by Faith Central & Steve Welsh
“… In a similar way, Jesus insists that a person speaks ‘out of the abundance of the heart’ (Luke 6:45). He too compares our speech, whether good or bad, to what grows on a tree: ‘For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit’ (Luke 6:43). …”
“… Jesus … said … ‘Let the children come to Me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.’ …”
“… Jesus told them … from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. … they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.’ … Jesus … said to [His Disciples] ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.'”
“Jesus said to His Disciples: ‘Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward. ‘Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. …”
“Lord Jesus, send Your Spirit to help us to read the scriptures with the same mind that You read them to the disciples on the way to Emmaus. … Create silence in us so that we may listen to Your voice in creation and in the scriptures, in events and in people, above all in the poor and suffering. May Your word guide us so that we too, like the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, may experience the force of Your resurrection and witness to others that You are alive in our midst as source of fraternity, justice and peace. We ask this of You, Jesus, Son of Mary, who revealed the Father to us and sent us Your Spirit. Amen. …”
“The blessings and woes we hear in today’s Gospel mark the perfection of all the wisdom of the Old Testament. That wisdom is summed up with marvelous symmetry in today’s First Reading and Psalm: Each declares that the righteous—those who hope in the Lord and delight in His Law—will prosper like a tree planted near living waters. The wicked, who put their ‘trust in human beings,’ are cursed to wither and die. …”
“Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. …”
“In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat, Jesus summoned the disciples and said,
‘My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days
and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance.’ … taking the seven loaves He gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to His Disciples to distribute … They also had a few fish. He said the Blessing over them and ordered them distributed also. They ate and were satisfied. They picked up the fragments left over – seven baskets. There were about four thousand people. …”
“… Then He looked up to heaven and groaned. ‘Ephphatha!’ Jesus said. So goes the account of the healing of the deaf man near the Sea of Galilee, as told in Mark. The word is one of a handful of words in Aramaic—believed to be the vernacular language of Jesus—that survived into the Greek New Testament. We don’t have to find an Aramaic dictionary to discover the meaning of this word. Mark readily supplies a definition: Be opened! Immediately, then, we are told that the man’s ears were ‘opened’ and that he was able to speak. …”
“‘… The Sower sows the Word. These are the ones on the path where the word is sown. As soon as they hear, Satan comes at once and takes away the word sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground who, when they hear the word, receive it at once with joy. But they have no roots; they last only for a time. … when tribulation or persecution comes because of the Word, they quickly fall away. Those sown among thorns are another sort. They are the people who hear the word, but worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the Word, and it bears no Fruit. But those sown on rich soil are the ones who hear the Word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.'”