OT 30 [A]: Ex 22:20-26; I Thes 1:5c-10; Mt 22:34-40

Isidor Isaac Rabi, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics and one of the key developers of the atomic bomb, was once asked how he became a scientist. Rabi replied that every single day after school, his mother would talk to him about his day. She wasn’t primarily interested in what facts he had memorized or what grades he had earned, but rather how he conducted himself in his learning. She always inquired, "Did you ask a good question today?"

"Asking good questions," Rabi noted, "is what made me a scientist."

To ask a truly good question, a person must possess noble motives and a genuine desire to discover the truth. The Pharisees, however, approached Jesus with a very different spirit. They already felt they had all the answers. They came to Jesus not to learn, but to trap Him, testing Him with a question designed to damage His reputation and entangle Him in the bitter theological debates of their day: "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

Jesus does not take the bait of picking one duty over another. Instead, He cuts straight to the eternal bedrock of divine revelation: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

Beyond Minimalism

In giving this answer, Jesus calls us away from the trap of minimalism. We are so often tempted to ask, "What is the bare minimum I need to do to get by? How much must I pray, how much must I give, how many rules must I follow to stay out of trouble?"

True divine love does not count the cost. We can see an earthly analogy in the love that good parents have for their children. Parents do not search for the minimum amount of affection required to remain legally compliant. They pour out their love continually because their children need it, because they are their children. They are not loved for their looks, their talents, or their intelligence, but simply for who they are. In the same way, God loves us not because we have earned it, but because we are His children. And in return, Jesus calls us to love God and neighbor completely, without reservation.

The poet Maya Angelou was once asked what her ultimate lifetime goals were. She answered simply, "I want to become a Christian." Maya Angelou was already a Christian! But her point was profound: Christianity is an ongoing, daily process of becoming. Every day we take new steps to allow God to transform us. And every day, God uses the people around us to help us find Him.

The Inseparable Twin Commandments

Notice the precise order and force of Jesus' words. “The second is like it.” In some translations, it is rendered as resembles it. The second commandment—love of neighbor—is not an optional add-on, nor is it a softer, more secular version of the first. It resembles the first because it draws its very life from it.

Any love for our neighbor that is not rooted in a profound love for God ceases to be Gospel love. It may look generous, it may feel warm, and it may accomplish a great deal of social good on the surface, but if God is divorced from it, it loses its eternal soul. Yet, the two parts of the commandment are utterly inseparable, even when they seem to pull us in opposite directions.

Our first reading from Exodus is startlingly blunt about this danger: God hears the cry of the oppressed, and His anger flares against those who claim to belong to Him while crushing or ignoring the vulnerable. You cannot truly love God while treating your neighbor as disposable. As St. John bluntly writes, "Anyone who says they love God but hates their brother or sister is a liar."

On the other hand—and this is a subtle, pervasive danger in our modern culture—we can become so consumed by "loving our neighbor" through activism, social causes, or philanthropy that God quietly drops out of the picture entirely. We reduce the second commandment to a mere program of social work: do good, be kind, make the world a better place.

When neighbor-love is disconnected from God, it becomes purely our own heavy burden. This is precisely why human relationships and marriages so often exhaust us. Couples try to sustain indissoluble love through sheer willpower alone, forgetting that there is a necessary Third Party to the covenant: God. God’s grace is what cements, completes, and fulfills human love.

Gospel Love vs. Mere Altruism

When our heart is fixed on God—when we love Him with everything we are—our neighbor is no longer viewed merely as a project, a political cause, or a way to make ourselves feel virtuous. The neighbor becomes someone who belongs to the God we adore. We begin to see them through His eyes and serve them with His heart. The love we offer is no longer our own fragile achievement; it is a direct participation in the very life and love of God.

This is the vast difference between Gospel love and the altruism of the do-gooder. The do-gooder acts out of duty, ideology, or the quiet psychological satisfaction of being useful. While that produces temporary earthly benefits, it remains strictly horizontal. It never rises to God, and therefore it cannot ultimately transform the giver or the receiver.

Conclusion

The tension between the two commandments is real, but it is a holy and healthy tension. If our love for God does not push us outward in service to our neighbor, it is sterile. If our love for neighbor is not continually drawn back into the wellspring of God's grace, it will wither into mere activism or burnout.

As we now prepare to enter the Eucharistic Prayer—the memorial of Christ's supreme sacrifice, the total gift of Himself to the Father and to us—we pray for the courage to love God with our whole hearts, minds, and souls, so that we might truly see and love our neighbors as living reflections of His presence in the world.

 

 OT XXIX [A] Is 45:1, 4-6; 1 Thes 1:1-5b; Mt 22:15-21.

The common theme of today’s readings is the nature of our obligations to God and to our country. They show us how, with God’s help, we can become ideal citizens of both earth and Heaven.

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah presents a startling figure: Cyrus, the pagan emperor of Persia. God addresses him as His “chosen,” literally His “anointed,” His messiah: “It is for the sake of my servant Jacob, of Israel my chosen one, that I have called you by your name, conferring a title though you do not know me.” Cyrus is chosen not because of his faith, not because he worships the God of Israel—in fact, he does not even know Him. He is chosen purely for the sake of God’s people.

Cyrus is an instrument in the divine hand, used for a purpose far greater than his own ambitions. He conquers, opens doors, and restores the exiles, yet he remains largely unaware of the One who grasps his right hand. He may appear to be the most powerful man in the ancient world, but another power far greater than his is guiding history. This teaches us something about being chosen by God: we take no credit for our call. We did not earn it, we are not deserving of it, and we have no achievements to show. Yet God chooses us simply because He is good and because He loves us.

In the Gospel, when trap-setters ask whether to pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus famously replies, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar—and to God what belongs to God.” While worldly rulers hold limited authority over civic affairs, ultimate allegiance belongs to God.

Writing to the Thessalonians St. Paul reminds us that we are chosen by God because we are made in His image. Just as the coin bears Caesar’s image, we bear God’s image—meaning we owe Him not just a portion of our lives, but our entire selves.

This is the key to understanding Jesus’ teaching. The coin bears Caesar’s image; since it belongs to Caesar. We bear God’s image, since we belong to God. Everything we are—our intellect, our freedom, our capacity to love, our very existence—is stamped with the divine likeness. To “give to God what belongs to God” is not merely to offer Him a portion of our time or resources. It is to surrender our whole self: mind, heart, soul, and being. That’s why Jesus told us to love the Lord with all our heart, with our mind, with all your soul and all your strength.

Being chosen is not a privilege that excuses us from responsibility. It is a vocation that calls us to live differently. The chosen are summoned to lives of gratitude and joy, sustained and expressed through the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. This is what St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians. At baptism, you received the indelible mark of Christ, the One who shows us what God’s image looks like. You are chosen. Live, then, in gratitude. Live in joy. Live by faith, hope, and charity. Give to God what belongs to God, and discover that in doing so you lose nothing; instead, you receive everything.

The words “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” have particular meaning for us in the United States. First, “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” means more than paying taxes or performing military service. We have a responsibility to take an active role in public life, from town hall to Washington, D.C. A good Catholic cares for his country because he loves God and wants the nation to reflect God’s love in every aspect of national life. By serving the country rightly, as a committed Catholic, one also serves God.

Our election is only a fortnight away. As responsible Catholics and citizens, we need to form our consciences before we vote. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops provides guidance in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, which helps Catholics learn Catholic social teaching, engage in respectful public dialogue, and make political choices in light of the Gospel. The bishops do not tell Catholics for whom or against whom to vote; rather, they call each person to form a conscience according to God’s truth, study the issues, and pray for discernment. A QR code link to the USCCB website is provided at the back of the church, if you are interested in learning more about responsible citizenship.

One danger the bishops name is that many people instinctively identify as Americans, Democrats, or Republicans before they identify as Catholics. When that happens, the Gospel can be overshadowed by partisanship or rigid ideology that demands more loyalty than the Word of God. Naming this honestly is not a condemnation; it is an invitation to let our faith shape our civic identity, rather than allowing politics to reshape our faith. Catholics should be guided more by moral conviction than by attachment to a party or interest group.

From the beginning, Catholics in this country have wrestled with how to live faithfully in a culture that does not always share or support the Gospel. That struggle continues today, especially when many feel politically homeless and unsure where their faith fits within the current landscape. A responsible citizen should learn where each candidate stands and whether that candidate supports Catholic values. Important issues must be considered: protection of unborn life, capital punishment, euthanasia and assisted suicide, poverty, homelessness, access to basic health care, human trafficking, racism, and violence.

Top of this list stands the defense of unborn life, because the unborn are the most defenseless among us. The bishops remind us that issues affecting human life and dignity do not all carry the same moral weight, and that opposition to intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences. At the same time, we may not use one issue to excuse indifference toward other grave threats to human dignity.

Consider how strangely our society can value life. Federal law prohibits carrying out a death sentence on a pregnant woman, and international human-rights law makes the same provision. Even under English common law, a condemned pregnant woman could delay execution until after giving birth. Yet these days some people call an unborn child merely a “lump of cells.” The law protects the egg of a bald eagle with severe penalties, $100,000.00 fine, while a human embryo is often denied the most basic protection. This inconsistency should awaken us. So, form your conscience before you vote in the coming days.

Gracious God, guide our hearts and hands as we vote, that our choices may uphold human dignity and advance the common good. 

 OT.XXVII: O.T:  Isaiah 25:6–10a; Philippians 4:12–14, 19–20; Matthew 22:1–14

At the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin held an elaborate banquet in honor of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Russian guests arrived in formal military uniforms, but Churchill came wearing the zipper coveralls for which he had become famous during the German bombing of London. He may have intended it as a nostalgic gesture, but his hosts did not receive it that way. They regarded it as an insult: their guest of honor had not considered the occasion worthy of proper attire.

Whether or not we share their reaction, the point is clear. What we wear can express whether we recognize the dignity of an occasion and the honor due to the host. In Jesus’ day, weddings were important communal celebrations, and appropriate clothing expressed respect for the bridegroom, the family, and the feast itself. In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of something far deeper than outward appearance: He calls us to receive the wedding garment of righteousness, conversion, and grace.

Jesus tells of a king who prepares a wedding feast for his son. Everything is ready. The tables are set, the food is prepared, and the invitations have gone out. Yet the invited guests refuse to come.

One goes to his farm. Another goes to his business. Their work and responsibilities are not necessarily evil. Farms, businesses, marriages, family obligations, and daily responsibilities can all be good things. The tragedy is that these guests allow lesser goods to replace the greatest good. They treat the king’s invitation as optional, inconvenient, and less urgent than the concerns of ordinary life.

Their refusal reveals a dangerous presumption: they assume that the king’s invitation can be ignored without consequence. They want the benefits of life, security, and success, but not the relationship with the king who gives life its meaning. They seek survival while rejecting the source of true life.

The king’s response is severe, but the feast itself is not cancelled. The invitation is extended outward: “Go out, therefore, into the main roads, and invite to the wedding feast whomever you find.” The servants gather everyone they can find, “bad and good alike,” and the hall is filled.

The wedding feast represents the messianic blessings promised by God: salvation, communion with Christ, forgiveness, eternal life, and participation in the Kingdom. It represents, in the deepest sense, the one thing that matters most.

This is a danger in our spiritual lives. Sunday comes, and it is time for Mass, but there is a project to finish, a meal to prepare, a game to watch, visitors to receive, a garden to tend, errands to run, or simply fatigue after a busy week. The urgent seems impossible to postpone. Prayer can wait. Mass can wait. God can wait.

But the Gospel asks us: can the most important thing really wait forever?

The same danger affects our human relationships. It is important to spend time with one’s spouse, children, parents, grandparents, friends, and neighbors. It is important to visit an aging parent who is alone. It is important to call the friend who is sick, grieving, discouraged, or isolated. It is important to care for our health, rest when we need to rest, seek medical attention when necessary, and repair strained relationships before it is too late.

Yet these things often do not appear urgent. The world will not collapse today if we fail to call, visit, apologize, pray, or rest. And so we keep postponing them.

We tell ourselves, “After this project is finished, I will make time.” “After the house is in order, I will call.” “After I pay off this debt, I will slow down.” “After things become less busy, I will return to Mass.” But life often does not become less busy. The urgent keeps multiplying, while the important is quietly neglected.

The Gospel is therefore not only a lesson about heaven. It is also a school of life. It teaches us to establish proper priorities. It teaches us not to lose the important for the sake of the urgent.

The wedding garment

The parable ends with a troubling scene. The king enters the banquet hall and finds one guest not wearing a wedding garment. The man is speechless when questioned, and he is cast out.

At first, this seems harsh. After all, the guests were gathered from roads and crossroads. How could someone brought in from the street be expected to arrive in formal clothing?

The point is not that God demands external perfection before He welcomes us. The point is that the invitation of grace calls for a response. In the ancient world, a royal host could provide festive garments for guests. If that background is assumed here, the guest’s failure to wear the garment is not a matter of poverty or lack of opportunity. It is a refusal to receive what the king has provided.

The wedding garment represents the inner disposition of one who accepts God’s invitation on God’s terms rather than his own. It is the garment of baptismal grace. He was rejected because he presumed that the invitation demanded nothing of him: no response, no righteousness, no conversion, no gratitude, no new way of living.

To come to the banquet without the wedding garment is to say, “I want the blessings of God, but I do not want to be converted. I want forgiveness, but I do not want to forgive. I want mercy, but I do not want to show mercy. I want a place in the Kingdom, but I do not want Christ to be King of my life.”

These are warnings for all of us, and so we must ask ourselves honestly:

Do I allow the distractions and pressures of life to keep me from prayer, the sacraments, and Sunday Mass?

Do I wear the garment of grace by striving to live with faith, charity, repentance, and forgiveness?

Have I allowed the urgent things in my life to crowd out the people and commitments that truly matter?

The table is already set. The sacrifice has already been offered. The Son of God has given Himself for us on the altar of the Cross, and He gives Himself to us again in the Eucharist.

Everything is ready.

The question is whether we will come—and whether we will come with hearts ready to receive the garment that the King Himself provides.

Come to the feast. Come not grudgingly, not merely to remain sane or healthy for another day, but willingly and joyfully. Come because the One who invites us is the One who has conquered death. Come because at His table, our deepest hunger is satisfied.

Come, Eat, and live. Amen.

 St. Francis: Patron of Ecology

Scripture Readings: Wisdom 13:1–9 | Psalm 19:2–5 | Colossians 1:15–20 | Matthew 6:24–34

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

On October 4th, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis died in October 1226. Less than two years later, he was canonized a saint. This year marks the 800^th year of his heavenward journey.  In popular religious culture, Francis is often reduced to a gentle figure in a brown habit surrounded by birds and garden statues. We honor him as the patron saint of ecology—a distinction formally declared by Pope John Paul II in 1979—and we bring our pets to church for blessings. Yet, if we reduce Francis to a simple lover of animals, we miss the radical, transformative heart of his life.

Born in Assisi around 1181, Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, consumed by dreams of earthly glory and knighthood. God refashioned those ambitions through captivity, severe illness, and a series of divine encounters. In 1206, praying before the crucifix at San Damiano, he heard Christ say: “Rebuild my Church.” What began as a physical restoration of a crumbling chapel grew into a global renewal of faith through the Order of Friars Minor and the Poor Clares.

Francis was not merely a nature enthusiast; he was a mystic whose vision of creation mirrored the arc of Sacred Scripture.

1. Creation as the Mirror of the Creator (Wisdom 13:1–9 & Psalm 19)

The Book of Wisdom warns us against a common spiritual blindness: becoming so entranced by the grandeur of the world that we forget the One who fashioned it. “From the greatness and the beauty of created things,” the sacred author writes, “their original author, by analogy, is seen.” Psalm 19 echoes this truth: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”

For St. Francis, creation was not an object to be exploited for greed, nor was it something to be worshipped in place of God. Creation was God’s first book of revelation—a living sacrament of the Divine Presence. Francis saw every creature, from Brother Sun to the humblest earthworm, as a sibling because all share a single Father. When he listened to a rushing river or looked at a field of wildflowers, he did not stop at nature’s beauty; he was drawn up into adoration of the Creator. Francis lived as the remedy to worldliness, transforming nature into an altar of praise.

2. Christ, the Image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15–20)

Where did Francis discover the key to reading this book of creation? He found it in Jesus Christ.

In our second reading, St. Paul presents a profound hymn: Christ is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation... for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth.” Paul proclaims that Christ holds all things together, and that through His cross, God reconciled all things to Himself.

Francis possessed a deeply Christocentric worldview. He recognized the cosmic Christ at the center of reality, seeing the footprint of the eternal Word in everything around him. When Francis looked at a lamb, he wept in remembrance of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. When he looked at wood, he saw the wood of the Cross. Near the end of his life, this interior configuration to Christ became physical when he received the stigmata—bearing in his own body the wounds of the Crucified Lord. For Francis, to love Christ meant to love everything Christ made, sustained, and redeemed.

3. Radical Trust and Freedom from Anxiety (Matthew 6:24–34)

In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers one of the most liberating invitations in Scripture: “Look at the birds in the sky... Learn from the way the wild flowers grow... Do not worry about tomorrow.”

If anyone embodied this message, it was St. Francis. As a young man, Francis stripped off his fine garments before the Bishop of Assisi and handed them back to his father, declaring that he would no longer call Pietro Bernardone his father, but only “Our Father who art in heaven.”

Francis embraced “Lady Poverty” not out of contempt for material things, but out of total trust in God. He understood Christ’s warning that “you cannot serve God and mammon.” Wealth and the drive for accumulation build walls—separating us from God, our neighbors, and the earth itself. By stripping away excess, Francis discovered the freedom of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Because he owned nothing, he received everything as a gift.

The Franciscan Call Today

The witness of St. Francis, illuminated by Scripture, invites us to examine our own lives through three calls to action:

• Move from Possession to Praise: In a culture that conditions us to consume, Francis calls us to step back in gratitude. View creation not as a commodity to use, but as a gift to safeguard and reverence.
• Recognize Christ in the Suffering: Seek the face of Christ in prayer and the Sacraments, but also in the beauty of the natural world and in the poor, sick, and marginalized, whom Francis embraced as living icons of the Lord.
• Surrender Your Anxiety: Bring your worries about tomorrow to the Heavenly Father, who clothes the grass of the field and holds all of creation in His hands.

May we walk through this world with lighter steps, wider hearts, and voices raised in the words of St. Francis: “Praised be You, my Lord, through all Your creatures!” Amen.