2 September 2026 - for this purpose

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

Unlike in the Nazareth, where Jesus was unable to do many miracles because of their lack of faith, in Galilee he seemed to heal one person after another. The two individuals that started the cascade were the demon possessed man in the synagogue and the mother-in-law of Simon Peter. The first was apparently Jesus's own initiative, a way to concretely announce his jubilee liberation program and Gospel message. The second, Simon's mother-in-law's healing, was the result of the fact that concerned individuals "interceded with" Jesus "about her." Jesus does sometimes take the initiative in order to make the coming of his Kingdom known to those who would otherwise have been ignorant of it. But sometimes, particularly once he is known in a region, he allows others to take the initiative. He waits for them to use their faith to unlock and unleash his healing power. Far from putting people off of Jesus, this second mode actually draws people to Jesus in increasing numbers. This is not surprising, since they are active and involved and not merely passive as in the cases when Jesus takes the initiative himself. The fact that there is incentive to being involved draws more and more people into the orbit of Jesus. Being merely passive observers and recipients does not energize people to follow Jesus in the same way as does their active conscious participation.

At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases
brought them to him.
He laid his hands on each of them and cured them.

As he cast out demons they tried to shout out something that was apparently true about his identity, "You are the Son of God." But they were not doing this to help his cause. It was not spoken with the same sincerity with which Simon Peter would later confess it. The demons were trying to sabotage Jesus by attempting to reveal something true, but in a way that was skewed and unhelpful. Most others, if they were in Jesus's place, would probably have responded, "Yes. Yes I am". But Jesus was not interested in popularity or feeling validated. It didn't help for people to hear it if they didn't realize what it meant in a deeply interior way. Jesus wanted people to receive this truth as a revelation, not as a slogan. Further, had it been too widely broadcast or re-shared with insufficient comprehension, it would only have served to shorten the time before the conflict leading to the cross was initiated. When demons tell us anything about Jesus they always do so to suggest that he is a threat to our autonomy and our ability to freely enjoy ourselves. They want us to see him as dangerous, and they are willing to twist things that are true to make us believe it. We should be aware of the motivations behind statements about Jesus, since even those with good intentions are never entirely neutral. This will help us to guard against deception.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

(see James 1:16-17)

Had Jesus been subject to a desire for popular approval his mission never would have gotten off the ground. He would have stayed in one region fulfilling one need after another in order to keep the crowds perpetually happy. But he had a higher purpose in coming than healing and exorcism, the results of which still did not address the deepest issues that afflicted humanity: sin and death. It was more important that more people hear his message than it was for him to experience sustained popularity in one area, even if it was the result of an endless list of miraculous deeds. But we should not take for granted that this was not a typical human response to success and adulation. He left those who at least superficially adored him and went on to others who did not yet even know him, some of whom were almost certain to reject him. He did this, and was able to do it, because he knew his true purpose. This speaks to the importance of knowing ones purpose generally, and the power it gives us to live as we are meant to live, to choose rightly even when the right choice is not the easiest one.

Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield,
For in him our hearts rejoice;
in his holy name we trust.

 

 

Randy Rothwell - For This Purpose

 

1 September 2026 - it hits different

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

He taught them on the sabbath,
and they were astonished at his teaching
because he spoke with authority.

They were not used to the way in which Jesus spoke. Other teachers would have peppered their doctrine with references to previous interpretive traditions in order to substantiate their own points of view. Jesus did reference the Scriptures in what he taught. For instance, he later asked the Pharisees, "Have you not heard what David did ... ?" (see Matthew 12:3). But although these quotations did help to establish and validate his own claim, their usage was new and unexpected. They were not rooted in any tradition of authority, and made sense only if he himself was an authoritative interpreter of God's word. Similarly, his moral teachings referred to core truths that did exist in the Scriptures. But when he presented these teachings in the Sermon on the Mount they took shapes that no one would have previously guessed. It was necessary for him to go beyond what Moses had said to fully bring God's moral law to light. He demonstrated an authority that transcended even that of Moses, who was the greatest of the Lord's prophets, and of the law itself, the most concrete and comprehensive revelation of God's will for mankind. He did not use his authority to upend or abolish the law, but rather to bring it to its true fulfillment (see Matthew 5:17). 

The reason Jesus was able to speak with such authoritative clarity about God's Word and his will for mankind was because the Spirit of God "knows what pertains to God", and Jesus was filled beyond measure with that Spirit (see John 3:34). He did not need to defer to merely human interpretations which were always somewhat tainted by the merely "human wisdom" of the "natural man" who "does not accept what pertains to the Spirit" since "to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it". The natural man responds to spiritual things like the unclean demon responds to Jesus in today's Gospel, assuming that God is out to get us, that his will means that the party is over. 

Unlike all other teachers Jesus was so spiritual that he could "judge everything" and was "not subject to judgment by anyone". He didn't have to prove anything or impress anyone. His confidence was rooted in his Father, not the unstable opinions of the crowds. One who was merely excessively certain of himself would quickly be revealed as a fool. One who tried to appeal to others for popularity would find popularity to be a fickle master. But one who was truly rooted in God was unshakable in a way that the crowds to whom Jesus spoke were able to recognize.

For “who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.

Surprisingly, the spirituality of Jesus that gave him the authority he possessed was not to be reserved to him alone. Since we share the Spirit which motivated his life we too come to possess the same "mind of Christ" that was proper to Jesus himself. Clearly, none of us possess this mind to the constant and perfect degree that Jesus did. But we are meant to do so more and more through the renewal of our minds that Paul enjoined on the Romans (see Romans 12:2). The more we experience this transformation the less we will be bothered by the judgments of those whose minds are still limited to the merely natural and human. We  can say, as Paul later will to the Corinthians, that "with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself" (see First Corinthians 4:3).

The mind of Christ isn't just something that is a nice way to enhance our subjective experience of life. It is necessary if we are to do our own part in the struggle against the dark powers that hold sway in our world. When our words our shaped by his mind they become powerful, and the world is changed as a consequence.

“What is there about his word?
For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits,
and they come out.”

 

Elevation Worship - Here As In Heaven

 

31 August 2026 - fulfilled in your hearing

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

In the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus proclaimed that the definitive year of jubilee had at last arrived. Jesus inaugurated it by proclaiming the Gospel to the poor, both materially and spiritually. He ushered it in by freeing those bound by sin, making God's forgiveness available to them. He helped those who recognized their own blindness be healed and recover their sight, with the result being not only that they acquired eyes that could see their surroundings, but also spiritual vision that was able to more see more deeply the identity of Jesus himself. He freed people bound by addiction and demonic affliction, letting the oppressed go free. This, finally, was what God had wanted all along, a year that that was acceptable to him at last.

“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Simply in virtue of the power of the proclamation of the Gospel the word of Scripture was fulfilled in their midst. But whether or not it had a transformative effect on those who listened would depend on how they heard. Like them, we have a choice about how to respond when we hear the Scripture proclaimed. We may be initially impressed by the gracious words it contains. But our initial impressions only go so far. We can follow our initial positive feelings with a response faith, in which case it's power is unleashed in our own lives and it becomes a reality for us. Or we can respond with skepticism, as did the congregation at Nazareth.

And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”

We can think, like those in Nazareth, that the words of Scripture, though impressive, are too good to be true. Or if they are true to any degree, that must at least be exaggerated. We think this based on the fact of our prolonged proximity to Jesus in our midst, assuming that if he were all that he claimed to be we would see more of the results on a daily basis. He wouldn't leave for other regions, perform miracles there, and then come back to us with only a sermon. Or would he? The problem is never with what Jesus provides, it is always with our response, which often lacks the intensity of faith to unleash all that he wishes to do in our midst. Miracles are not meant to be a way we test Jesus and defang his potentially life-altering call to repentence. Rather, our faith unlocks the power of Jesus to do miracles in our midst. If we approach Scriptures with an attitude that we've heard it all before we risk missing out on what Jesus desires to do among us.

Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.

Jesus did not write off the people at Nazareth. Since they were too familiar with him, or at least who they believed him to be, Jesus would help them to see him from a new and different perspective. It was, to be sure, a challenge to their assumptions. But it represented a real opportunity to choose to see him from the perspective of an outsider, with fresh eyes. But in order to avail themselves of the potential of this perspective they had to square it with the fact that recipients of God's favor in his examples were Gentiles. If they could overcome their prejudice and animosity against those groups and see what God had done in those cases they would be able to recognize how Jesus himself was at work among there in that synagogue. It was already clear from history that God did not always play favorites in the world in the way they assumed he would. It ought to have helped them overcome the sense of entitlement which led them to insist that Jesus go above and beyond to prove himself when they had already seen and heard enough to believe. 

Jesus wants us to come to a deeper faith as well. He may invite us to do so in ways that challenge our expectations, in order to help us see things in a new way. But we want to become able to see things in this way. We are among the blind who need new spiritual eyes to see him. We look around and do not see a year acceptable to the Lord. But Jesus can help us to have the faith to realize that in him the great jubilee is truly here. When we realize it we can leave the benches from which skeptics spout their unhelpful critiques.  We can then take our place sharing that good news with those others who do not yet know it, so that they too may be transformed.

Kutless - Word Of God Speak

 

30 August 2026 - get your mind right

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

 

Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you." 

Peter had a very human response to the idea that his friend and teacher should need to suffer and die. The compassion that motivated it was a strength, not a weakness. But the human way he expressed it was limited and insufficient. If Jesus really was what Peter had said of him it implied that he, and not Peter, would dictate the plan. The Christ and the Son of God would not benefit from the suggestion of an alternate path or from second opinion in regard to his next steps. Yet Peter could not wrap his head around the fact that Jesus should have to suffer in this way. When he arrived at this apparent contradiction he had the choice to trust his own wisdom or to assume that Jesus had a reason for what he said. But what Jesus said seemed so wildly unlikely that Peter reverted to treating Jesus like any other friend. He acted as though he were talking someone who was saying crazy things back from a ledge. No doubt such dark words would have been difficult to accept. Doing so would have been in the same ballpark as Abraham agreeing to offering his beloved Isaac in obedience to God even though the promise made to him by God could only be fulfilled through him.

"Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. 
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

Human thinking might reason rightly about merely human realities. But it was insufficient to assess the strategy of God for establishing his Kingdom on earth. If we were interacting with a purely natural world, that had no interpenetration with spiritual realities, we might have been able to content ourselves with the type of thinking that comes naturally to us. But as things stand, the spiritual has always been present and working to shape our reality, sometimes in hidden ways, sometimes through the parts of the story the prophets like Jeremiah were able to illuminate, but now made explicit in the coming of Jesus himself. If we are to align our lives with God's design for the world we can't really on merely human modes of thinking. Instead, we need to do what Paul suggests in our second reading.

Do not conform yourselves to this age
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect.

Only when our minds are renewed do we understand the logic of sacrificial love that made Jesus go to the cross for us. It is the revolution in our thinking that allows us to make the transition from the initial appeal of our callings and vocations to persistence even during the hard times and difficult aspects those things entail. We may feel for a moment as though we were duped by the Lord. But our transformed minds will help us end by choosing obedience.

Jeremiah's human mind did have something to say:

I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.

But ultimately he chose to remember the spiritual truth of which his renewed mind was certain:

But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.

Jeremiah didn't want to cry out violence and outrage as his message. Humanly speaking, he would have preferred to stay positive. He wanted people to feel affirmed and to remain in their good graces himself. But to do so in that time and place and circumstance would not have been truly loving. He had to believe God's word, which told him that there were higher goods that mattered more. In ruminating on that word he received the fiery motivation necessary to persevere even amidst great difficulty. 

 

Jeremiah could, no doubt, have made a more concerted effort to forget his calling, to distract himself whenever something reminded him of what had been spoken to him by God. Little by little he might have deadened the fire within him. But he chose not to be conformed to his age. Thus, not only was he transformed as an isolated individual, but God's will was accomplished through him. In truth he became an example of the sort of "living sacrifice" about which Paul wrote, whose very life availed for the well-being of his people. It did not do so in the way he might have hoped, by avoiding the Babylonian exile, or even mitigating the horror of that exile appreciably. But nevertheless, at the end of the book of Jeremiah, in the beginning of the exile, we do see immediate signs of hope. Not only that, but future generations who read his words would come to understand more deeply the importance of wholehearted obedience to the Lord. Moreover, his word contained promises that helped prepare for the coming of the Lord Jesus himself:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
 

(See Jeremiah 31:31-34)

Jeremiah's own life as a living sacrifice had sufficient parallels with the life and career of Jesus that his  life, and not only his message, served to prepare people for the coming messiah. When our own minds are renewed and our lives correspond to that fresh spiritual way of thinking we help make Jesus intelligible to others, to whom the cross often seems as strange as it did to Peter. 

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

It isn't so much that we are called to seek out misery and suffering, as though they were good in themselves. But we are called to be able to put God's Kingdom first and ourselves second. We must not be so fixated on self that we are unwilling to hear where God is calling us. We need to be willing to speak when and what we are called to speak, even if there are consequences. We must be willing to demonstrate our love for both God and neighbor, when it is difficult, and not only when it is easy. We must be faithful to the Gospel and "be ready in season and out of season" (see Second Timothy 4:2), as Paul told Timothy. It is important for us to overcome the patterns of human thinking that tell us to prioritize our selves and our lives in this world as though they were the highest goods. Let us replace a mindset that asks "What about me?" with one that meditates trustingly on God's word, seeking his will and then carrying it out by his grace. 

Todd Agnew - Romans 12:1

 

29 August 2026 - the heat of the moment

 

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

Herodias harbored a grudge against him
and wanted to kill him but was unable to do so.
Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man,
and kept him in custody.

The place of Herodias in the life of Herod was tenuous. Herod might have been convinced at any moment by the words of his prisoner John the Baptist, to whom "he liked to listen". We can imagine why the words of the one who called their union "not lawful" would be threatening to Herodias. There was always the possibility that the idle curiosity of Herod about the John would turn into something more serious. If it did, there was no guarantee that she would be able to retain her relationship the royal position it entailed.

She had an opportunity one day when Herod, on his birthday,
gave a banquet for his courtiers,
his military officers, and the leading men of Galilee.
Herodias’ own daughter came in
and performed a dance that delighted Herod and his guests.

Herodias preyed upon the same weakness that John condemned in Herod. Presumably it was to some degree sensuality that caused him to take Herodias as a wife in spite of the prohibition against such a marriage. And it was sensuality, drinking, a party, and a dance that again managed to captivate him and sufficiently mute the voice of his conscience in order permanently remove the danger represented to his hedonistic ego by John. The volume of the temptation was turned up to eleven, while the voice of reason was never more for him than a passing interest. It was not enough to provide proof against the temptation. In his desire to honor the pleasure he had received he surrendered his self-control and even his rationality. On some level he responded to the dance as though it were an idol to be rewarded, as though making promises would help to continue and increase the delight he had received. Thus, as is always the case with sin, he gave of himself but received nothing real in return. And indeed, what he gave of himself he was not able to claw back.

“Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you.”
He even swore many things to her,
“I will grant you whatever you ask of me,
even to half of my kingdom.”

The fact that Herod agreed to put John to death was not the end of the story for his afflicted conscience. We know that even after the death of John his memory continued to haunt the corrupt king. Thus, when he heard about Jesus, who was the fulfillment of everything represented by John, he said, "This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him" (see Matthew 14:2).  The consequences of sin listed by Paul are clearly seen in Herod's own life choices: "they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened" (see Romans 1:21). Yet we also see that it is impossible to deaden the voice of conscience entirely. The form conscience takes when it is suppressed is increasingly experienced as antagonistic and thus perhaps even less easy to accept, at least without some kind of rock bottom experience leading to desperation for change. But we can see that the words of John the Baptist were not entirely wasted and even Herod was not left entirely without hope. 

 

We see in John, who never appeared very impressive in terms of worldly status or wealth, precisely how "God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong". Exactly when John seemed more than ever to "count for nothing" he reduced to nothing one who appeared to be something. The reversal was among the greatest imaginable. Herod appeared victorious when he had John killed, yet was in the act defeated. John seemed to lose everything when he was slain, yet it was in fact then that he truly gained all things.

Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield,
For in him our hearts rejoice;
in his holy name we trust.

 

 

Newsboys - Step Up To The Microphone

 

28 August 2026 - fuel shortage?

Today's Readings
(Audio)

  

The foolish ones, when taking their lamps,
brought no oil with them,
but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps. 

Presumably the foolish ones would have had enough oil to last if the bridegroom had come when they expected him to come. The wisdom of the wise made them realize that it might not happen that way. They didn't act only based on expectations or assumptions. They had a contingency plan. It requires less of us if we assume the second coming of Jesus is only minutes or days away. There is much we would probably not bother to do if we were convinced of it. Many good works might be omitted, since they could seem less important in that context. Things that we might otherwise have done with excellence might instead be done in a quick, haphazard fashion. While it is true that the long absence of the bridegroom can sometimes make us lazy or wicked, it is also true that his imminence can be an excuse to ignore our responsibilities. Realizing that we are lesser lights than the Lord, we may fail to fulfill our duty to shine as lights of the world, if we assume that he himself will illuminate everything from east to west in a matter of moments.

Since the bridegroom was long delayed,
they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

It is recognized in the parable that we probably can't maintain a constant faithful and diligent awareness of the nearness of the coming of the Lord. Yet, for all that, the summary given by Jesus for the meaning of the parable is, "Therefore, stay awake". We need not be superhuman in our level of focus, but we must fight against all temptation to laziness and apathy. We have seen that these temptations may come when we assume the bridegroom will be back tomorrow or if we forget he will ever return. Instead, we are meant to make ready to welcome him with sufficient oil to illuminate his return. He isn't coming so quickly that we can take our part for granted. If we lack the necessary oil when we see him he will have no reason to suspect that we were among those awaiting him. Rather, precisely because we want to be among those who thrill to hear, "Behold, the bridegroom!", precisely because we are so eager, we must not fail to have enough oil to fuel our lamps until he appears.

We do not prepare for the coming of the bridegroom as though we required to do so merely with our own resources. Rather, Christ himself, through his Spirit, is the fuel that keeps our lanterns lit:

Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

 

 

Brotherhood Of Hope - Rejoice, Rejoice Believers

 

27 August 2026 - firm to the end

Today's Readings

(Audio)

  

Stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.

It is one thing to be good when you know others are watching. It is another to do so when they do not appear to be. The faithful and prudent servant is the one who does what he ought to do even when there is no immediate reward or punishment for doing so. The wicked servant is the one who gets away with whatever he can because there are, at least for a while, no apparent consequences. On the one hand, we know that we can't get anything past God who sees all and knows all. On the other hand, we still don't always manage to remember that or to live as though it were true. We begin to think and act as though God were not watching, even while knowing better or some level. It is in the sense that we need to stay awake.

So too, you also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.

We may forget God for a time, but not forever. There will be moments even during our mortal lives when his presence and power are made know to us. Will he find us faithful or faithless at such times? We might keep thieves away with sufficient security precautions but we won't manage to prevent his entry. He will probably come to us many times in his spiritual presence in order to remind us of the role he is meant to have in our lives. We want to be able to demonstrate that we have been living as though he had been watching even if we were not capable of remembering at every moment that he was indeed doing so. 

 

We may not always have the actual experience of his presence with us. But we must still practice living as though he might appear at any moment. This means we must develop motivations that are deeper than immediate reward or punishment. Not because there will never be reward or punishment. But rather, because there is a period of testing before rewards and punishments are given. We don't receive immediate results so we can learn to do things for their own sake and for the sake of our fidelity to Jesus. Rewards for such meritorious behaviors are fitting. But they are not meant to be our only motivation. Punishments for failing to behave well are also fitting. They are in part meant to serve as deterrents. But they aren't meant to do so in such an overwhelming and immediate way that they override our free will.

Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant,
whom the master has put in charge of his household
to distribute to them their food at the proper time?

We may not be those who are in charge of the Lord's household on earth, the Church. But we are all in some measure servants, stewards entrusted with responsibilities for how we use the gifts we have been given to serve the others whom the Lord has placed in our lives. Sometimes there is some level of immediate rewards or consequences for our behavior; the pleasant sensation of a good deed done well, or the sting of conscience for something we ought to have done but failed to do. But we can't be so tethered to such signals that we fail to act rightly in their absence. We are meant to remember that, even if Jesus seems absent at times, he is not really so, and can show up again without a moment's notice. We want to be ready if he does.

How can we actually succeed at right behavior that never flags even when our emotions aren't there to sustain it? We must continue to "call upon the name of our Lord Jesus", the one who has called us to be holy and who has begun the process of sanctification in us. We must use the spiritual gifts he has given to us as we wait, since, as Paul assures us, we "are not lacking in any" of them. If we simply continue to make a faithful response to the grace that we have already been given and the good work already begun in us "He will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ". This is the same confidence that made Paul assure the Philippians, "I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (see Philippians 1:6). Let us lean in to the call, and into our gifting, so that we are ready to welcome Jesus when he returns.

 

Ike Ndolo - Awake, O Sleeper

 

26 August 2026 - insider threat

 

 

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside,
but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.

We might think that if their are going to be tombs anyway they might as well look decent. But in the Pharisees' case, making themselves appear external presentable made the inner hazard harder to spot. There was the risk of contagion for anyone who frequented such tombs. But the fresh coat of paint obscured the danger. This was the risk that the Pharisees posed to others. People would see their apparently highly religious surface layer and fail to see the hypocrisy and evildoing that was in their hearts. Not recognizing it, they would then fail to limit their exposure, at the risk of becoming infected by such practices and attitudes themselves. It is one thing to preach to a higher level than we ourselves have attained. This is necessary since none of us has completely attained perfection or mercy as God himself is perfect and merciful. Yet we cannot tone down the Gospel on account of our own weakness. But we are meant to be transparent about the fact that we ourselves inevitably fall short of our own standards. Even Paul was clear on this point, writing, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost" (see First Timothy 1:15).

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You build the tombs of the prophets

It is easy to give honor to the saints. It is more difficult to emulate their lives and embody the holiness that makes them worth celebrating. A superficial devotion to the saints does not necessarily do much to make us like them even if, to some degree, we give lip service to the things they did and taught. We tacitly recognize that we are of a different lineage, that of those worldly people to whom the saints made their appeal, and not in the lineage of the saints themselves. We tend to honor them for their apparently unobtainable otherness rather than as friends who can guide us in our own Christian walk. Thus we cement ourselves as people to whom true saints must make their appeal and against whom they must preach rather than, as we are meant to be, their spiritual children.

In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that
if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.

Laziness does not work well in the physical world. Neither does it work well in the spiritual realm. We are called to do more than present a pleasant and pious facade to others, while ignoring the real work needed in our souls. Nevertheless, none of have sufficient resources to succeed alone. We do need spiritual assistance. The Pharisees made themselves appear so in control that they failed to recognize this need. They ultimately settled for a thinly concealed complacency. Laziness of that sort is closely tied to lukewarmness and indifference. The opposite of such laziness in the spiritual realm isn't so much industriousness as it is sustained desire. It means persistence in our pursuit of holiness and of God. This kind of refusal to quit even when we ourselves lack the resources necessary to move forward is only possible with the peace and presence of Jesus himself.

May the Lord of peace himself
give you peace at all times and in every way.
The Lord be with all of you.

 

 

Newsboys - Thrive

 

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)

 

18 August 2026 - threading the needle

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

 

Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich
to enter the Kingdom of heaven.

One who is too tethered to this world by attachments may end up like the young man about whom we read yesterday, who was able to live a generally moral life, discover the truth about Jesus, and yet remained unable to take the final steps forward into the freedom offered to him by Jesus. We may think that the problem was with the young man specifically. If so, we underestimate the difficulty of what was asked. The fallen ego is simply too large and the way proposed is far too narrow. Camels are massive. And they are meant to be used precisely to carry other things. Even unladen they aren't going to fit through any knitting needle. Unladen they also all but lose their purpose. The only thing intended for the eye of a needle is a thread. Thus, our egos need a complete transformation from one sort of thing to another if they are to enter the Kingdom of God. The question of the disciples and the response of Jesus makes clear that this is not something that is within our natural capacity.

“Who then can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For men this is impossible,
but for God all things are possible.”

The point then, as it were, is not about merely removing a few things we are carrying. It is about being transformed by God into threads of the beautiful tapestry of the Kingdom he is creating. Rather than receptacles for worldly things we become docile to the higher purpose of unleashing beauty in the world. This does mean leaving behind things to which we were formerly attached. We recognize that doing so can often leave us feeling sorry for ourselves, with a scarcity mindset.

“We have given up everything and followed you.
What will there be for us?”

This is how things look from the perspective of the self-protective ego that always wants to know, 'What about me?'. But from the perspective of the Kingdom we see things differently. This new perspective begins in baptism and will be brought to completion "in the new age" which will be inaugurated when our Lord returns. In the new age worldly realities will be revealed as mere shadows of deeper and more profound truths existing within the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. The disciples themselves did have had to renounce many earthly goods, and any claim on earthly authority, but their authority as the first leaders of the Church was, if less immediately evident, more important in the grand scheme of history. We may have to give up things or even relationships for the sake of the Kingdom. But even here on earth we already receive compensation that is far greater, if we have but the eyes of faith to see it.

everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters
or father or mother or children or lands
for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more,
and will inherit eternal life.

Jesus himself had divine riches beyond all telling and yet allowed himself to become poor so that he could enrich us by his power and presence among us. This gives us confidence that what is impossible for man is possible for God, for whom "all things are possible". What was first accomplished in Jesus can also be accomplished in us. We can have among ourselves "this mind" that is ours in Christ Jesus (see Philippians 2:5). May the Holy Spirit come and help us to experience the renewal of our minds (see Romans 12:2) so that we can live, no longer as beasts of burden, but as citizens of the Kingdom. 

 

 

Matt Maher - Lay It Down