Monday, July 5, 2021

Dear Reader, if you receive these homilettes by email, you may find the service stopped in July.  As I understand an instruction from Google, its Burnfeeder program will no longer support the service.  You can always find the homilettes on the blog site: https://cbmdominicanpreacher.blogspot.com/ . Perhaps if you send me your email address, I could send the homilettes in a mass email.  You may send your email address to cmeleop@yahoo.com. I am also pchecking into other options like changing my blogging service. cm 

Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Genesis 28: 10-22a; Matthew 9:18-26)

Since only a week ago last Sunday we heard Mark’s version of today’s gospel, it will be instructive to compare the two.  Matthew’s version leaves out much of Mark’s fascinating details.  Where Mark strives to tell an interesting story, Matthew emphasizes that faith in Jesus brings about miracles.

In Matthew, the official’s daughter is already dead.  The man, however, believes that Jesus can raise her from the dead.  Indeed, this is what takes place.  Matthew presents the woman with hemorrhages as believing Jesus is like a magician whose simple touch would heal her.  The evangelist makes clear, however, that Jesus’ deliberate words, not his mere touch, as in Mark’s story, bring about the healing.

Comparisons among the gospels should be more than interesting to us.  They indicate the mysterious grandeur of Christ whose life cannot described in any one person’s words.  It cannot be fully explained by any four person’s words or four million persons’ words.  He is God, whose splendor is beyond our imaginations.  We stand ever grateful to have met him in history and to meet him regularly in the Eucharist.  He has come to experience our wonderful human life.  More than that, however, he is here to share his infinitely more awesome eternal life with us.

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