Father Matthew Wiering Podcast

In last Friday's Gospel, Luke gives us an important detail about the number of women disciples of Jesus and how they provide for the Lord and the twelve apostles. This glimpse into the life of the early Church gathered around Jesus reminds us that women have an essential role to play that is different from the men. And it is the same today! We need spiritual fathers in the Church to lead and pastor us, but we also need spiritual mothers -- i.e. consecrated religious women -- to support God's family with their attentive love. Just like every family needs a father and a mother to flourish, so too the Church! Let us pray that God call and bring back many consecrated women religious to our parishes so that we can have the spiritual mothers we all need! Homily from our school Mass.

If we meditate on the life of St. Joseph, we realize that he had an awfully exalted task: To be husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate One, and to be father of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God. And God called Joseph to be this despite that he was a "sinner", unlike his bride and adopted son! St. Paul reminds us that husbands and fathers are to be "head" of their family as Christ is head of the Church. He says this not because the men are the best in the family -- usually they are not -- but rather because he wants men to step into this leadership so that they take responsibility for their growth in faith, which may not come natural to them. They learn to rely on God to give them the grace to do what seems like a very difficult if not impossible task. This was the call of St. Joseph! And this is the call for all husbands and fathers.

In today's Gospel Jesus heals a man who is deaf and mute. Hearing this Gospel is a good reminder for us that Jesus, who is still present in the Church today, continues to heal through the Sacrament and through the prayers of Christians. The physical healings that Jesus performs are also symbolic of the equally -- if not more important -- spiritual healing that we need. Of what do we need Jesus to heal us? Let's respond to this invitation to ask for the healing we need and for the healing that those around us need!

Our Sunday readings today focus on the Law. It's helpful for us to see how Moses rejoices in the laws that God gives to Israel, and he says that the nations around Israel will consider Israel to be blessed because of how God has spoken to them through the Law. The question for us this week is, 'How do we receive the laws given to us by the Church?' Do we receive them negatively -- with skepticism or indifference or disdain? Or do we receive them as God wants us to receive them -- with gratitude for this gift that actually promotes freedom and shows us how precious we are in His sight?

In today's 2nd reading from the 5th chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we are reminded that human marriage, a tremendously important natural good, also serves as a sign of the more important spiritual reality of Christ's real marriage with the Church (us). The physical and spiritual union of Christ and us (analogous to the physical and spiritual union between bridegroom and bride) is achieved as Christ offers His Body to his Bride (us) in the Eucharist.

This Sunday we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, into heaven. We might wonder why the Church insists on the importance of this event in Mary's life and in the life of the Church. Meditating on the "twin feast" of the Solemnity of the Ascension, when we commemorate the Ascension of Jesus's body into heaven, helps us to make sense of why it's so important that Mary -- body and soul -- has joined her Son, who is also there with his human body, in heaven. 

Today's Gospel reading, which introduces the 6th Chapter of John, is an apt start to the most explicit teaching on the Eucharist in all of the Gospels. It's no coincidence that John describes a meal in which everyone attendance ate abundantly with lots leftover. Our stomachs don't get full when we go to Mass, but because the bread of the Eucharist is not mere bread but Jesus Himself, our souls leave Mass full of God.

After the disciples return from their first missionary journey, Jesus tells them to come away with him to be together by themselves. And this is precisely what Jesus invites us too to do with Him ... daily in prayer. 

In today's Gospel Jesus gives the instructions to his disciples that when they go out on mission they are to bring nothing with them except a walking stick: "No food. No sack. No money in their belts." They must have felt pretty vulnerable setting out from Capernaum, yet that is precisely the point.  When the return, they aren't starving, and all of their needs were met on the journey. God wants us to learn that He wants to provide for us, and He will do so if we let Him!

I'll be on my annual retreat this weekend and so won't publish a Sunday homily. But here's a homily from the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (June 12) in which we reflect on the meaning of the Immaculate and Sacred Hearts...