In today’s Gospel we hear that Jesus withdraws to the region of Tyre and Sidon... foreign territory... Gentile territory, and a woman comes running after him. She is not one of his own. She is not part of the covenant. She is, in the language of that world, an outsider... a foreigner... a Canaanite.

And she will not stop shouting.

"Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon."

And Jesus... says nothing.

Let’s sit in Jesus’ silence for a moment, because it is an uncomfortable silence. The disciples want her gone. "Send her away, she keeps calling out after us." She is a nuisance to them. She does not belong in their story. And when Jesus finally does speak, what he says is harder still, even more uncomfortable: "It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."

Friends, that is a slur. Let us not soften it. Jesus, in that moment, speaks the language of exclusion that his own people used against her people.

And she does not walk away. She does not even argue the insult. She faces him and takes the very words thrown at her and turns them into a door. "Please, Lord, even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their master's table."

Frist she asks for mercy. Then she recognizes who Jeus is, “Lord, Son of David”…the Messiah of Isreal, then she recognizes that even the crumbs of his mercy are more than enough to heal her daughter.

And everything changes: "O woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish."

That is the reversal at the heart of this Gospel. A woman with no standing, no claim, no place at the table, becomes the one who challenges Jesus, and teaches us, what the table is actually for.

Because look at what surrounds her story this Sunday in our Scripture. Isaiah promises that foreigners who love the Lord
will be brought to God's holy mountain, (foreigners on God’s holy mountain), and then God says, "my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." Not some peoples. All peoples.

The psalm cries out, "let all the nations praise you." And St. Paul, writing to the Romans, tells the Gentiles plainly that the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable, and that God has mercy on all peoples.

“All”. That word will not let us go this weekend.

I cannot preach on this Gospel and pretend we are not living in a moment when the word "foreigner" is being used again, in our own country, the way it was used against that woman at the border of Tyre and Sidon. Immigrants and refugees are being spoken of today the way the disciples spoke of her... as a nuisance, as someone to be sent away, as someone who does not belong at the table. Families are being separated. People fleeing violence are being turned back. The stranger among us, whom Scripture again and again calls us to welcome, is being met not with hospitality but with open animosity and even cruelty.

I say this not to make a political point but because it is impossible to read Matthew 15 honestly and not hear our own headlines echoing inside it. The Church has never asked us to abandon prudence or the rule of law. But she insists that we look for and discover the face of Christ in the migrant, the refugee, the one who comes to us from outside our borders and outside our comfort zones. Isaiah's house of prayer for all peoples is not a slogan. It is a description of what God's own house actually is, from the very mouth of God’s own prophet.

But here is not where I want to leave you, because this Gospel does not end in confrontation. It ends in healing. The Canaanite Woman’s daughter is made whole. Jesus does not simply tolerate this woman...he is moved by her, he praises her, he holds her up as an example of the very faith he has been searching for. The outsider becomes the model disciple. The religious leaders of his time have missed who he is, his disciples are often bewildered as to his true identity, and here, this foreigner, a pagan, a woman, really sees him for who he really is, believes in him, and names him out loud for all to hear.

And that is good news for every single one of us because every one of us knows what it is to feel like when we are on the outside. We all have had reasons when we called out and it seemed like heaven gave us silence. A diagnosis. A broken relationship. A child, a sibling, a parent, or a friend, we cannot reach. A grief that will not lift. We have all stood, at some point, in the space of that woman, crying out into what feels like an empty void.

Here is the promise this Gospel leaves us. Jesus was never actually walking away from her. He was moving toward her the entire time...he chose to go into Gentile territory, into the very place she lived, before she ever called out his name. That is who God is. God does not wait for us to arrive at the right address. God comes to where we already are, and is with us!

So when you walk through your own dark valley, and it feels like the silence is winning, remember the Canaanite Woman. Do not stop calling out. And trust that the Lord who seemed silent for a moment was never absent for a moment. He is already there, before you even knew to ask. Remember “the Lord is with you” always!

Blessings,
Fr Tim

I want to take a look at our first reading today, because I think Elijah is having a very significant moment. Elijah is a man who has given his whole self for God. He has preached in the name of God, he has confronted the powerful, he has stood his ground against political leaders when standing his ground was genuinely dangerous. And now he is hiding in a cave on a mountain, exhausted and afraid, waiting for God to show up and make it clear as to what God wants him to do next. And God does show up, but not in any of the ways Elijah expects. First comes a wind so fierce it splits mountains and shatters rocks. God was not in the wind. Then there was an earthquake. God was not in the earthquake. Then fire…God was not in the fire. And then, after all of that, a tiny whispering sound. A still, small voice. And that is where Elijah finds God.
I think many of us feel as though we are in that cave right now.

We are living through a moment in this country that feels like sustained wind, earthquake, and fire all at once. The political noise is deafening, the chaos is destabilizing. The divisions are deep and painful. There are policies being pursued right now that are causing real harm to real people: to families living in poverty who cannot stretch a paycheck to cover rent and groceries both, to people of color who continue to carry the weight of systems that were never designed to see them fully, to women whose dignity and autonomy are still subject to political negotiation, to immigrants and refugees who came here seeking safety and found fear and discrimination instead. These are not abstractions. These are the people God has placed in our path. Many of them are in this church. And in the middle of all that noise, God says: I am not in the earthquake. I am not in the fire. Listen for the whisper.

That is not a call to retreat from the hard work of justice. It is a call to make sure we are rooted in something that the storm cannot blow away, because the storm is real and it is not going away anytime soon, and if all we have is outrage, eventually the outrage runs out. But if we are rooted in the God who speaks in the still small voice, we have something that does not run out.

Which brings us to Peter...soaking wet and embarrassed, getting back into the boat. I love this story, and I love Peter, because Peter is us. The disciples are out on the water in the middle of the night, the wind is against them, and they are terrified. And then Jesus comes walking toward them on the water and they think he is a ghost, which honestly I think is a reasonable response given the circumstances. And Jesus says to them, take courage, it is I, do not be afraid. And Peter, in his desire to please Jesus, says: Lord, if it is really you, tell me to come to you on the water. Now think about that for a second. The other disciples are gripping the sides of the boat. Peter is the one who says, Lord, call me out onto the water. There is something genuinely beautiful about the real faith displayed in that impulse. He wants to go where Jesus is, even if where Jesus is happens to be the middle of a stormy sea in the dark.

And Jesus says, come. And Peter gets out of the boat. And he actually walks on the water. For a moment, Peter is doing something that defies every reasonable expectation. Because his eyes are on Jesus. Then he notices the wind. He looks away. And he sinks. Jesus reaches out immediately and catches him, and says, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And I want to be careful here because I think this line is sometimes preached in a way that makes Peter feel small and makes us feel guilty every time we struggle. That is not what I hear in it. What I hear is something closer to tenderness. Why did you doubt? Not as accusation. As an honest question. You were doing it, Peter. You were walking on the water…then what happened? Because here is the truth: Peter didn’t sink because he lacked faith entirely. He sank because he shifted his gaze from Jesus to the storm. He sank because the wind was real and loud and frightening, and for a moment it was bigger in his eyes than the One who had called him out onto the water. I think that is the spiritual challenge of this particular moment in our national life. The wind is howling. The waves are real and crashing on our shores. The suffering of those pushed to the margins of our society is real, and it should grieve us, and it does grieve us. Paul in the second reading describes a grief that is almost unbearable, a sorrow and constant anguish of heart for people he loves who are struggling. Paul knows what it is to be broken open by the suffering of others. And he does not dismiss that grief. He carries it. But he carries it in Christ.

So the question I hear the Gospel putting to us today is…where are our eyes focused?
Because if our eyes are fixed on the storm alone, we will despair. The problems are too large, the forces arrayed against the poor and the marginalized are too powerful, the political dysfunction is too entrenched, and despair starts to feel like the only honest response. But despair is not what Jesus calls us to. Not because the suffering is not real, but because the storm does not have the last word. We are not a people of despair, we are a people of hope!

Jesus has the last word. And Jesus says come.

Come out onto the water. Come toward me. Come into the places where the comfortable will not go, to where the powerful have turned their backs to, where women and people of color and immigrants and the poor are told their lives matter less. Come there. I will be there. Keep your eyes on me.

And when we sink, and there will be moments when we sink, Jesus will do the same thing he did for Peter. Immediately, he stretched out his hand and caught him. There is no hesitation in God's mercy. There is no delay while Jesus decides whether or not Peter deserves to be rescued. He just catches him. Jesus will catch us.

The psalm today gives us language for what we are asking God to do. "Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation. And justice and peace shall kiss." That is a beautiful image. Not justice in place of peace, not peace as a cover for injustice, but justice and peace together, inseparable, embracing one another. That is the world God is building, God’s Reign. That is the world we are called to work toward, even on the days when the wind is howling.

So this week, when the noise gets loud, find the whisper. When the waves rise, fix your eyes on Jesus. And when someone around you is sinking, be the first one who reaches out a hand. Because that is exactly what Jesus would do.

And remember Jesus’ words…“Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.”
​
Blessings,
Fr Tim

I usually end my reflection with questions but today I want to start with a question: When was the last time someone told you that everything you need is already here, that you don't have to earn it, that it is yours without price and without condition? Because that is exactly what God says to us today through the prophet Isaiah. "All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat!" No waiting list. No application. Just come, as you are!

That is the daring generosity at the heart of today's Word, and I think we need to sit with it for a moment before we rush past it, because we live in a world that tells us exactly the opposite.

Our world says: you get what you earn, you deserve what you pay for, and if you don't have enough, that is probably your own fault. The market decides who eats and who goes hungry, who has shelter and who sleeps outside, who belongs and who gets sent away. And the truth is that logic has seeped into our politics, into our public life, and sometimes even into our Church conversations, in ways that should unsettle us, deeply.

We are living through a moment of real strain in this country. You feel it. I feel it. The political divisions are deep and they are bitter. Policies are being debated and enacted that directly affect the most vulnerable among us: the working poor who cannot make rent, the immigrant families living in fear, women whose dignity and full humanity are still contested in law and in culture, people of color who carry the exhausting weight of systemic racism, refugees who fled violence only to be met with suspicion and rejection at our borders. These are not abstract policy questions. These are our sisters and brothers. Many of them sit in this very church.

And into all of that, God speaks through Isaiah with something that sounds almost reckless: "Why spend your money for what is not bread? Your wages for what fails to satisfy?" In other word, you are pouring your energy into systems and ideologies that are leaving people empty. Come to something that actually nourishes you. Come to me!

Then we get to the Gospel, and Jesus puts flesh on that invitation in the most concrete way imaginable.

Jesus has just learned that his cousin John has been killed. He is grieving. He gets in a boat to find some solitude, some quiet, some space to breathe. And when he gets to shore, there is a crowd already gathered to greet him. Thousands of them. And Matthew tells us something important about what Jesus did in that moment. It says his heart was moved with pity. In the Greek, the word is something closer to being moved in your gut, a visceral, physical compassion that you feel before you think it.

Jesus sees the crowd and he does not see a problem to be managed. He sees people, human beings. And he heals them, and
he feeds them, and he refuses to send them away. He encounters them as they are.

Notice what the disciples say when evening comes. "This is a deserted place and it is already late. Dismiss the crowds." Isn't that a familiar response? This is too big, it is too complicated, it is too late in the day. Let them figure it out themselves. Send them away.

And Jesus says, no. "There is no need for them to go. Give them some food yourselves."

Give them some food yourselves! That line should stop us cold. Because we are the disciples. We are the ones standing there with five loaves and two fish looking at a problem that seems impossibly large. The hunger in our county and nation. The fear in our immigrant communities. The poverty that never quite makes the agenda. The exhaustion of those who are never really counted, those who are never really included. And it is tempting to say, Lord, we only have five loaves and two fish. This is not enough. We cannot possibly fix this.

In 2020, when the number of families coming to our parish food pantry blew up from 250 to 750, virtually overnight, believe me when I say we said, “Lord we only have five loves and two fish” we can’t do this…and we didn’t, all of you did…you stepped in, the local community stepped in!

Jesus doesn’t ask us to fix it on our own. He asks us to bring what we have to him…bring it here to me. And then watch what happens.

Because here is the good news…the genuinely joyful news that I want you to carry out of here today: the way of God is not scarcity. The way of God is abundance. When we place what we have, however little it feels, into the hands of Jesus, something happens that we cannot manufacture by ourselves. People get fed. Everyone is satisfied... and there are twelve baskets left over!

That is not a fairy tale. It is a description of what happens when communities of faith take seriously their call to share. We have seen it here in this parish. We see it in our partnerships with organizations like SEEC. We see it in the quiet generosity of this parish week after week. When we stop calculating whether we have enough and start trusting that God will multiply what we offer, the math changes.

St. Paul understood this. That is why he could write from prison, with such incredible confidence: "What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?" He lists everything that the world throws at the most vulnerable, and then he says: none of it. None of it separates us. We are not promised an easy road. But we are promised that the road does not run away from God. It runs toward God. And nothing, not political chaos, not systemic injustice, not the cruelty of the powerful, not even death itself, can cut us off from God’s love.

So here is where I want to land…we live in a hard moment. The problems are real and the suffering is real and the anger and fear is real. And it is okay to name that. But we are not a people of despair. We are a people of hope who believe that five loaves and two fish, placed in the right hands, can feed a multitude. We are a people who believe that the hand of the Lord, as the psalm says, is open, and that it satisfies the desire of every living thing. Every living thing. Not just the comfortable. Not just the documented. Not just the powerful. Every single living thing.

Our job is not to solve everything by lunchtime. Our job is to show up, bring what we have, and to let our hearts be moved the way Jesus' heart was moved, and to trust that God is ultimately in control, and that God deeply and passionately loves you just as you are!

Amen.

Blessings,
Fr Tim

In today's Gospel, Jesus compares the Reign of God to a treasure buried in a field...a pearl of great price. Who among us has not dreamt of finding a great treasure? Who hasn't imagined, if only for a moment, what it would be like to stumble across something so valuable that it changed everything?

Imagine the impact it would have upon your life. How would you use it? What would you do differently within your life with this newfound wealth? Would you share it with family and friends, or would you keep it quiet, afraid of what might change if others knew you were suddenly wealthy? Would you use it to help the poor and the less fortunate? Would it make you generous... or would it make you afraid of losing it?

These are the questions we ask ourselves when we imagine finding gold, or a pearl beyond price. But Jesus isn't talking about gold. Jesus isn't talking about a pearl, not really. The great treasure we've stumbled across is not a buried chest of coins, not a jewel pulled from the sea, but rather the promise of eternal life... the Reign of God, breaking into our midst, here, now, today.

This is exactly what Jesus is challenging us to do: to imagine how different our lives would be if we actually “lived” in the Reign of God. Not just on Sunday. Not just while we're here at Mass, dressed for the occasion, minds half on the homily and half on lunch. But every day. All the time. In the checkout line, in the midst of rush hour traffic, in the middle of a difficult conversation with a family member, or a loved one or a good friend, or in the quiet moment when no one is watching and we choose, or don't choose, to love.

Usually when we think of finding a treasure, we think immediately of financial gain, how it would change our lives, our children's futures, our retirement, our security. But in this case, we are challenged to think about an entirely different kind of change; how our lives would look if measured not by what we've accumulated or what we have or own, but rather by how we love one another, how we care for each other. Measured by how we live the Gospel in the ordinary, unglamorous hours of the day…not the hour we set aside for God, but all the hours of our days. How we impact the lives of the people around us... for  the better, or, if we're honest with ourselves, sometimes for the worse.

Finding the Reign of God, and falling in love with it, is the whole point of the parables we hear today. Not admiring it from a distance. Not respecting it as a nice idea, rather, falling in love with it…the way you fall in love with a person, so that it reorders everything else in your life around them.

There's a quote often attributed to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, though it was actually written by Fr. Joseph P. Whelan, SJ, a former provincial superior for the Jesuits of Maryland, in a reflection he gave on vocations and discernment. I think it's worth us hearing:

“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything…That's not sentimental language. I believe that is the most practical sentence you'll hear all week because it names the truth that whatever has seized our imagination is already deciding everything, whether we've noticed or not.

The question the Gospel puts to us today is simply: what has seized your imagination?

If I were utterly, totally, and completely in love with God above all else... if building up the Reign of God came first, before career, before comfort, before every other claim on my time and attention... would my life look any different than it did when I woke up this morning?

What is at the center of my life? What motivates what I read, what gets me out of bed, what breaks my heart in the world I meet each day, and what amazes me with joy and gratitude in that same world? Let’s fall in love all over again, with God, who so deeply and passionately loves you just as you are!
​
Blessings,
Fr Tim

Once again, this week Jesus speaks to us in parables…multifaceted gems that once tumbled around in our hearts and when ruminated upon, yield unbelievable insights into the Reign of God. While the disciples certainly preferred straightforward answers, Jesus obviously preferred parables.

Of the comparisons of the reign of God to a field, a mustard seed and the leaven in bread, I have always liked the comparison of the mustard seed to the Reign of God. This tiny, tiny little seed grows into a great bush…so large that the birds of the air make their nests in it.

If you take the parable at its face value it all seems quite lovely. However there is a dark side that farmers know well: the mustard bush is an invasive plant, it grows wildly and rapidly, quickly overtaking a garden…ruining the plants that had been planted with care…reducing their yield, if not completely choking them out.

Mustard bushes can be uncontrollable and rapidly spread across a farm if not quickly uprooted before going to seed. Surely this reality was not lost on Jesus…nor on those who heard him tell the parable. It seems that perhaps Jesus is presenting an image of the expansion of the Reign of God as something uncontrollable, invasive and fast growing!
But the reality of the mustard seed is that while it can be an invasive plant, it can also be a desired plant. One that is planted with purpose and care, that yields a valuable spice used in the seasoning of foods around the world.

Looking through the lenses of these images…the Reign of God is not something that can be domesticated or controlled…by its very nature it grows uncontrollably and bursts forth offering refuge and flavor to the world. I believe that many of us though would prefer something that we could contain and control… and domesticate!

But the truth is that the Reign of God is just that…“God’s Reign” …not ours. We are part of it by our baptism and we are called to help water it so that it continues to grow and “invade” every crevice and furrow of this planet, to give “flavor” to the world… but we don’t get to tame it and shape it to our designs, our tastes or desires.

Two thousand years ago Jesus’ vision of the bursting forth of the Reign of God was nothing less than radical….and it still is today. We are called to be part of that radical vision: to feed the hungry, to welcome the stranger, to shelter the homeless, to visit the sick and imprisoned…to love God with our whole being and to love one another as Christ loves us and to reach out and to care for “the other.”

Part of the Reign of God is the proclamation of the deep and passionate love of God for all peoples! And wasn’t it just this radical vision of the reign of God that Jesus preached that got him crucified… as his disciple, just how radical of a life am I willing to live? In a world that proclaims a “gospel of personal prosperity” -- tax cuts for the rich at the cost of healthcare cuts for the poor -- to what lengths am I willing to go in building up this radical vision of the Reign of God that Jesus preached? What concrete action can I take today to “water” the Reign of God and fight back against “fake Christianity”? Where and how do I see the Reign of God bursting forth in imaginative and radical ways in the world around me that support the poor and the marginalized and raise people up to the hope and vision that Jesus preached in the Gospel?
​
Blessings,
Fr Tim

In today’s Gospel Jesus once again instructs the crowds with a parable, a parable about a sower and the seed. But this parable raises as many questions as it seems to answer. One such question might be: who sows costly seeds among the weeds and the thorns, and why?

The good farmer, the successful farmer, sows seeds on good rich soil that has been prepared, fertilized and tilled and yields a rich and abundant harvest! So why does Jesus tell the parable of a farmer who scatters seeds on bad soil, indiscriminately throwing them among the weeds and the thorns and the rocky soil…why sow it in these places? What is his point?

Parables are meant to get us thinking…just when we think we understand the point of the story, upon further reflection, another layer is revealed. I like to compare parables to finely cut and polished gemstones. As we mull over a parable and turn it around in our minds, we discover more and more facets of the gemstone…of the story that, at first glance, may not have been so obvious. That is the amazing quality of a parable.

In this parable, some interpret the sower as God and the indiscriminate sowing of the seeds as an example of God’s all- inclusive love for all peoples. They understand the seed sown is “the Word” offered to everyone, regardless of whether or not they will accept it and allow it to grow within them. Perhaps God sees possibilities of growth and abundant harvest amongst the thorns and rocky soil that we cannot even yet imagine!

It seems to me that “the Word” being sown is “the Word of Justice” sown in the thorns and rocky ground of racism and bigotry. And “the Word” is crying out for racial justice in the midst of unjust structures that systematically favor one race over another…white privilege. And God’s “Word” will take root and grow, as we have seen it do in the hundreds of thousands who marched during the Black Lives Matter protests across this country and around the globe…pointing out systemic racism around the world. For Isaiah told us that God said, “so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” That “end” is justice and equality for all God’s children!

What is the “thorny and rocky” soil of our nation and our world today? I would say, our current administration’s blatant disregard for the wellbeing and care of the most vulnerable of our sisters and brothers…sadly more than disregard, a clear disdain, and active mistreatment with intent to harm! And more than just a refusal to welcome the stranger, as Jesus commanded, a clear desire and demonstrable glee, in uprooting the lives of immigrants and their families, and in some instances seeking to destroy their futures by deporting them to foreign countries, where they have no family, no hope of a future…only pain, loss and ruin.

Those who see this as just or even acceptable cannot call themselves Christian or in anyway followers of Jesus Christ or People of The Book! For it is clear that the God of Who lead the people out of Egypt commanded them that they must welcome the foreigner/the stranger in their midst, and Jesus commanded his followers that they must do the same, and that in the final judgement, they will be judged on whether or not they did so! It has never been a suggestion; it has always been the way in which God has called us to live with one another on the earth.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to measure our words and actions to make sure that they measure up to the standards that Jesus set forth in the Gospel. And as disciples we are called to work for justice, equality, and peace in the world. That means, working, voting, and speaking out on behalf of issues that deny people justice, equality and peace…and we all know what that looks like! Christian Nationalism is NOT Christian, it is racism and bigotry wrapped up in a fake, mistranslated and seriously distorted version of Christianity.

We know what discrimination, inequality and denial of justice looks like, so there is no excuse to not speak up and do our true Christian duty, one rooted in the words and call of Jesus Christ, a call clearly stated in Matthew 25, (Matt. 25: 31-46)!
As we continue to reflect on this Gospel this week, let us ask ourselves: what are the “thorny or rocky ground” parts of my life where the seeds of the Gospel could yield a more abundant harvest? Where in the world is the rocky soil on which God has sown seed from which is springing new growth at this moment that both surprises and delights me? Where am I being called “to tend to the Word” that needs to be cultivated and nurtured in the thorny and rocky round of the world around me?
​
Blessings,
Fr Tim

Today's Gospel invites us to "rest in Jesus"…to turn our burdens over to Jesus and allow the power of the Holy Spirit, dwelling within us, to empower us to push on, ever forward, knowing that we do so not alone, but filled with the presence of the very one who created us and loved us into being.

Jesus does not dismiss the burdens of life. On the contrary, Jesus recognizes just how heavy they are and, in the midst of the struggles of our lives, he assures us to be with us and help us.

We are not asked to set our burdens down at the door of the church as we enter…but rather we are invited to bring them to the altar and place them side by side with the bread and wine which we offer to be blessed and broken, transformed and shared.

This Jesus, the Christ, knows firsthand of our human burdens and understands our suffering. We need not fear that our God does not understand, or does not care. The message of all of Jesus' preaching and teaching was the exact opposite: our God knows us and loves us deeply and passionately and walks with us in the midst of our sufferings. Our God weeps with us when we weep and suffers with us when we suffer.

And as the Body of Christ, we are invited to reach out to others whose burdens and pain overwhelm them…to be the living compassion of Christ to them…to help carry their burdens and to walk with them in the midst of their suffering. As Pope Francis said, to "be a sign of mercy."…a living sign of mercy.

​Welcoming the stranger, the immigrant, the one who is "other," is an authentic living out of our discipleship…it incarnates the Gospel in the midst of our community. For so many among us and around us right now, that welcome is not an notion or an abstraction. It is the difference between a family that can bring its burden to the altar in peace, and a family that carries its burden alone, in fear, afraid even to be seen. Our own bishops have said as much in recent months, reminding us that whatever a person's circumstance, the thought of families held and separated and detained in fear "should challenge the conscience of every American." That is not a political statement…it is a Gospel statement!

Ironically in our reaching out to others, often our burdens are lightened, our wounds begin to heal and we become more and more the living Body of Christ. We become the face of the mercy of God.

Let us ask ourselves…do I have burdens or old wounds that I am holding on to and not giving over to Jesus, that getting rid of might allow me to be more available to my sisters and brothers in need? Whose burden or pain am I being called to help carry, and how might I do that? Is there someone among us right now -- an immigrant neighbor, or a family stripped of support and safety by recent government cuts to public aid programs like “SNAP” whose fear and hunger I have not noticed? How might I become the face of mercy, in a concrete way, to those who are suffering, and thus live out more fully my discipleship of Jesus Christ?
​
Blessings,
Fr Tim

In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks for total loyalty from his disciples! But, total allegiance to what ends? As we celebrate the birth of our nation we naturally think of things like the “pledge of allegiance,” the oath we make to our nation to defend her and to stand by her…and we recall the many brave women and men, down through two and a half centuries, who have risked and given their lives so that we may enjoy the freedoms that we do, even as some of them come under assault, by members of the very government that are meant to protect those freedoms.

Jesus was clear that he expected his followers to “be all in,” to choose him over their mothers and fathers, over their sisters and brothers and even over their daughters and sons. This must have sounded absurd! Given the culture they lived in, they must have asked themselves, who could do this?

To choose Jesus over your family was to make a choice that would mean that you would lose your identity, because in their culture, your identity was rooted in your family, and you would lose the ones who would care for you in old age, or care for you in the event of illness; choosing Jesus over your family would mean your future would immediately become much more precarious!

What was Jesus asking of his followers? It seems, given the larger context of the Gospel, that Jesus was asking his disciples to put him at the center of their lives and from this center to then move outward to others. This message of Jesus, taken in the context of the fullness of his message to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves, gives us insight into what he is suggesting.

If indeed we are able to place Christ at the center of our lives, then I believe we will be less self-absorbed, less harsh towards others and more kind and accepting of others as they are, more generous and loving. Basically, more Christ-like.

By consciously and reflectively living more deeply Christ centered lives we become more and more rooted in our relationship with Christ and ultimately, then our relationships with our sisters and brothers can blossom and become fuller and deeper. Then we can have more authentic human encounters with “the other” loving them and accepting them as we find them…just as God does.

By placing Christ at the center of my life, I prioritize my life in such a way that the central realities the Gospel calls me to live out in my life become the priorities of my life. In this way, the Gospel values of justice, peace, care of the poor and the marginalized, the sick and the imprisoned, these realities are no longer simply “nice ideals to work for” but rather “Divine fundamental imperatives” around which I build my life, create family, and live out my relationship with God, others and the planet.

So, this week, let us ask ourselves…am I putting anything or anyone ahead of Christ and my relationship with God that I need to reconsider so as to live a more Christ centered life? How might I strengthen and deepen my relationship with God so as to more positively impact my relationship with loved ones and with all my sisters and brothers?
​
Blessings,
Fr Tim

​In this weekend’s Gospel Jesus warns us against fear and tells us to fear no one. Fear, and in particular “fear of the other” has been the cause of the destruction of entire peoples and cultures, the cause of one war after another, and still we have not learned just how disastrous for humanity fearmongering and the hatred of those who are different can be to our world.

Poets, philosophers, and mystics alike all have warned that fear ultimately leads to the deadening of the soul and disconnection from the human family. Several years ago, Pope Francis warned that wherever there is fear, there will always be someone who will manipulate it to their own good. "Because fear, besides being good business for merchants of weapons and death, weakens and destabilizes us, destroying our psychological and spiritual defenses, anesthetizing us to the suffering of others and, in the end, making us cruel." The completely unnecessary and illegal war with Iran is a perfect example.

We find ourselves in the midst of a fear-ridden country and world with some people shouting of a growing calamity because of the calls for racial justice and equality, because of increased immigration, and other societal changes that are happening with our changing demographics. And yet, Jesus who found himself in a not too dissimilar geopolitical situation (think the Roman occupation of his native country) called his followers not to fear but to have faith…not to give into fear!

We too are called to not allow ourselves to be ruled by fear and allow it to turn us into cruel people who think of ourselves first and only, and leave the less fortunate to fend for themselves and to exclude them from our democratic debate, and to seek to exclude them from our communities, our schools, our churches and our public spaces. Pope Francis taught that mercy is the “best antidote” to fear! And in the same speech, he called for us to partner that mercy with courage.

We need courage to do the right thing in the face of fear which causes communities to want to build walls to keep people out, instead of bridges which invite people to build community. And it is fear that makes people choose open conflict rather than to embrace and welcome the stranger as Jesus has commanded us to do.

In a very real way we are called to “walk towards our fears” and not run from them. Walking towards our fears takes courage, but we must not forget that we do not walk that journey alone, we walk with Christ!

Our discipleship calls us to be courageous in these difficult and divisive times, and as Pope Francis told us, we are to “be a sign of mercy”, living signs of mercy to others, and Pope Leo has followed that up, calling us to be signs of hope! So let us be living signs of mercy and of hope to all those who are targeted or mistreated or threatened because of the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their gender or because of where they were born or who they love, or what their social status is or what their nationality. These realities cause fear in some people who are unable and unwilling to accept people who do not look like them, people who are “other than themselves.” They cannot accept that each and every human being is made in the image and likeness of God and is deeply and passionately loved by God just as they are!

And as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to stand up in opposition against those persons and movements that espouse social, political or religious ideologies and principles that deny or demean the God given human dignity of every woman, man and child on this planet.

Not until we have done this will we have truly lived the great commandment of Jesus: to love our neighbor as ourselves. We must ask ourselves, what personal biases am I being called to walk towards or to sit with and name? Let me pray to draw courage in facing my own biases with the Holy Spirit guiding me.

May each one of us be a sign of mercy and a sign of hope to those who are suffering, are discriminated against, are marginalized in any way, or ignored, or unloved.

May your lives be filled abundantly with the endless mercy and hope of God. Amen.

Blessings,
​Fr Tim

There is a sentence in today's Gospel that I want to sit with for a moment before I say anything else. Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, he was “moved with compassion.” But the word Matthew uses in ancient Greek – splanchnizomai – meant something more visceral than moved with compassion…it meant more like, his gut wrenched. It meant he felt the suffering of those people in the very core of his body. It meant the pain of the harassed and helpless was not abstract to him. It landed in him physically. It hurt.

And after that gut-wrenching compassion comes action, prayer, the sending of laborers, the naming of the mission: to proclaim the kingdom, to cure the sick, to raise the dead, to cleanse those the world has declared unclean, to cast out the demons of fear and exploitation and indifference. And then, perhaps the most astonishing line in the whole passage, "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give." This is not an optional instruction for the especially holy. It seems that this is Jesus’ description of discipleship itself.

Before we can be sent, we have to see. And seeing -- real seeing -- the seeing that wrenches the gut, requires that we look at who the crowds actually are.

They are the families sleeping in their cars a few miles from here, within sight of some of the most expensive ZIP codes in the country. They are the undocumented worker who got injured on a job site and is afraid to call 911. They are the asylum seeker who has fled violence, crossed thousands of miles, and now waits in uncertainty, told by a system that seems not to care, that her case will take years. They are the Black teenager followed in a store, the transgender young person rejected by family. The woman whose gifts are diminished at every turn, the elderly man who has outlived everyone he loved, the homeless woman riding the train all night too afraid to go to a shelter for fear of violence.

Jesus saw the crowds and he did not look away. He did not manage them at arm's length, process them through a system, sort them into groups of deserving and undeserving. He was moved. He was filled with compassion. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd, not as a problem to be solved, but as beloved children of God in need of someone to journey with them as they walked through their private valley of darkness.

So as disciples, sent, who do we see? Who do we allow our gut to wrench for? And this is a harder question: who do we look away from? Who has our society trained us to be blind to? I think that probably most all of us have at some time in our lives felt unseen, felt unwelcomed, unloved. And in converse to this reality, Paul in Romans then writes, "God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." While we were still sinners. Not after we had cleaned up. Not after we had proven ourselves. While we were yet broken, love came.

That unconditional grace received without cost, it is the source and the energy of our mission.

When Jesus sends the twelve, he sends them light. No gold, no silver, no extra tunic, no staff for self-defense. There is something deeply countercultural, even counter-instinctual. We live in a world that tells us to secure ourselves first, to accumulate leverage, to build walls of protection before we go out. And here is Jesus saying: go as you are. Go with what you've been given. Trust.

This is not a romanticization of poverty. Jesus knew poverty and he healed it wherever he found it. This is something different -- a call to radical dependence on God and on the communities we go to serve, rather than on accumulated privilege and power. It is the posture of the peacemaker.

In our tradition, we talk about nonviolence not merely as a tactic but as a way of seeing, a way of being in the world! A conviction that every human being carries the image of God and that no cause, however just, justifies the destruction of that image. That stance towards the world, going without sword or shield, trusting in the power of truth and love, in the power of the Holy Spirit is exactly what Jesus embodies in Matthew's Gospel, and what he asks of the laborers he sends. 

We who are gathered here know what it means to work for justice in a world that sometimes pushes back hard. We know what it is to advocate for the immigrant family facing deportation, to show up at a school board meeting for inclusive policies, to speak out when the silence of the comfortable becomes complicity in harm. That work is exhausting. And it is holy. And it begins, always, in that gut-wrenching compassion that Jesus modeled, seeing the harassed and those in need of help and refusing to look away.

In a few minutes, we will come to this table. We will receive without cost the bread of life. We will receive what we did not earn, have not merited, and could not purchase. We will receive grace. And that will be sufficient for the work of the day.

And then the proclamation, “the Mass is ended” and we will be sent: Go, this is our mission. We are the laborers. The harvest is abundant. Those who are worn down, harassed and in need of help are waiting, not as objects of charity, but as the face of Christ, as the ones in whom God has placed the sacred image that our calling, as disciples, is meant to serve.

Blessings,
Fr Tim