Faith

Monday, 15th week in ordinary time – 13th July 2026 – Matthew 10:34-11:1

We come to the end of the second of five discourses found in the Gospel of Matthew. The mission discourse ends with no apology. It is not a diplomatic speech that has carefully tip toed safely past a minefield of difficult issues. In the mission discourse, Jesus had delivered a battle brief, not a business pitch.

The mission discourse has been more like a bull taken on by its horns or the elephant in the room addressed! Jesus hands his followers their crosses, warns them of intense persecution, and addresses the polarizing reality of his kingdom head-on. True leadership warns of the scars before promising the crown.

The mission discourse makes it abundantly clear that the Christian will always be to the world, a point of derision, an object of scorn. This is not merely from those who sit outside our green pastures but also include some ‘goats’ who mock the sheep within.

Making a choice for Christ clearly sets you on a collision course with the rest of the world and the world does not have to be on the other side of the globe but can be on the other side of your home. For the early Church, this domestic fracture was the first step on a road that often led to literal martyrdom. Rejecting the pagan family deities was viewed as a betrayal of both home and state, turning loved ones into informants.

Those in the early Church who followed Christ, leaving their pagan faiths, were the ones who did not just feel some heat under the collar; many felt the heat literally as they were burnt for Nero’s pleasure. The early saints did not risk social awkwardness; they risked becoming literal torches for Nero’s garden.

Jesus is emphatic; luke-warm Christians who have been bathing in their watered down understanding of the Catholic faith are “not worthy of him.” While we may propagate and promote our happy-clappy, kumbaya version of Christ, that version, good as it may be, must also be confronted with verse 38 where we are told that if Christ is not first in everything, then we stand nowhere in his court; we are not worthy of him. A watered-down faith does not dilute the truth; it completely invalidates it.

Christ completely dismantles the modern illusion of a risk-free, low-cost discipleship. He demands total supremacy in the human heart, refusing to be treated as a secondary lifestyle accessory or a comfortable weekend insurance policy.

While Christ did not ask us to actively seek persecutors so that we may be martyred, he actively asks us to die to ourselves in order that we may find him. He says “those who find THEIR life will lose it.” What Christ is saying is that those who make a life for themselves in which HE is not part of, that life is a life created for themselves, a life devoid of him. That life, as happy as it may seem to the world, is a life lost. Such a life is lived in quiet rebellion against God. You don’t have to curse Christ to reject Him; you just have to build a life without Him.

The mission discourse winds down with some respite for the ones sent out. So far, most of the discourse seems to border on not just the straight and narrow but the harrowing and challenging. So, Christ encourages us to promote and support the work of the evangelist.

By welcoming the missionary, you welcome Christ. That welcome may be just a cup of cold water that you can afford but each of us can afford to fund the mission and life of the Church. You don’t have to cross an ocean to advance the Gospel; you just have to being by opening your door.

A cup of cold water was the cheapest, most basic element of hospitality in the ancient Near East, yet Jesus attaches an eternal reward to it. This teaches us that supporting the priesthood, religious vocations, and parish missions is not a passive charity; it is an active, mystical participation in the work of Christ Himself. If your feet cannot carry the message across borders, your resources must carry the messenger.

The Gospel of today ends with the doctrine we all advocate but fail short of; to practice what we preach. Jesus did exactly that! Having “instructed the twelve he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities” till he walked to Jerusalem, walked up the steps of the Praetorium and then with a cross on his back, walked all the way up to Golgotha. Christ did not write a textbook on suffering; He became the living blueprint for it.

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Faith

Tuesday, 15th Week in ordinary time – 14th July,2026 – Matthew 11:20-24

Matthew 11:1 marks the exact transition concluding the “Missionary Discourse” of Chapter 10. “Now when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities. The lectionary omits verses 2-19 concerning John the Baptist. These texts will find their way in the liturgy of the Church several times in Advent and around the feast concerning John the Baptist.

The Gospel passage of today stands smack in between the sending out of the seventy into mission and the return of the seventy from mission.  It almost seems like an interlude of sorts to create the impression that a certain time has lapsed between the two events.

Principally, chapters eleven and twelve will cover the rejection of Our Lord and are referred to as the rejection passages. Verses 16-19, which precede this text, gives us a clear understanding of the rejection that Jesus faced. Nothing He does seems to make the people happy. The people of Jesus’s day wanted John the Baptist to lighten up and Jesus to tighten up. They wanted a faith that was “just right”—which inevitably meant a faith that demanded absolutely nothing from them.

Today’s churchgoers often suffer from the same  syndrome. One church is “too traditional,” the other is “too casual.” One preacher is “too political,” the next is “too superficial.” We have turned the sanctuary into a theater and the liturgy into a playlist. If the music doesn’t hit our exact emotional frequency, or if the sermon runs five minutes over, we “write a bad review” by excusing ourselves from Sunday mass.  We won’t dance when the flute is played, we won’t mourn when the dirge is sung. If John the Baptist is too radical for you, and Jesus is too scandalous for you, the problem isn’t the preacher—the problem is your appetite.  It seems like we want an omelet but do not want to break the eggs.

Jesus responds to this indifference towards him and to his mission and having confronted their behaviour (verse 16-19) he now decides to shake a fist at them. This is not Jesus losing His temper; this is Jesus declaring that indifference is not a neutral position—it is a catastrophic choice.

The text draws our attention to three predominantly Jewish cities in Galilee. The first two of the three Jewish cities mentioned are Chorazin and Bethsaida; towns situated near the Sea of Galilee and which today lie in ruin. However a good portion of the synagogue of Chorazin is still standing. The third Jewish city of Capernaum which is mentioned by Jesus in the text is the place that Jesus made his own headquarters for ministry.

Clearly, the Gospel tells us that these three cities were not places where he worked some random miracle or gave some small-time village religious teaching. Our Lord had put his heart and soul into bringing them the words of salvation and the acts of divine grace. We are told, “most of his deeds of power had been done here.” It is for this reason that he reproaches them

But what had Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum done? It’s not so much what they have done but rather what they failed to do. To them had the Gospel been preached vigorously. Capernaum was the Lord’s de facto headquarters in the region of Galilee. More than two thirds of the miracle of Jesus had been worked around the lake of Galilee where these cities were situated. They should have become cities of holiness and faith; light to the Gentiles who had outnumbered them in this region. Yet the ministry of Jesus had no effect on them personally.

We often assume that the closer someone is to the things of God, the more faithful they will be. The three cities or as they have come to be called, the “evangelical triangle” proves the exact opposite. Familiarity bred a lethal form of contempt, or worse, boredom. They became consumers of the supernatural. A miracle no longer was a call to repent; it was just Tuesday afternoon entertainment in Capernaum.

We live in a culture of spiritual surplus. We have endless resources, Christian podcasts, apps, and churches on every corner. Because grace is cheap and readily available to us, we treat it as disposable. Capernaum witnessed the maximum output of heaven, but offered the minimum response of earth.

What is it that Jesus wanted from them as a sign of acceptance of his ministry? He wanted them to repent. Jesus didn’t want their applause, their money, or their institutional validation. He wanted their brokenness. He wanted them to repent—a word that in Greek (metanoia) literally means a radical, total U-turn of the mind, heart, and lifestyle.

He says to them that if his words and deeds were preached in the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented. We know that these cities were known for their immorality and lust. If immoral cities could respond in repentance, then why were the cities that our Lord preached to, so indifferent to putting on a new heart and mind? I guess the answer to that question lies in the actions of each of us. Have I repented or do I take the love of the Lord for granted?

Sadly, the culture out there—addicts, outcasts, and those broken by secularism—often responds to the raw Gospel with immediate tears and transformation because they know they are dying. Meanwhile, the lifetime churchgoer sits in the pew checking their watch, utterly untouched, because they think they are already well. It is a terrifying truth that the gutter is often closer to grace than the front pew of a Church.

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Faith

Wednesday, 15th week in ordinary time – Matthew 11:25-27

Unlike our usual tendency to offer gratitude only when specific desires are met, Jesus models a radical form of thanksgiving. His praise to the Father emerges directly in the face of rejection and mission setbacks, teaching us to anchor our hearts in God’s divine purpose rather than worldly success. True faith thanks God in the valley of rejection, not just on the mountain of answered prayer

We know from scripture, that the cities that Jesus preached to and worked miracles in, would not repent (11:20-23). Supernatural signs may amaze the eyes, but they cannot convert a stubborn will. The people to whom Our Lord ministered to were perpetually ungrateful; they would not mourn even if a dirge was sung nor dance when the flute was player (11:17-18).

People who teach the skills in the art of staying positive need to take a leaf out of Our Lord’s life. In the face of such rejection, Jesus does not walk away, rather he says a prayer of thanksgiving. In the face of hostility, he sees the plan of God. He is not consumed by the negativity that his mission receives but rather sees that God had a method to this apparent madness. Modern ‘positivity gurus’ teach us how to manifest success; Jesus models how to give thanks in the middle of a shipwreck.

The text of today has two parts; a prayer of thanksgiving for the revelation of God (verses 25&26) and then we are given the content of that revelation (verse 27). Tomorrow’s text has an invitation that is extended as a result of this revelation. It consists of those ever-loved words of Jesus, “come to me all you who labour and are overburdened.”

For now, let us focus on the prayer of thanksgiving and the revelation made. The thanksgiving is not for some super achievement. It is a thanksgiving to God for the way He works. We usually thank God only when we win, but Jesus thanked Him simply for how He works.

We are told that his plan is not revealed to the wise and the learned. That should not lead one to falsely assume that God is opposed to scholars and scholarship. For the message of God to sink into our hearts, we have to place our human learning aside and become students in God’s university of simple surprises. Stepping into God’s university does not mean abandoning our intelligence; it means humbling it. This is the first lesson we take away from today’s text.

But to this prayer of thanksgiving is added the secret itself. God reveals his top-secret plans and he gives Jesus the honour to ‘reveal’ it. “ALL things have been handed to me by my Father,” says Jesus, “no one knows the son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.”

God handed over to his son Jesus, ALL things; not some things. It is in the power of Jesus to give all things that we need. We frequently live with a mindset of spiritual scarcity, treating God’s provisions as if they are limited or rationed. We carefully calculate our requests, wondering if our problems are too big or if we are asking for too much. Yet, Jesus shatters this scarcity mindset by declaring that the Father has handed over all things to Him—not a partial custody, not a restricted allowance, but absolute ownership.

It is for this reason that tomorrow’s text begins with the words “come to me.” Does this take away the important role that God the creator plays in our lives? Does he stop functioning as a loving father? Not at all. It is easy to misinterpret the phrase “all things have been handed over to me” as a celestial transfer of power, as if the Father has stepped back into passive retirement.

Because the Father hands over all things to Jesus that does not mean he as Father can’t also hand things to us. But now like Mary, he gently nudges us to go to his Son. Our Blessed Mother said, “do whatever he asks you” and those thoughts seem to resonate in the revelation of God to us, through Jesus. From the halls of heaven to the wedding at Cana, the divine directive remains beautifully unchanged; ‘look to the Son’.

But Jesus also has the intimate knowledge of God as Abba. The God of the Old Testament was rendered nameless because his name could not be taken in vain or just about any time. The God of the Old Testament was feared and held in awe as if he was distant from his people.

Jesus knows the father and he calls him ABBA. He shares with us that intimate knowledge of the Abba he knows. Yet this is not some mutual admiration society that Jesus and God the Father are exclusive members of. Jesus cracked open the inner circle of heaven to turn strangers into sons and daughters of Abba. This deep knowledge of who God is, was meant to be shared and that knowledge is shared by Jesus.

Is this knowledge of the Father meant for all? No! Jesus makes this very clear. While this knowledge could be for anyone the decision to reveal it is left with Jesus alone. It is for this reason that the next verse which we will study tomorrow begins with the words, “come to me.”

Yet we may choose to reject that call of Jesus but by doing that we reject the way to Father. “NO ONE can come to the Father”, says Jesus, “except through me.” (John 14:6). God’s love has no boundaries, but His access has a name: to decline the call of Jesus is to lock the door to the Father.

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15th Sunday in ordinary time – Isaiah 55:10-11 and Matthew 13:1-23

 One third of Jesus’ teachings were in parables. His objective was to make His message as simple as possible so that the message of the kingdom would take root and bear an abundant harvest. Chapter thirteen has seven parables relating to the kingdom of heaven and the first of these parables is the parable of the sower.

Right away I want to draw your attention to the name of this parable. The ‘parable of the sower’ is a misleading title that appears in our Bibles. Over the years we have come to believe that the focus of the parable is on the sower. The focus of the parable is not the sower or the seed but the soil or the listeners of the parable.

Interestingly while the parable does speak of the sower, who would have been a male peasant farmer, it does not claim that the sower was the owner of the land. This means that any hired help disconnected from the final output of the harvest could have been given the job. Being a hired help, he would simply do the job at hand, namely to scatter seeds. The sower scatters his seed carelessly, recklessly, seemingly wasting much of the seed on ground that holds little promise for a fruitful harvest.

 However, when we reorient our minds to the purpose of the parable, we come to realize that what really matters is the soil. Make no mistake, the parable is not a critique of the sower and how he sows but on the soil. Hence this parable is really about us—those who hear the “word of the kingdom” and this kingdom is filled with mixed responses to Jesus and his ministry even today.

The readers of Matthew’s Gospel would have had no problem understanding this parable for they were living its consequences. Matthew’s community was no care free hippie generation. Their decision to follow Christ clandestinely or openly meant that consequences followed.  Believers faced constant persecution, from family rejection to state-enforced death

It is no wonder that Matthew places this parable first among the seven. The parable served as a reminder to Matthews’s early Christian community of the soil they could be in response to the divine sower’s actions.  It was natural that given the amount of persecution they faced the response would be as varied as those in the parable.

Some fell on the path and are snatched by the evil one to give up their faith immediately. Some who fell on rocky ground were those that were enamoured by the message of Jesus but gave it up as quickly in the face of persecution.  Then there were those in the early Church who were fascinated by the message of Jesus but rejected it, for that meant giving up the lifestyle of wealth and the thought of giving up their wealth choked their desire.

Finally we come to those in Matthew’s community that took solace and consolation from this parable; those who endured the onslaught of rejection and persecution. Their fidelity to the message of Christ paid off, for their lives bore fruit and witness in the kingdom.

Interestingly there is no uniform output even from those who were receptive to the seed.  Following Christ may bring us unity but not uniformity. That’s why spiritual comparison is a futile exercise. Each of us, before the Lord, knows the kind of soil we are. Do not judge your harvest by another’s basket; your soil has its own story with the Saviour. The kingdom is a partnership of the divine and the human. Think about it, God could be a solo artist in bringing about His kingdom, yet he wants me to partner in His divine plan.

Even though the parables focus is not on the sower we could learn a lesson or two from the sowers that we in the Church have become. Too often we play it safe, sowing the word only where we are confident it will be well received, and only where those who receive it are likely to become contributing members of our congregations. When we only speak to the safe and receptive, we turn the Church into an exclusive club

While it is true that the parable calls us to be good and receptive soil, for a moment let us also embrace the task of being ‘sowers’ who are willing to risk sowing God’s word via WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram. Notice how much of social media has become about us and what we do each day and so little about the Lord and how we could spread his message. Social media asks us to broadcast our lives; faith calls us to broadcast His light. We must stop scrolling past our calling and start sowing into the digital wilderness

Jesus’ approach to mission is quite at odds with our play-it-safe instincts. He gives us the freedom to take risks for the sake of the gospel. Perhaps modern sowing is not meant to be on fields anymore but via our digital devices. Playing it safe in mission is the quickest way to guarantee a barren harves

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Friday, 10th week in ordinary time – 10th July 2026 – Matthew 10:16-23

Major religious movements rarely start with a grand blueprint for an institution. Instead, they begin as lived experiences within an existing culture. The early Church experienced a slow, often painful birth, transitioning from an internal Jewish debate to a global religious identity.

St Matthew wrote this Gospel during a period of great hostility between the Jews and the Christians. The Christians had not yet formed a clear identity as a body of people, as we have today. At best, the early Christians were a sect of Judaism that believed that the Messiah was Jesus who had died and had risen. The early Christians still prayed at the synagogues, their prayers were still the prayers that their Jewish brothers and sisters recited, their habits and cultural mannerism were still predominantly Jewish.

But all that changed with the council of Jamnia or Jabneh. After the fall of Jerusalem, (A.D.70) the “Council of Jabneh” was convened. It consisted of a group of Jewish scholars who were granted permission by Rome around the year 90 to meet in Palestine near the Mediterranean Sea in Jabneh (or Jamnia). Here they established a non-authoritative, “reconstituted” Sanhedrin.

These scholars shifted the focal point of Jewish identity from space (the Temple) to text (the Torah). Facing existential erasure, they realized that a community anchored in a shared scriptural canon could survive anywhere in the world, even without a homeland. When the Romans destroyed the Temple of stone, the sages at Jabneh built a temple of text. Jabneh proved that a community anchored in a scripture can survive without a homeland. Among the things they discussed was the status of several questionable writings in the Jewish Bible. They also rejected the Christian writings and made a new translation of the Greek Septuagint.

While scholars’ debate on what happened next, many have accepted that the council of Jabneh decided to expel those who did not adhere to their value system. Such a procedure is described in the Birkat ha-Minim, a ‘Blessing on the heretics’ (actually a curse) and among those cursed were the Jewish apostates whom we would call ‘the early Christians’. This sparked tension between Judaism and Christianity and built up even more in the medieval ages.

When St Matthew was writing the mission discourse, this tension was a lived experience. Today, every Christians would read this text in their own context that they live in. In India, these persecutions are real and fraught with dire threats and bodily harm. The hostile trial rooms of the first century have simply relocated to the police stations of the twenty-first. Anti-conversion laws have turned the act of tending to one’s flock into a criminal conspiracy. It is not uncommon to have right wing groups, attack with impunity, Christian evangelist and Christian institutions; taking the law into their own hands while the law itself looks the other way. The tragedy is not just the vigilante violence, but the official silence that validates it.

So often, those who are charged with enforcing the law, are complicit in harbouring the attackers while filing false charges against Christian evangelists who are just tending to their own flock and institutions. In the hands of the powerful, the law is no longer a shield for the weak, but a sword against the faithful. Matthew’s Mission Discourse is no longer a historical text; in India, it is a daily survival guide.

Social media is abuzz with videos recorded by right wing groups insulting St Teresa, calling for a Hindu nation and blatantly suggesting violence against Christians and other minorities. The very media channels that would scream blue murder at the top of their lungs on prime-time TV are silent to such hate. Yet, should anyone with a surname that sounds remotely from a minority faith dare to even critique the functioning of government, the same media channels would call you anti-national and within hours you would be in some prison on trumped up charges.

 Jesus does not hide the danger that his disciples will face. He does not sugar coat the path ahead. The Gospel does not hide the wolves; it prepares the sheep. “Beware”, he says, “of them.” That “them,” has become for “us” in India, any one from the highest offices in the political class to one who thinks that they are doing a holy task for their faith by attacking a Christian. In India, the threat is systemic: it is voted into high office and executed on local streets.

The description of the persecution that is found in this text, seems like it is happening in real time, here in India. “You will be dragged before governors and kings before me,” said Jesus. While fear will be natural in such a circumstance, the defence of the righteous is the work of the Holy Spirit. The words of our defence will be given, for God will speak through us. But that does not mean that the doors of the prison will be opened by an angel and we will be released, like it did for St Peter. Our lives could end up like St Stephen who was stoned to death. God promises us the words for our defense, not an escape from our cross.

Perhaps the saddest pain that comes from such persecution is not the physical attacks but the pain that comes from those with whom we once lived and loved; our neighbours, colleagues or students who studied and lived in our Christian institutions. The heaviest stones are not thrown by strangers, but by those who once shared our bread. The words of Jesus ring true two thousand years later “brother against brother, father against child, children against parents.” It has not been uncommon for us today in India, to hear and perhaps experience, first hand, our very “brothers and sisters” with whom we took oaths in school, now turn against the very priests and nuns at whose hand they were educated.

The shrill voices on social media accusing Christians as having a single agenda of conversion is fanned with impunity. The loudest lies on social media are treated as gospel, while the true Gospel is treated as a crime. Social Media giants are never asked to take these posts and videos down nor are these pages and sites every banned by government. Tragically, the lies have been told again and again giving rise to fear and falsehood and the victimization of religious minorities. When the state refuses to ban the hate, it implicitly signs the warrant for the attack.

Today, we in India are hated as citizens because we hold Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. Unfortunately, even now, some members of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church refuse to admit the reality of this persecution that is faced on a daily basis. The superscription of the text of today’s Gospel in the RSV Bible reads, “the coming persecution.” For us in India, it is not a matter of coming persecution but a matter of ongoing persecution.

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