Sunday Gospel Reflection, August 23, 2026: I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven...

I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven…
How do we gain access to the Lord? 

    In the time of the prophet Isaiah, anyone who wanted access to the king needed to go through an official known as the master of the palace who was caretaker for the people and a conduit of information from the people to the king. But Isaiah writes that Shebna, entrusted with this role, has failed in his duty. Because Shebna has not served the needs of either the king or the people, the Lord will place the key of the House of David on another, one who will ostensibly do a better of job of facilitating the people’s access to their king. 

    The key of which Jesus speaks in Matthew’s Gospel also involves access, though of another sort. When Jesus asks his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?, Peter’s proclamation is in fact God’s revelation: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus is God’s revelation; Jesus is also the key that will restore humankind’s access to God through his death and rising. When Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, Peter and his fellow disciples now have a firm foundation from which to facilitate people’s access to God: the authority to teach and preach and bring the power of God’s love to bear on the world. 

    The Church is founded upon the revelation of God through his Son Jesus. Throughout the centuries, the Church has sought to reveal God to the world, and that revelation depends on what knowledge is loosed and what knowledge is bound on earth. And often, we think we have gathered all we need to know about God. But, as Paul reminds the Romans, God is profoundly beyond our comprehension: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! 

    Yet God does reveal himself to us if we are open to listening and to participating in the Eucharist that is our most profound revelation of the living Christ among us, a truth we see by faith, the action of God in union with the Spirit and in union with Christ. The Mass itself is that revelation, a celebration of our union with him, and good reason to, as Psalm 138 exhorts us, give thanks to you, O Lord, with all our hearts and worship at God’s holy temple! We may not be able to plumb the depth of the riches of God, but surely we can open to his revelation among us, daily!

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Valuing each person (Pope Leo XIV)

 Todos, todos, todos...
--Pope Francis

    This is the missionary spirit that must animate us; not closing ourselves off in our small groups, nor feeling superior to the world. We are called to offer God’s love to everyone, in order to achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences but values the personal history of each person and the social and religious culture of every people. 

--Pope Leo XIV 

Image source: https://www.osvnews.com/see-what-missionaries-say-pope-leos-africa-trip-was-really-all-about/ 
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There is a place for all of them (Henri Nouwen)

Dear God,

As you draw me ever deeper into your heart,
I discover that my companions on the
journey are women and men
loved by you as fully and as intimately as I am.
In your compassionate heart,
there is a place for all of them.
No one is excluded.
Give me a share in your compassion, dear God,
so that your unlimited love may become visible
in the way I love my brothers and sisters.

Amen. 

                  --Henri Nouwen

Image source 1: Plautilla Nelli, Last Supper, detail, (1550s), https://angelusnews.com/voices/relating-to-jesus-and-christ/
Image source 2: https://holyfaithcatholicchurch.org/journey/companions-on-the-journey/
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Not according to categories (Rev. Eston Williams / Pope Francis)

At the end of the day,
I’d rather be excluded for those I include,
than included for those I exclude.

 --Rev. Eston Williams

     God’s great freedom in giving himself to us represents a challenge and an exhortation to modify our behaviours and our relationships. It is the invitation which Jesus addresses to us today. He calls us not to think according to the categories of ‘friend/enemy’, ‘us/them’, ‘those who are in/those who are out’, ‘mine/yours’, but rather to go beyond, to open our heart in order to be able to recognize God’s presence and action, even in unusual and unpredictable environments that are not part of our circle. 

--Pope Francis

Image source: Look carefully at the “tiles” of this mosaic. Each is a picture of a member of a larger group – a very diverse group! https://www.christchurch-southgate.org/home/inclusive-church/
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The pivot point of our faith (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

    The term pivot point is used in basketball: the player grounds one foot in place and then spins, looking around for an opening to throw the ball. But you have to remain grounded, because if you move, it’s a foul, and once you start traveling, it’s all over. 

    The pivot point of our faith is the Jesus Christ came to manifest the love of God for all people. That is the one place we need to keep our foot grounded, because if we don’t, we lose track of what we’re about. We lose sight of who we are and who we’re with. 

    It’s easy to get people off track if they don’t maintain their pivot point, if they don’t maintain their grounding in one thing. Our faith is in the power of the love of God to transform our world. It’s in the fact that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were effective at bringing salvation and making it available to all people. 

    When we believe this, when we stay focused in this, we cannot in fact then land in our divisions. 

    We are a Church divided, divided because we all think we know who’s right, and yet the one “right” gets lost in it all. Jesus Christ is our focus. Jesus Christ is what unites us. He is the source of our communion. 

    We live in a country divided, because we have forgotten what we have in common, and part of that is because we’ve had to move into a correctness that isn’t allowed to say, United Under God. There was a time when the United States was united under God, and therefore Jews and Muslims and Christians could actually all get along, if they chose to, because they had one grounding. 

    But even if the rest of the world, even if the rest of the Church, doesn’t stay grounded, we need to. For that is when our Eucharist and our worship are effective in our lives and make them something in this world that will help transform it. When we stay focused in that love of Christ, that love of God revealed in him, when that becomes our pivot point, everything doesn’t necessarily make sense, but it all comes into proper focus. 

    What truly does unite us, if we allow it to do so? His infinite love for each of us. This is when we are free to do his will: when we are set free by his love for us. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, May 21, 2026

Image source: https://brobible.com/sports/article/steph-curry-travel-warriors-mavs-reaction/

We can be the woman who is Ark of the Covenant (Danielle Harrison)

    Mary is the embodiment of what it means to continually say “yes.” And this feast day shows us what is possible for all of us when we can continually say “yes” to God. 

    Right before Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, she had this remarkable moment with the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation. It's her first ‘yes.’ And notice that Mary does not stop and just sit in that. She could have. But instead, she looks out to see where she can have an impact, where she can be of service to someone else. She doesn't wait for Elizabeth to come to see her. She goes and travels to be hospitable, to be caring, to be in community with Elizabeth. And so, we have that great scene where they meet, John leaps in the womb, and Mary and Elizabeth are filled with joy. And then Mary goes into this beautiful song of praise. And I have to think that that song held her throughout her journey, her life journey. Reminding her that: ‘yes, even though this beautiful gift has been given to me, it's not going to be easy. But I know who I am, and I know that God knows who I am.’ 

    My sisters and brothers, we look in the world today and we see… What do we see? We could dwell in the uncertainty and confusion and pain and strife and the negative. Or we can take our ‘yeses’ to what God is calling us to do and go into the marketplace of the world - whether that's the marketplace of our homes, the marketplace in our communities, the marketplace in a global situation - and be that good news. We can go and do those visits. We can go and be hospitable and caring and loving. 

   In essence, we can be the woman who is the Ark of the Covenant, the New Covenant, that we carry Christ within us. And as we carry Christ, we bring Christ in what we say and what we do and how we live and how we be. 

    Let's keep saying “yes.” So that at the end of our journey, we too are assumed. We too are brought close to the One who has always held us close. Amen. 

--Danielle Harrison

Today is the Solemnity of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary!

Image source: Salvator Dalí, The Madonna of Port Lligat (1949), about which the artist said: “Modern physics has revealed to us increasingly the dematerialization which exists in all nature and that is the reason why the material body of my Madonna does not exist and why in place of a torso you find a tabernacle 'filled with Heaven.'” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madonna_of_Port_Lligat#/media/File:The_Madonna_of_Port_Lligat.jpg
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A heart open to universal embrace (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

Todos, todos, todos... 

--Pope Francis

    We cannot sit at the heavenly banquet table if we are still selective as to whom we can sit down with. If, in the next life, like here in this life, we are selective as to whom we love and embrace, then heaven would be the same as earth, with factions, bitterness, grudges, hurt, and every kind of racism, sexism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism keeping us all in our separate silos. We can only sit at the heavenly banquet when our hearts are wide enough to embrace everyone else at the table. Heaven demands a heart open to universal embrace. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI 

Image source: https://parishableitems.com/2023/10/14/gods-invitation/
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