Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

(Genesis 15:1-12.17-18; Matthew 7:15-20)

Today’s first reading makes us wonder why our married friends who desperately want a child are not so blessed as Abram.  They too keep asking the Lord as they worry about not having an heir like them in appearance and virtue.  Knowing their goodness, we question God’s hearing their pleas.

God responds favorably to Abram by ratcheting up his promise.  His descendants will be not only as numerous as the sand on the earth but as glorious as the stars in the sky.  He has not made a like promise to everyone.  But he has promised His Holy Spirit with eternal life to all who believe in His Son Jesus Christ.  The Spirit will bring them joy and peace as they make Jesus’ prayer, “Thy will be done,” their own.

Just because God does not provide everything we ask for should not discourage us from praying.  We know that He loves us.  We have also seen how God opens doors and windows to a better life that we have never noticed.  Let us stand fast in our faith of the Lord Jesus. 

Memorial of Saint Irenaeus, bishop and martyr

(Genesis 15:1-12.17-18; Matthew 7:15-20)

A couple is married over twenty-five years.  They never have had children of their own.  Although they are Godparents to many and serve the church in many ways, they feel a great loss in their lives.  Once they considered the possibility of producing a child in vitro, but did not pursue it because that procedure violates the sanctity of human life.  The couple’s childlessness and, even more, their trust in God resemble the circumstances of Abram in today’s first reading.

Abram not only deeply desires to have a child with his wife Sarah, but also God has promised the couple heirs as numerous as the grains of dust on the earth. Now they are advanced in years and almost have given up hope.  Abram pleads with God, perhaps for a last time, only to hear God’s promise reasserted in a more glorious way: “Look up at the sky and count the stars….Just so…shall you descendants be.’”  Abram does not abandon God, who has blessed him in different ways, to worship another.  Rather he continues to do all that God asks of him.

God’s ways are inscrutable.  Couples who would seem to be wonderful parents suffer by not having children while many children suffer in broken homes.  Yet God has cared enough for those who suffer, which include every one of us, by coming to share our suffering.  He has actually moved us beyond it with the promise of eternal life as well as many spiritual blessings.