9th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Sunday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time Year A: Matthew 7: 21-27

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY PHILOXENUS OF MABBUG

This saying of our Master obliges us to be diligent not only in hearing God’s word, but also in obeying it. We do well to listen to the law, because it moves us to good works; it is a good thing to read and meditate on Scripture, because our inmost thoughts are thus purified from all evil; what to be assiduous in reading, listening to and meditating on the law of God without doing what it sees is a wickedness that the Spirit of God has already condemned, forbidding those guilty of it even to pick up the holy book in their unclean hands. God is said to the sinner: Do not touch the book of my commandments, because you have taken my covenant on your lips, but have hated correction and cast my words behind you.

Bell Rock Lighthouse, Illustration by Miss Stevenson

Assiduous readers who do no good works are accused of their very reading, and merit a more severe condemnation because each day they scorn and despise what they have heard that day. They are like dead people, corpses without souls. The dead will not hear thousands of trumpets and horns sounding in their ears; in the same way souls dead in sin, minds that have forgotten

God’s disciples need to have firmly anchored in their souls the remembrance of their Master, Jesus Christ, and to think of him date and night. They must learn where to begin, and how and where to construct the rooms in their buildings, and how to bring those buildings to completion. Otherwise all the passers-by will mock them, as our Lord said about the man who set out to build a tower and could not finish it.

The foundation is already laid, as St Paul said: it is Jesus Christ our God. If anyone builds on this foundation with gold or silver or precious stones, or with wood or straw or stubble, his work will be brought to light, because fire will reveal it and test the quality of each one’s work.

Good habits and righteousness in all its beauty are what Paul compared to gold, silver, and precious stones. Faith is like gold; temperance, fasting, abstinence, and the other good works are like silver; while the precious stones are peace, hope, pure and holy thoughts, and spiritual understanding that contemplates God and the grandeur of his being, and keeps silence, trembling before the inexplicable, uncommunicable mysteries of the Godhead.


Philoxenus of Mabbug, Hom. 1: SC 44, 27-31 (from Christ our Light 2)

Passion (Palm) Sunday, Year A

Palm Sunday! What image comes into your mind of this glorious day? Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph, the crowds stretch out their garments in his path and sing praises: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Lk 19:38).

With our current international crisis, this Palm Sunday the crowds throughout the world are dispersed to their homes, and our hearts are heavy. Who could have foreseen this unique Holy Week on Palm Sunday in 2013, when Pope Francis, fresh from his election, spoke at World Youth Day. May his words bring us comfort and trust in the Lord's loving mercy and may we soon be gathered together as one to praise Christ:

Crowds, celebrating, praise, blessing, peace: joy fills the air. Jesus has awakened great hopes, especially in the hearts of the simple, the humble, the poor, the forgotten, those who do not matter in the eyes of the world. He understands human sufferings, he has shown the face of God’s mercy, and he has bent down to heal body and soul.

Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, Hippolyte Flandrin (c. 1842)

This is Jesus. This is his heart which looks to all of us, to our sicknesses, to our sins. The love of Jesus is great. And thus he enters Jerusalem, with this love, and looks at us. It is a beautiful scene, full of light – the light of the love of Jesus, the love of his heart – of joy, of celebration.

At the beginning of Mass, we too repeated it. We waved our palms, our olive branches. We too welcomed Jesus; we too expressed our joy at accompanying him, at knowing him to be close, present in us and among us as a friend, a brother, and also as a King: that is, a shining beacon for our lives. Jesus is God, but he lowered himself to walk with us. He is our friend, our brother. He illumines our path here. And in this way we have welcomed him today. And here the first word that I wish to say to you: joy! Do not be men and women of sadness: a Christian can never be sad! Never give way to discouragement! Ours is not a joy born of having many possessions, but from having encountered a Person: Jesus, in our midst; it is born from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life’s journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable, and there are so many of them!