July/August 2025: Newsletter Reflections
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
6 July 2025
Reflection
Jesus is preparing his disciples for mission. He leaves them in no doubt about the challenges, obstacles and dangers which will await them. They will succeed, however, because the power of God is working with them. Accordingly, ‘the seventy return with joy’. Do I experience that joy when I do what the Lord wants?
Reflection
The message entrusted to the disciples by Jesus is peace and the nearness of the kingdom of God.’ This same message of peace and justice, forgiveness and healing, and the Good News of God’s kingdom, has been entrusted to the Church down the centuries. Now it is my turn to witness to it.
sacredspace.com
Reflection
In the Gospel, Jesus teaches us about mission and vocation. It calls us to be simple and humble as we do our ministry. We should not be discouraged when people do not listen to us. As Pope Francis reminds us in the Joy of the Gospel, every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Jesus Christ. Despite our differences are we ready to accept the responsibility of carrying on his mission and ministry? Today Jesus asked each and every one of us to not only believe in him, but we are also called to share the good news throughout all the earth.
De la Salle Medical and Science Institute
* * *
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
13 July 2025
Three Steps
The parable of the Good Samaritan brings out the practical nature of authentic charity. There are three steps in his response to the plight of the man dumped in the ditch.
- The first step in love is to see people, to be aware of them and attentive. Our eyes open the shutters of our aloofness when we take notice of people. Being attentive we hear them knocking on our doors, seeking entry into our lives. But so often we are experts at ignoring people and keeping them out.
- The second step is to answer the knock and let the person in. The Good Samaritan was moved with compassion for the injured traveller Compassion literally means feeling-with, responding to the pain of the other person. When others knock at the door, compassion lets them in and is willing to reach out to them, whether it is in sharing tears in their sorrow, or celebrating with their joy or giving to their emptiness.
- The third step in charity is to translate feeling into practical action. It is amazing how many excuses we can find to avoid helping somebody in need. But really, there is no excuse to justify failing to assist somebody in a case of life or death. The two churchy men were guided by harsh legalism to pass by on the other side.But when the Samaritan came to the scene, he was moved with compassion at what he saw. His hands sprang into practical action.
capuchinfranciscans.ie
* * *
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
20 July 2025
Jesus scolded Martha for being so anxious and worried. Then He told Martha: ‘There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.’
Put yourself in Martha’s shoes. How do you think you would respond to this reprimand? Would you react as Martha did or would you pause and reflect on Jesus’ statement and your reaction to his words? Would you be rational enough to ask yourself: ‘Am I jealous of Mary’s relationship with Jesus? Are my priorities out of order?’
Today Jesus asks each of us: What takes priority in your life? One way to answer this question is to ask ourselves: How do I use my time? Do I fritter it away? Do I work 12 hours a day? Am I involved in activities I enjoy? Do I spend quality time with the people I care about? Do I make time for prayer and spend time with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit?
No one else needs to know the answers to these questions. However, our answers to these questions may give us some insight into our lives. In our busy and distracting world, it is easy to get off-track. Today Jesus is inviting us to come away and spend time with Him. What a wonderful invitation! Today will we accept His invitation or will we ignore it because we are too busy?
Ferdinandbenedictinesblogspot.com
* * *
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
27 July 2025 • World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly
How do you pray or what is your recipe for prayer? Do you follow a certain procedure or you spontaneously pray to God what is in your heart?
In the gospel for this Sunday Jesus is asked by a disciple: Lord teach us to pray and Jesus obliged him and taught the disciple the perfect prayer which is the Our Father. If we try to deeply reflect on this prayer we would notice that the Our Father contains our Adoration for God, our Contrition/Repentance for the sins that we have committed and our Supplication: we request God to give us the food that we need.
If we say this prayer with our hearts and minds deeply focused towards God we would feel something that we don’t usually feel. This feeling is very hard to explain but we would certainly notice this healing experience the moment we learn how to pray the Our Father with all our being.
We must always be prayerful and we must not give up on our being prayerful. Because when we pray we connect ourselves with God, we open ourselves to the enormous blessings that are always at God’s disposal when we pray.
Prayer is not asking God to give us this and that. Prayer is essentially satisfying our longing for God. And the God that we always long for will grant us the desires of our hearts because we always thirst and hunger to be with Him in prayer.
Do you have a prayer before God? Don’t give up, continue to believe, have faith and you will soon have it.
Marino J. Dasmarinas
* * *
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
3 August 2025
Three Lessons from the parable of the Rich Fool
Life is More Than Possessions: While it’s not wrong to have wealth or possessions, it becomes problematic when they become the center of our lives. Jesus warns against all kinds of greed. Our lives do not consist of the abundance of our possessions but in the depth of our relationships, our character, and most importantly, our relationship with God.
The Uncertainty of Tomorrow: The rich man’s plans revolved around his assumption of many years ahead. Yet, none of us truly knows how much time we have left. While it’s wise to plan for the future, it’s equally wise to live in the present, with gratitude, generosity, and an awareness of life’s fragility.
True Wealth is in Relationship with God: The parable ends with a poignant question: What value are our earthly treasures if we’re not rich towards God? Material wealth can be fleeting, but a rich relationship with God is eternal. It’s the kind of wealth that feeds the soul, brings genuine joy, and has eternal significance.
Application: Today, let’s ask ourselves: What treasures are we storing up?
Are our barns filled only with earthly possessions or with acts of kindness, love, and faithfulness? Are we living for today without a thought of eternity?
Are we rich in material wealth but bankrupt in our relationship with God?
Conclusion: Beloved, let us remember that life is short and unpredictable. Our true value isn’t determined by the amount in our bank accounts or the size of our barns, but by the richness of our souls and our relationship with God.
Harrison McCaffrey
dailysermons.medium.com
* * *
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
10 August 2025
C.S. Lewis said once that the way to become a Christian is to act like one. If we consciously try to act like a Christian, one day we will wake up and find that we are.
One aspect of being a Christian that we might never equate with following Jesus is hospitality. But if we look at the Scriptures, we find that the ministry of hospitality is mentioned quite often.
I recently went back to the seminary where I was educated, and I was reminded about the importance of hospitality. The seminary is owned by the Benedictines. If one knows anything about the rule of St Benedict, then you know that hospitality was very important to Benedict.
Benedict said once that we are to welcome everyone who comes to our door as if they were Christ. At Benedictine monasteries one of the most important positions is that of guest master. The guest master greets visitors and makes sure that they have a place to stay and that their needs are cared for. If the person cannot pay, they stay for free. Why? Because they are an embodiment of Christ.
We are reminded this Sunday that Jesus comes to our door as a visitor often. Do we recognise him, and do we show him hospitality? This is an important part of being a disciple.
Reflection Questions:
- Who was the last person that came to my door? How did I treat that person?
- Have I been treated well when I went to the door of a stranger? How did that make me feel?
Fr Mark DeSutter
www.sacredheartmoline.org
* * *
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
15 August 2025
Reflection
The Magnificat was a daily prayer of Mary, spoken in good times and bad. We can imagine that she often prayed words like that. Even at times like the passion and death of her son, her faith remained strong that God would care of her and of him. In prayer we can pray our own Magnificat, thanking God for blessings, for good times, for bad times through which God protected us, and for the ways in which we have grown up – in good times and bad. The faithfulness promised to God’s people is also promised to each of us now.
Reflection
Try today to walk around a place of beauty. Look and listen, smell and touch the beauty of nature. As you walk pray the first lines of Mary’s poem – ‘my soul glorifies the Lord’. Be filled for this time with thanks for all you see, hear, touch and feel of the creation of God.
Sacredspace.com
a resource of the Irish Jesuits
By looking at Mary’s Assumption into Heaven we understand better that even though our daily life may be marked by trials and difficulties, it flows like a river to the divine ocean, to the fullness of joy and peace. We understand that our death is not the end but rather the entrance into life that knows no death. Our setting on the horizon of this world is our rising at the dawn of the new world, the dawn of the eternal day.
Pope Benedict XVI
* * *
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
17 August 2025
The Christian must not be lukewarm. The Book of Revelation tells us that this is the greatest danger for a Christian: not that he or she may say ‘no,’ but that they may say a very lukewarm ‘yes.’ Lukewarmness is, as the late Pope Benedict emphasised, what discredits Christianity most. Therefore it is one of the biggest problems facing the Catholic Church as a whole and therefore every Catholic diocese and every Catholic parish including our own. We need to confront it straight on.
The greatest way of all God has established to inflame us is at Mass. Whoever draws near Christ draws near the fire, Origen said in the third century. If that’s true, then all the more Christ says to us, ‘Whoever receives me, receives the fire.’ Whenever we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, we ingest Fire. Christ has come to ignite that fire and how he wants each of us to become truly enkindled! St Catherine of Siena used to say in the 1300s, ‘If you are what you should be, you will set the world ablaze!’
Mass is the place where Christ helps us to become who we should be. As we prepare to receive him today, we beg the great cloud of witnesses surrounding us now to pray for us that we may be enveloped by fire, always burn with love to the glory of God, and bring that flame of faith out to warm others hearts and fill our parish and the whole world with the fire of God’s amazing love.
Fr Roger J. Landry
catholicpreaching.com
* * *