He came to rule from within (Fr. Patrick Michaels / Molly Hartle)

Christ didn’t come to rule over us;
he came to rule from within.
Because Christ did not come to rule as any other king.
 There was only one power he wished to exercise
and that was the absolute love of God for all.

 --Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, April 30, 2026 

    [In Matthew 11: 25-30], Jesus seems to be saying something odd. Essentially, he thanks God for hiding his treasures from “the wise and the learned.” My first question upon reading this was “Wouldn’t the wise and the learned naturally see his treasures?” 

    But those aren’t the people Jesus is talking about. He’s talking about the Jewish elite (that is, the Pharisees and Sadducees). Jesus knows that the Jewish elite are not only going to try to undermine him but that eventually their judgement will lead to his crucifixion. We get a taste of this in Matthew 9 when Jesus heals a paraplegic by saying simply “your sins are forgiven.” Rather than seeing the miracle in Jesus’ astonishing healing, the Jewish elite say, “This fellow is blaspheming!” 

    So, Jesus is mad. Not at the Jewish elite per se, but at their own misguided attachment to the letter of the law. He knows that their inability to remain open to his teachings will cost them salvation. Thus, his reference to “the childlike” – the Jewish elite are anything but. 

    In the latter part of this gospel reading, Jesus speaks to the very people who have fallen under the Jewish elite’s perfectionistic adherence to Mosaic law—all those who “labor and are burdened.” Jesus offers them a simple, inclusive faith that doesn’t require an education. No doubt this is what he means when he says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden light.” 

    Here, Jesus opens the door for anybody and everybody to follow him, even those people who lack an education, social standing, and money. He himself was born into poverty, was unable to read and write, and had little to no standing in society. 

    Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened… 

--Molly Hartle,
Communion Service Reflection,
October 4, 2022 

Image source: Jesus challenges the Pharisees and Chief Priest, The Chosen, Season 5, Episode 3, https://www.thebibleartist.com/post/the-chosen-season-5-episode-3-bible-study-discussion-guide-exploring-the-chosen-with-small-group

The heart of the gentle, humble Jesus (W.S. Gilbert / Dr. Wendy Wright)

Let your heart be your compass.

--W.S. Gilbert

     [In Salesian spirituality,] each devout person becomes such by conforming her or his heart to the heart of the gentle humble Jesus of the gospels. It is interiorly, within the core or heart of the person, that this conformity is to take place. The human heart, refashioned through prayer, loving relationships, and loving actions, becomes fashioned into the heart of the gentle, loving savior. Jesus will live in such a heart. Jesus is enfleshed in such a person’s life. Through the ‘devout’ Christian, Jesus lives and society is transformed. 

--Dr. Wendy Wright,
“Hearts Have a Secret Language”

Image source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/418091763063248/posts/1038651777673907/
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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
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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/
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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/
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