock.
R. The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
The LORD shall ransom Jacob,
he shall redeem him from the hand of his conqueror.
Shouting, they shall mount the heights of Zion,
they shall come streaming to the LORD’s blessings:
The grain, the wine, and the oil,
the sheep and the oxen.
R. The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
Then the virgins shall make merry and dance,
and young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into joy,
I will console and gladden them after their sorrows.
R. The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
Alleluia SEE LK 8:15
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 13:18-23
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Hear the parable of the sower.
The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the Kingdom
without understanding it,
and the Evil One comes and steals away
what was sown in his heart.
The seed sown on rocky ground
is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy.
But he has no root and lasts only for a time.
When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word,
he immediately falls away.
The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word,
but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word
and it bears no fruit.
But the seed sown on rich soil
is the one who hears the word and understands it,
who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church
52 God, who “dwells in unapproachable light”, wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son.3 By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity.
“For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)
FRIDAY, JULY 24TH Mt. 13:18-23 Jesus’ Parable of the Sower and the Seed.
- Seed sown on the path… Someone hears the Word of God but has no preparation… no knowledge… and so no understanding. The seed can’t take root! How important it is that we develop in ourselves and our children good habits of reading and study, and then apply them to the faith, so that when we hear the Word it takes root in a mind that has been prepared. Otherwise, the Word will be easily stolen by the enemy.
- Seed sown on rocky ground… The Word is heard and received with joy, but the roots are shallow and die quickly because the Word’s acceptance was based on feelings, rather than being rooted in the intellect or will. When the good feelings pass, the person moves on. Our feelings must be guided by reason informed by faith, that is, firmly rooted in the truth of Christ preserved and taught by Holy Mother Church, protected from error by the Holy Spirit.
- Seed sown among thorns… The thorns choke the Word, preventing it from growing. Thorns that choke the Word: 1) Thorns of hurts from the past… 2) Thorns of worries about the future… 3) Thorns of personal sin. The Word of God is always competing with three deadly enemies of our soul – the past, the future, and personal sin!
- Thorns of Past Hurts… Bitterness and resentment from past hurts are thorns that choke the Word to death! With our good will, effort, and God’s grace these thorns can be removed. The healing balm that we must apply liberally to remove these thorns from our heart is this: we must pray daily and earnestly for the eternal salvation of anyone who has hurt us deeply. At first the flesh may rebel, but for the sake of charity we must persevere. This is not hypocrisy, it is heroic virtue.
- Our God cannot be outdone in generosity! Through this act of charity, we are saving two souls – their soul and our own! For, “Charity covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Pt. 4:8) God further rewards our generosity such that the dew of prayer begins to soften our heart until we can truly forgive them and desire their eternal salvation, thereby setting us free from a hurt and resentment we may have been carrying for years!
- Thorns of worldly concerns to ensure riches and comfort now and for the future – these thorns, so prevalent in our society, also choke the Word. We live in a materialistic world that is largely blind to spiritual realities. Jesus said, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Mt. 6:25-27) Later, the Lord gives us an even stronger admonition: “What would it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul for all eternity.” (Mt. 16:26)
- To overcome these thorns of worldly concerns that grip our heart and soul, we must first throw ourselves on Jesus’ Divine Mercy, saying often during the day, “Jesus, I trust in you.” Then we must pray daily these two prayers of supplication and trust that Jesus prayed. The first: “Our Father are art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The second prayer: “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but thy will be done.” (Mt. 26:39) Then beg for the grace to live what we are praying!
- That being said, if God has blessed us materially, if we are comfortably well-off, we are obliged to practice the virtue of generosity with our treasure! “To whom much is given, much will be required.” (Lk. 12:48) The parents of our Blessed Mother, St. Joachim and St. Ann, were in this category. They expressed their thanksgiving to God by giving one third of their means to the poor; another third, they gave to the Temple and its upkeep; and they kept only a third for themselves. Let us pray to St. Joachim and St. Ann for their love of God and their generosity of heart!
- Thorns of personal sin. Ven. Pope Pius Xll said, “The loss of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.”
- Catechism of the Catholic Church. CCC 1847: “God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us.”116 To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”117
- Taken from In Conversation with God by Francis Fernandez (Vol 4, Pgs 212-213): “With the help of divine mercy, because there is no right to grace, the Christian who follows Christ closely will not fall habitually into grave faults. But the knowledge of our weakness should lead us to avoid any occasion of sin, even the most remote. We do so by mortifying our senses, by not trusting in our own judgment or our years of faithfulness or our excellent formation. We have to ask the Lord to make us to abhor every sin and every deliberate fault, to give us a conscience sensitive enough to detect the smallest sins. We need to purify our soul with frequent Confession so that we do not lose our sense of sin, that sense that seems so absent from our society.”
- Seed sown on rich soil… The Word is heard… it is understood… it bears fruit and yields a great harvest! What makes the soil rich? Some soil is rich by nature, but most of the time the soil is rich because it has been well tended. We all want to be that rich soil so that the Word of God will take root deep within us yielding an abundant harvest! How do we become good soil… what is our preparation?
- The soil of our heart must be softened by love of God and love of souls. Spending our daily holy hour in deep prayer with the Lord increases our love for God, and for what God loves – the salvation of immortal souls! Therefore, let us pray and suffer for the salvation of souls!
- More still, Jesus Christ – Second Person of the Blessed Trinity – became man, suffered and died to save each and every one of us! Knowing this, let us beg for the grace to see the value of each person through the lens of the cross, then love and serve them as Jesus commanded us to do. Then the King will say to us, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world”… for, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers, you did for me.” (Mt. 25: 34, 40)
- The soil of our heart must be watered by voluntary sacrifices and patient acceptance of the involuntary sufferings God permits in our life for our sanctification and the sanctification of the whole Church.
- The soil of our heart must be weeded by frequent reception of the Sacrament of Penance!
- The soil of our heart receives essential nutrients by frequent and fervent Holy Communions!
- We further enrich the soil of our heart by studying the Faith and reading the lives of the Saints – living icons of the Gospel and our older brothers and sisters in Christ!
- Finally, our Blessed Mother Mary will enrich the soil of our heart with the grace of final perseverance if we love her and remain faithful to praying the daily Rosary, in which we pray 50 times… Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death!
- “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” (Heb 12: 1-2)
