25 August 2026 - gnat for nothing

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin,
and have neglected the weightier things of the law:
judgment and mercy and fidelity.

There is a modern expression that encapsulates the approach of the Pharisees: majoring in the minors. They took a rigorous approach to details. This would not have been wrong in itself but it caused them to ignore and neglect the weightier things of the law: "judgment and mercy and fidelity". Jesus did not say the details were unimportant. He criticized the Pharisees for ignoring more important things because of a disproportionate focus on those details. But why focus in that way? Was it not precisely because such things were easier to control, because it was easier to succeed at precision tithing than at comprehensive mercy? Was it not also because of the way that these lesser things appeared to demonstrate their religious expertise in ways that more vague and amorphous concepts like mercy could not? They thought their tithing was impressive, and used it to build a public image of themselves that implied that they neglected nothing. Yet what good was tithing if it did not represent putting God first in one's life, if it had nothing to do with fidelity? Tithing in such a way as to build one's own ego was exactly the opposite of the point.

You cleanse the outside of cup and dish,
but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.

The Pharisees selected actions that required nuance and demonstrated competence, but that didn't touch the heart in any real way. They multiplied their compliance with external details because it provided a good front to mask their hearts, which were far from God. They wanted to look good in the eyes of others, but the motivations they pursued were fundamentally selfish. 

We can't say that we don't know Catholics who have taken an approach similar to that of the Pharisees, or even that we have never been such Catholics ourselves. Externals are easier. Inner transformation is not within our direct control. We may make occasional efforts at conversion, but when results evade us we tend to revert back to what we can control rather than persisting in bringing our good desires to God through prayer. Such externally excellent Catholics who nevertheless harbor invisible corruption help to explain the state of religious discourse on the internet. Engaging in abstract debates with strangers is very easy and controllable. But it is also mostly irrelevant and useless. Our outrage only serves to distract us from our actual lives in which we stand in need of actual grace in order to become less like Pharisees and more like Jesus himself, who never neglected judgment, mercy, or fidelity.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, stand firm
and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught,
either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.

We don't have to guess about what is important, or make up our own traditions about what should be our priorities in this life. The living Tradition of the Church contains all we need to know as long as we approach it honestly and sincerely. This Tradition is not burdensome. It is a part of the everlasting encouragement given to us by Jesus Christ and God our Father. This gift really can "encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word".

Craig Musseau  - Good To Me

 

24 August 2026 - branch office

Today's Readings
(Audio)

We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law,
and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.

Moses wrote of another like himself who would come, to whom the people would listen. The prophets predicted the coming of a messianic figure who would bring freedom to his people. They looked to the age when a royal son of David would reign on the throne after God finally cast their sins away and fully espoused himself to them as his people. There were many different threads of messianic prophecy but, according to Philip, Jesus himself was the one who fulfilled them all.

But Nathanael said to him,
"Can anything good come from Nazareth?"

It was only natural for Nathanael (also know as Bartholomew) to push back against the apparently excessive exuberance of Philip. It felt to Nathanael as though Philip had gotten caught up in the hype of someone who, if not a charlatan, could not be everything that had been claimed about him. He pushed back by questioning his humble origins. Superficially it made a lot of sense to wonder how someone with such a lofty destiny could come from such apparently humble origins. But such a view was based on prejudice, assumptions that Jesus would be a certain way because he seemed to come from a certain place and group of people. Yet even identifying Jesus as coming from any locale in Israel or on the planet earth could not do full justice to his identity. It wasn't enough to explain that there were many good and wise people living in Nazareth. It didn't help to mention that he had actually been born in Bethlehem. There was more to him than the accidents of his origins could explain. Thus, rather than debating Nathanael about his specific criticism he instead invited him to come and see for himself.

Philip said to him, "Come and see."

Many people in our own day think that they know something about Jesus because they place him in a category and use that category to define him. They think of him as a mythical figure, or a spiritual leader like Buddha or Muhammad. Or they seem him as the mascot of a authoritarian structure that uses superstition to control its members. It is probably helpful to explain why none of these is remotely accurately as a description of Jesus. But even more helpful, when possible, is inviting people to see for themselves. When people believe falsehoods about Jesus it is typically because they have accepted what they have been told by others. The best antidote to this is to ask them to give Jesus a chance to reveal himself to them. In the best cases people with integrity to desire the truth will find it.

"Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him."

People who take the invitation to come and see will discover a Jesus who knows them, who understands their deepest hopes and dreams. Nathanael likely hoped to have a place in the messianic age in which people would invite one another under their fig tree (see Zechariah 3:10). Jesus not only identified this aspiration but helped Nathanael to realize that it had basically happened to him. Suddenly Nazareth sounded not so much like a backwater town of no account but now more like the promised messianic branch of which prophets had spoken. Nathanael's entire life had been re-contextualized in one meeting.

"Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel."

The way that Nathanael experienced being known by Jesus allowed him to come to belief that Jesus was indeed the long awaited Messiah. But there was still more yet to be revealed, more than Nathanael guessed or could have imagined.

You will see greater things than this."
And he said to him, "Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will see heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

Jesus was the bridge between heaven and earth, and God's dwelling place among men. Nathanael took the invitation to come and see Jesus and found the fulfillment of his longings. But because he would also choose to remain with Jesus as a disciple he would "see greater things than this". So too for us. We must not stop or be content with an initial revelation about Jesus, even a very transformative one. We can always know him more deeply than we do. His transcendence guarantees that however much we have received there is always more to find in him.

 

Chris Tomlin - Jesus Messiah

 

23 August 2026 - passing keys

Today's Readings
(Audio)

"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" 
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

The popular consensus about Jesus is never going to tell us the whole story, even when it contains aspects that are true. When we ask the least informed people they may suggest that Jesus was merely fictional, mythological, like characters in so many other poetic stories. Of people who answer in this way, some may assert that the stories about him were at least noble ideals. Others may hold a grudge for the ways, some of which are indeed admittedly negative, that the story of Jesus has changed the history of the world. But the position that there was no historical reality to Jesus is not historically tenable. 

One who is asked about the identity of Jesus must provide some concrete rationale for how a poor and insignificant rabbi became so important. Closer to the truth than those who say that Jesus didn't exist at all are those who suggest that he was merely a good moral teacher whose identity was later exaggerated by his followers. Or others may suggest that he was a political revolutionary whose identity took on the shape of a legend in the years after his life. 

None of these common theories can provide a compelling account of the data we have from history about Jesus. One might say that Jesus was like the earlier prophets, that he so provocatively called Israel to account for her failure to put love of God and as her first priority that people desired to put him to death in order to silence him. But this doesn't explain the categorical difference between his impact and that of earlier prophets. It doesn't explain the split between early Christians and Jews in the practice of such traditions as the celebration of the Sabbath and keeping kosher food laws. It doesn't explain the meaning of the immediate and constant emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus as the central historical fact on which the faith of Christians was built. 

Jesus did speak prophetically and incited much opposition in doing so. But much of this opposition was precisely because of the central place his own person played in his message, to the degree that, if it were not true it would certainly be blasphemous. None of the other prophets spoke of themselves as exciting before Abraham or as greater than Solomon, much less as one with the Father, the sole person capable of revealing him to the world. But Jesus did say and was hated for saying these and similar things. Yet, unlike the other prophets, his message was uniquely vindicated through the resurrection, the Father signing the testimony of the Son with his own divine power. Even the life of an authentic prophet could not account for the historical truth about the person of Jesus. Much less so the life of a merely political revolutionary, who would quickly have been forgotten along with so many other violent messianic figures of the time.

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" 

Even if we ask other Christians about Jesus they can only answer by telling us about Jesus. Even if we can repeat with exactitude what they have told us, correctly stating that he is fully human and fully divine, it does not mean that we have internalized those truths, or that we know him in the way he wants to be known. It is one thing to say truly that Jesus is Lord. But it is something else to experience the truth of who he is through a revelation that transforms our lives. What others can't convey through mere words the Father desires to reveal to us through his Spirit. It is important to help Christians to know true doctrine about Jesus. But it is even more important to point them to a personal encounter with him.

"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." 

- Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI

The role Peter was given in the Church as a guarantee against the forces of the netherworld is unique to him and his successors, the popes. But the guarantee is built on his faith in the revelation of the Father precisely to signal that the Church will always be a rock were the truth can be found. The voice of Peter calls through the centuries, not only teaching us truths about Jesus, but calling each of us to have our own encounter with him. She does this perhaps most perfectly in the mass, where she not only presents to us Jesus as an object of faith, but invites us to come and receive the Eucharistic Lord.

DC Talk - Mind's Eye

 

22 August 2026 - works of chairity

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

 

The scribes and the Pharisees
have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.
Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,
but do not follow their example.

It is a perennial problem that those in positions of authentic religious authority are sometimes scandalous in their example. They may be the source of legitimate teaching of doctrine and the application thereof without first applying it to their own lives. This does not necessarily invalidate their authority or make them any less necessary sources of religious knowledge. In short, we can't necessarily ignore or avoid them just because they are bad people. Ideally we will find teachers whose lives and whose message coincide, teachings whom we can know by their fruit. But if we can't find such teachers we still need access to authentic doctrine. We still need to stand under the authority of the chair of Peter in the Church. If we should not entirely oppose even hypocritical leaders how much less should we choose to disregard such valid teaching as they do provide merely because of from whom it comes? If a teacher instructs us of the importance of charity but himself fails to be charitable it doesn't mean that the teaching itself was invalid. We can too easily use bad examples of religious leaders to confirm our bias against teachings with don't appeal to us, which we don't like, and which we would prefer to be false. Just because a liberal priest was caught up in a scandal doesn't necessarily invalidate everything he ever said. The same goes for a conservative priest. But we cherry pick such examples to feed our own confirmation bias. This too we must avoid.

For they preach but they do not practice.
They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry
and lay them on people’s shoulders,
but they will not lift a finger to move them.

We do not want to follow the example of teachers who are happy to expound endless fine points of doctrine without concern for those who receive it. They are those who are fascinated with their own image as religious people, and not actually interested in the spiritual well-being of those to whom they preach. If anything, they tend to enjoy the sense of superiority they get from saying so many true things about areas in which they believe others are failing. They tend to feel that merely by talking about it they are succeeding in those areas themselves. But often they aren't. Moreover those to whom they preach may often be in better spiritual positions, living a more simplistic, authentic, and integral approach, without being lost in the doctrinal nuance of religious showmanship. 

Rather than the scribes and the Pharisees we want to be like Jesus himself, whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light, light precisely because he helps his followers to carry it. We need not allow the condemnation of those who don't share this approach to unsettle our emotional well-being. If others (or even our inner voices) are hypercritical of our practice it need not lead us to desperation or despair. It should help us to rely more on Jesus and less on ourselves or others for the strength we need to live our call as Christians. When and only when we rely on Jesus for what we need we become able to help others in turn with what we ourselves have first received.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (see Second Corinthians 1:3-4).

The image we present to others is not a reliable motivation for our Christian life. Only our desire to share the mercy we have first received is sufficient to the task. If we focus on self-image we will quickly be content with a superficial approach to religious like that of the scribes and the Pharisees. We will feel the need to increasingly visible in our good works and noticed for our religious practices. This will in turn make us hard for us to love in the many small and often invisible ways that really matter. We will think that the only scale of action that matters is one that could be noticed by others. But such an attitude ultimately directs our piety, not toward God, but to the idol of popular opinion.

Let us listen to the call of our one Father in heaven, and follow the example of our one master, the Christ. Let us become humble servants rather than tyrannical leaders, just as Christ himself "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (see Matthew 20:28).

Brotherhood Of Hope - To Love You And To Make You Loved

 

21 August 2026 - connections

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law, tested him by asking,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

This question was more of an actual test than a trap like the previous questions from the Sadducees. All of those attempts to trip him up had failed. That must have made this scholar of the law  sufficiently curious to finally give Jesus an opportunity to explain his own perspective. Asking which commandment was greatest was implicitly also asked how all of the commandments were interrelated. What was the proper hierarchy of importance in all of the many rules and regulations of the law? We know that this was an important question because we see elsewhere that there were many who set commandments in opposition to each other, using some as an excuse to ignore others. For instance, people would use their obligation toward God as an excuse to shirk their duty toward their parents. Or they would use minute points of emphasis in order to discredit their opponents. And there were many other such similar abuses, all of which resulted from making human will, and not the intention of God the final arbiter of values.

He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.

The first part of the answer of Jesus was not shocking in itself. It was quite obvious that the Shema prayer, the first of the commandments, the one which people literally wore on their bodies in their phylacteries, was the most important. But knowing this was not sufficient for the Pharisees who often used the importance of that commandment in order to avoid obligations toward the neighbors, and even to justify their own vicious attitudes of hostility and envy toward them. 

Neither was it shocking for Jesus to list love of neighbor as the second highest on the list of divine priorities. Between these two commandments he covered the two tablets of the law given to Moses by God. The aspect of the answer of Jesus that was the most unique and important was said so casually that it might have been easy to miss. He introduced love of neighbor by stating that the "second is like it". If one truly processed in understood the way in which the second was like the first it would no longer be possible for those two commandments to be set against one another. If one took the idea seriously human reasoning could no longer use the law to justify selfish behavior. 

Love of God required love of one's neighbor whom God himself had created in his own image. Love of God, who was invisible, could not be fully demonstrated without loving the neighbors whom one could see (see First John 4:20). The tight connection of these two realities came to a head in Jesus himself. When people failed to love Jesus they demonstrated both a failure to love their neighbor, which was more obvious, but also a failure to love the God who had become incarnate in his person. 

Unlike using God as an excuse, which is relatively easy, it is more difficult to love neighbor in a way that causes us to fail in our obligations toward God. But it is possible. Most often this happens when what that to which we direct our love is not really neighbor, but self. We tell ourselves we love our neighbor when we are choosing something that is really for our own convenience or comfort rather than doing the hard work of loving them as God would have us love them. An example would be not sharing the Gospel for fear of upsetting them, or not intervening in destructive behavior such as addiction in order to help keep them superficially happy. But if our love of neighbor is truly like our love of God we can't be content to love only by half measures. Our own love for neighbor must become like his love for us. It must be the sort of love that seeks and saves and chases down the very last of the lost sheep, bringing others not finally to ourselves, but to the Lord. After all, he himself is the only true hope we have to offer, the only lasting love we have to give.

Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
and I will settle you upon your land;
thus you shall know that I am the LORD.

Bob Fitts - Hear O Israel

 

20 August 2026 - guest list

Today's Readings
(Audio)

The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who gave a wedding feast for his son.
He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast,
but they refused to come.

When the guests refused to come at first he tried to appeal to them, explaining that the feast he had prepared was extremely desirable. The ones whom he sent to persuade them were messengers like Ezekiel who conveyed the overwhelming goodness of his plan.

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.

Some simply ignored this second invitation, preferring the mundane tedium of their farms and businesses to a transformative celebration. But others responded with unexpectedly intense intense hostility, laying hold of his servants, mistreating them, and killing them. These were people who found the message of the prophets to be intolerable. They didn't want new hearts because they were convinced the ones they had were fine, and took offense at the suggestion that there was anything wrong. They were so attached to the current state of affairs in their lives that they found the invitation to the banquet to be threatening. The responded violently in an attempt to silence that invitation, trying to mute the voice of their conscience which resonated with its urgency.

Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.’
The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests.

Not everyone responded negatively to the invitation to the banquet. Those who were not already living lifestyles of smug self-satisfaction saw the invitation for the amazingly generous offer that it was. They knew that they had done nothing to deserve it. It had come to them entirely unexpectedly, as sheer grace. Yet even among this group not everyone could be bothered to make an appropriately complete response. 

He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?’
But he was reduced to silence.

One person thought he could enter the feast unchanged from his daily life in the world. He couldn't be bothered to avoid soiling his garments with sin en route. He seemed to assume that this sort of worldly contamination would not be a problem, even though a wedding was cause to wear the one's best and finest. He didn't realize the necessity of being robed in holiness and clothed with good works. He was like a Christian who failed to bring his baptismal robe unstained into God's Kingdom. The point, of course, is that it was within the realm of possibility for him to keep his clothing clean or to have it cleaned if necessary. And so too for us. Grace makes it possible for us to be cleansed from all of our impurities, as Ezekiel said. What we cannot do is attempt to proceed to the banquet of the Lamb while ignoring the gradually thickening accretion of sin on our spirits. The individual particles of dirt may seem minor. But the indifference that leads us to ignore them shows contempt for the host of the feast.

We may not be among those who are hostile to God's messengers (though it sometimes depends on what and how they preach to us). But many of us are tainted by lukewarm indifference. We take our daily life of farm and business to be primary and God's invitation to be something to be slotted in eventually, when it fits. But the opposite should be true. Even when we do initially recognize the importance of the invitation we still tend to overlook our own need for transformation, preferring to ignore the stains on our souls rather than to address them. Perhaps we do this because the cleaning process seems difficult. But we don't have to do the scrubbing ourselves. Rather we are meant to come to the living water we find in the sacraments to be washed clean therein. Then we use the grace we have received to make our lives correspond to our stated repentence by living in a way that befits guests invited to the heavenly banquet.

A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.

Housefires - Come To The River

19 August 2026 - hiring strategy

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner
who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard.

This landowner was both odd and provocative. He went to the the market obsessively, again and again looking for people to work in his vineyard. It seemed that he did this because he cared both about his vineyard and especially about the laborers themselves. It pained him to see some standing there "idle all day" because he understood that their dignity was worthy of a higher purpose.

'Summon the laborers and give them their pay,
beginning with the last and ending with the first.'

The only explanation for the specific instructions for the order that the laborers were paid is that the landowner wanted to be intentionally provocative so as demonstrate something that would not have been otherwise obvious. He was clearly more interested in being generous than in the strict demands of justice. The demands of justice were met, but he was willing to go beyond them when necessary to make sure that no one would be lacking at the end of the day. But he must have had the last receive first because he knew that those hired first would have difficulty accepting it. They assumed on the basis of comparison with what those hired last that they deserved even more than the price on which they had agreed with the landowner. However, there were two things that were true, neither of which was always obvious to the workers. The first was that the landowner desired to employee everyone insofar as possible. If didn't hire them sooner he would keep looking until he could find and hire them eventually. The second was that the landowner desired to give all of them a certain amount, independent of the effort the expended. He did value the work they did in the vineyard, else he would not have engaged them in doing it. But he valued the individuals even more and wanted to make sure that, at the end of the day, no one suffered privation. 

What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?
Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?
Are you envious because I am generous?

We may wonder if such a hiring methodology and payment strategy is truly practical. Wouldn't the word get out, with the result that people would take advantage of his generosity, presenting themselves to his service only at day's end? But notice, he did interrogate those who had been idle all day. Had he discovered that they were trying to take advantage of him we may assume he would have been less eager to set such ones to work in his enterprises. The parable definitely doesn't describe a capitalist system, but neither does it represent a welfare state. It represents something higher than either extreme where the dignity of the individuals involved reigns supreme. 

 

It is precisely this, his concern for the treatment of the workers, that is the thread that connects the Gospel with the first reading, wherein the Lord refuses to tolerate the abuse of the sheep by other shepherds. Whether we are workers in the vineyard or sheep of his pasture his desire is look after and tend us himself. The shepherd who seeks even the one lost sheep is the same Lord whom Jesus represents as the vineyard owner hiring at the last hour. He is relentless in his love for us, refusing to abandon us, and obliterating all obstacles between us. This even includes obstacles in our own hearts, such as greed and envy, that can make us reluctant to allow him to do so. Being and remaining his sheep requires not finding his pastures offensive or intolerable and bolting. We must have hearts like his to receive all that he desires to give us. We must be docile to his care.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
Beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.

 

Shane And Shane - Psalm 23 (Surely Goodness, Surely Mercy)