We still hope for freedom (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

     On this day each year, we try and remember what has been good in our journey as a country. The entrance of Europeans into this land was good and bad. It was good from the standpoint that it gave a place of religious freedom to those who were oppressed where they came from; it was a problem for the people who already lived here, who found that their land was slowly being taken from them, and they and their values and their way of life weren’t necessarily being incorporated into this new land. 

    As immigrants would continue to come to this land, they would struggle to make a go of it, and they did so because of their own courage, their own conviction, their own values. They built up, through hard work, a nation, prosperity, things they did not know in the lands that they came from. They built up so many things that are biblical. The sense of a concern for one another; that even though there was competition, there was also often one nationality taking under its wing another, helping them to make their way, helping them to find their place, helping them to establish themselves, building up slowly the fabric of a country, built upon the hope for freedom. 

    We still hope for this freedom, and we still work to build it up, and we celebrate what we have accomplished so far, what God has accomplished through us. 

    Our greatness as a country is in our vulnerability to one another and to our world. It is to be found in our weakness, where God has the opportunity to work, God has the opportunity to weave, God has the opportunity to create anew. Today we celebrate our own independence, the right to not just exercise our own freedom, but to make it available to all. 

    It is not a feast, a celebration, that is about us individually. It’s a celebration about us collectively, and when we see ourselves collectively, what we can achieve through the freedom that we won over and over and over again. This is a celebration of all that is best in us, which requires an acceptance of all that is not. And in owning all that is not, to transform it. God is at work in us, and for that, we give thanks. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, July 4, 2025

Image source: https://daily.jstor.org/celebrating-immigration-on-the-fourth-of-july/

A store of meekness and kindliness (Fr. Ron Rolheiser / St. Francis de Sales)

True religion is, at a point,
about the size and quality of our hearts,
about how wide or narrow they are,
about how mellow or bitter they are,
about how forgiving or angry they are,
and about how much they can imitate God’s love
which goes out warmly and equally to all,
to the bad as well as the good.

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI

    Lay up a store of meekness and kindliness, speaking and acting in things great and small as gently as possible. Remember that the Bride of the Canticles is described as not merely dropping honey, and milk also, from her lips, but as having it “under her tongue,” that is to say, in her heart. 

    So we must not only speak gently to our neighbor, but we must be filled, heart and soul, with gentleness; and we must not merely seek the sweetness of aromatic honey in courtesy and suavity with strangers, but also the sweetness of milk among those of our own household and our neighbors; a sweetness terribly lacking to some who are as angels abroad and devils at home! 

--St. Francis de Sales,
Introduction to the Devout Life

Note: In Salesian spirituality, the word "meek" is most often translated as "gentle."

Image source:  https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/which-honey-tastes-the-sweetest.html
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Sunday Gospel Reflection, July 5, 2026: Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me...

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…
Does Jesus rule your heart? 

     Christians generally look to the Book of the Prophet Zechariah as a prophecy about the coming of Jesus. Your king shall come to you, the Lord says through the prophet, a just savior, meek and riding on an ass. In his gospel, Matthew will use this very passage to describe Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But before Jesus gets there, no one seems to comprehend the nature of his kingship, particularly in the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida where he has gone to preach. And yet Jesus prays: I give praise to you, Father, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike. Jesus speaks a prayer of praise for all that is unfolding, all that will lead to the salvation God has promised. Even the obstinate failure of many to understand – which will lead to Jesus’ death – is part of that promise, for Jesus must offer all for the sake of all mankind. His is not the meekness of the weak, but the gentle, humble heart of our King who gives himself for expiation of our sins. 

    It is only once we open ourselves to that truth and allow Jesus to rule our lives that our vision can be expanded past the tangible and we can truly know him, know Christ. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves, Jesus says. It is invitation, not coercion. Jesus’ yoke is his love for us; to accept it is to open ourselves to his love and to allow him to dwell in us and rule our hearts. Our job is simply to let him steer and guide us.. Then we will find the kind of peace prefigured by Zechariah, when all the implements of war (the chariot, the horse, the warrior’s bow) shall be banished, and we shall shout for joy, praising God’s name forever, as Psalm 145 exhorts us to do. 

    How do we open ourselves to the truth of Jesus’ tremendous gift? As Paul tells the Romans, it is the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead who will give life to our mortal bodies also. If we live for the sake of the love revealed to us in Jesus Christ, if he lives in us through baptism, then we are participating in his love, and what we choose to do with our enfleshed bodies reveals that love. If we allow his Spirit to come and work within us, we are set free, and it is freedom that brings peace in the way that God has wanted to rule throughout all of Scripture – ruling our hearts with his love. 

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

Starved for stories of kindness (Robin Williams / Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle
you know nothing about.
Be kind. Always.

--Robin Williams

I could have said potato chips. Always true. Plain ones. No flavors. Potato. Oil. Salt. I could have said black licorice from Finland, also always true. Or long flowy pants with no front pockets. That’s new. Tending my eight aloe babies still recovering from their transplant. Counting orchid buds about to bloom. How many grams of protein in a serving of anything. The insane softness of my daughter’s inner arm. How baby swifts can fly ten months without stopping. Imagining Rodin and Rilke watching sunsets together. But what I said felt truest of all—I am starved for all stories of kindness. The young man delivering diapers to immigrant families in Maine. The woman sending socks to my friend with cancer. The stranger who walked a labyrinth with me. My husband offering me the last egg in the carton. Anyone who smiles and says hello in the grocery store aisles. Anyone who says hello back. 

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,
"When They Asked Me,
'What Is Your Current Hyperfixation'”

Image source 1:  https://www.newhopeministry.info/blog/labyrinth-walking
Image source 2: Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, The Prophet Elisha and the Woman of Shunem (1664), https://www.mfab.hu/artworks/9145/
Quotation source
Poem source

God's goodness (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

 

Forever I will sing
the goodness of the Lord!

--Psalm 89

    Above all else, Jesus revealed this about God: God is good. That truth needs to ground everything else: our churches, our theologies, our spiritualities, our liturgies, and our understanding of everyone else. 

    Sadly, it often doesn’t. The fear that God is not good disguises itself in subtle ways but is always manifest whenever our religious teachings or practices somehow make God in heaven not as understanding, merciful, and indiscriminate and unconditional in love as Jesus was on earth. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser OMI 

Image source: https://virtueconnection.com/how-to-rest-in-gods-mercy-3/
Quotation source

Working towards the eternal (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

God’s love is eternal, 
and it is to work towards the eternal 
that we live in him. 

--Fr Patrick Michaels,
Homily, October 31, 2025 

    Chapter 10 of Matthew tells of the mission and commissioning of Jesus’ apostles (yes, apostles, the only time Matthew uses this word), and it is full of challenges. In this chapter, Jesus gives the Twelve clear instructions and tells them of the coming persecutions, exhorting them not to be afraid when they are made to suffer for his sake – a sobering message. 

    The next part of the gospel passage is no less disconcerting: Are we really to spurn our families, set ourselves against our fathers & mothers? Yet Jesus teaches us that our first priority must be God himself, because if we love God first and foremost, we can love others – family, friends, all – more fully. To embrace God's love is to be transformed by it, and for the better, though many who are hostile to faith don't understand this concept, really. But once transformed, we can be even more loving to all.

    Jesus further tells the apostles to take up their cross, and to lose their life for his sake. Jesus' own suffering on the cross is an exemplar for them of complete devotion to the will of God, and also a model of generosity in sacrifice. 

    So many martyrs followed the apostles' commission, and for this, they lost their lives. But oh, the gain!  Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it, Jesus says. To embrace an existence in which God, Jesus is our first love, to discern our path by means of his Word, to carry out his mission in our world… This is how we find true life, the life that is God's love, growing within us, a love we are called to share with the world, a love we will know in its fullness one day, in perfect union with our Lord, in heaven. 

--Suzanne T., 
Communion Service,
November 24, 2015 

Image source: St. Andrew Dung-Lac and Companion Martyrs, https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-andrew-dung-lac-and-companions/  

The promise of eternal life (Fr. James Martin)

And whoever gives only a cup of cold water 

to one of these little ones to drink 

because the little one is a disciple, 

amen, I say to you,
he will surely not lose his reward.

--Matthew 10:42 

    Eternal life is a hard thing for even some devout Christians to believe. But we have to remember that Jesus does three things to help us accept this promise. First, he tells his disciples about eternal life, [for example,] in John 6. Second, he shows his disciples what it looks like by raising Lazarus from the dead, in John 11, proving that Jesus has power over death. Finally, he definitively reveals the pattern of eternal life, the “first fruits,” as St. Paul says, at the Resurrection. 

    But if that doesn’t “convince” you, look at it this way: God is love. God loved you into being and entered into a loving relationship with you, at the moment of your conception. Why, then, would a loving God let something like death end that loving relationship? No, God has a place prepared for each of us, a place where we will dwell with God until the end of time. Hope in this. Trust in this. Most of all, believe in this. 

--Fr. James Martin 

Image source: https://divinewordmedia.com/2020/06/27/hospitality-exemplified-amidst-covid-19/
Quotation source