We cannot remove the scales of sin on our own (Haley Stewart)

    The confessional requires our vulnerability. We can have no veils between ourselves and God, and he himself has torn the veil of the temple that might separate us. To examine our conscience with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we can see ourselves with the help of God’s divine mirror. 

     Before becoming Catholic, I might have felt guilty about things I had done, but that guilt never could be truly addressed and overcome. The sacrament of Reconciliation not only makes it possible to accept the reality of my sin; confession offers the gift of leaving the shame in the confessional. Sin has been spoken, it has been faced—and it has been met with mercy and washed away by the blood of Christ. 

     We may try to uncover our “faces” inch by inch and day by day, but like Eustace Scrubb in one of C.S. Lewis’ stories, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we cannot remove the scales of sin on our own but only through the mercy of God, in order that one day we can truly meet him “face to face.” No flimsy veil of self-deceit can protect us from the power of that mercy. The grace is there, waiting for us. Thanks be to God. 

--Haley Stewart

Image source: https://anunexpectedjournal.com/lewiss-dragons-and-materialism-a-reflection-on-eustace-scrubb-and-other-dragons/
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Compassion lies at the heart of prayer (Henri Nouwen)

    Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world; when I pray for the endless needs of the millions, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience I realize that compassion is not mine but God’s gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are, that is, when God allowed all of us to enter into his intimate life, it became possible for us to share in his infinite compassion. 

    In praying for others, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found by the divine love that holds the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace. 

 --Henri Nouwen 

Image source:   https://www.crosswalk.com/church/end-racism/a-convicting-prayer-for-compassion-on-those-affected-by-racism.html
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Proclaim the compassionate love of God (Fr. James Martin)

    Jesus calls a whole group of people to spread the Good News, not just one. That is, he doesn’t just appoint a kind of assistant—one person, like Peter. No, he appoints 12 of them and then more. In other places in the Gospels, we’re told that there were as many as 72 disciples. The 12 is an image of the 12 tribes of Israel, a kind of "gathering in." But these numbers are also a reflection that Jesus knows we need one another, even amid divisions—like the disciples faced. And like we face today. 

    Jesus also calls them by name. He doesn’t call a mass of nameless people, but individuals: Peter, Andrew, James, John, and so on. And he calls them, which was unusual in those days, when the student sought out the teacher. Today, Jesus calls each of us by name, too. Knowing our strengths and weaknesses, our likes and limitations, our desires and dreams. 

    Every person here has at some point realized that God is inviting him or her, or them, into a relationship with God. But that relationship is not just for you and God, it’s for everyone. God calls us each of by name and sends us out. To do what? The same thing Jesus asks his disciples to do: to heal diseases and illnesses. Not in the same way of course, but diseases nonetheless; the disease of violence, the disease of exclusion, the disease of ignorance and the greatest disease of all, the disease of hatred. 

    So go into the world, proclaim the compassionate love of God, knowing that the Good Shepherd is with his flock, with his feligresía, and with you always. 

--Fr. James Martin, S.J. 

Image source: https://catholicmagazine.news/the-defining-moment/
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His heart fills with compassion (Fr. John P. Fitzgibbons S.J.)

    The future we all long for, the Reign of God, is found in the present moment. It seems to me that is what Jesus senses in today's gospel passage from Matthew (9:32-38). After a long series of stunning cures -- a hemorraghic woman, the raising of a synagogue official's daughter, the cure of two blind men, and the exorcism of a possessed man -- Jesus breathlessly looks out over the crowd. Instead of shrinking away, his heart fills with compassion and sorrow for the multitude "because they were harassed and dejected." Surely he, too, was exhausted! 

    Yet what issues from his mouth is a prayer for more ministers of mercy: "The harvest is good, but the laborers are scarce. Beg the harvester to send laborers to gather the harvest.” 

    I think what gives Jesus the energy and the heart to labor and live so well in the present is an insight. It's hard to name exactly, but the insight starts when looking into the eyes of someone who needs. It grows when we reach out and heal by caring. It becomes a harvest when a community begins to act this way. 

--John P. Fitzgibbons, S.J. 

Image source: https://timeofmercy.com/time-of-mercy-blog/2021/1/5/6x7gnsd1sds2mhzcxvn33n1itn15zm

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Compassion will flow (John O'Donahue / Pope Leo XIV)

There is a place in you...
that is the eternal place within you.
The more we visit there,
the more we are touched and fused
with the limitless kindness and affection of the divine…
If we can inhabit that reflex of divine presence,
then compassion will flow naturally from us.

--John O’Donahue 

      If Christ shows us the face of a compassionate God, then to believe in him and to be his disciples means allowing ourselves to be changed and to take on his same feelings. It means learning to have a heart that is moved, eyes that see and do not look away, hands that help others and soothe their wounds, shoulders that bear the burden of those in need. 

--Pope Leo XIV 

Image source: Eustache Le Sueur, Christ Healing the Blind Man, https://www.wikiart.org/en/eustache-le-sueur/christ-healing-the-blind-man
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To celebrate this forgiveness (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

    To be his, whether we live or die, means that his love means everything to us, and his love is the primary goal each day. We seek to live in it. And when we fail, when we die to that love a bit, we know that he is there to bring us back. 

    I think that, growing up, I didn’t understand why we had a sacrament of reconciliation. What was its power, but to celebrate this love, to celebrate this forgiveness that lifts us up – like moms of old, brushing off our knees, kissing our booboos, and getting us up and toddling off again… to try. 

    It is the cycle of remaining in him – that is the beauty of this sacrament, to remain in him always. To never lose sight of a love that forgives, a love that restores, a love that lifts up. 

   We’re not looking for an absolute transformation. We’re looking for a transformation of attitude, a transformation of mindset, a transformation of vision, how we see. 

    You can clamor after all the power in the world, but the only power worth having, the only power worth exercising, is the power of mercy. And it is born of our own experience in God. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, November 6, 2025

Image source 1: https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/grace-through-reconciliation/

Image source 2: https://www.miraclecenter.org/wp/the-magic-kiss/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 14, 2026: Jesus' heart was moved with pity for them...

Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them….
How is God’s infinite compassion active in your life? 

    God’s patient compassion for humankind is extraordinary. In the Book of Exodus, while Israel is encamped in front of Mount Sinai, Moses goes up the mountain to God, who proposes to establish a bond between himself and the people: If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people. God has cared for the people of Israel constantly, bringing them out of Egypt, bearing them up on eagle wings, that they might become a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. In no other faith tradition of the time was there established this kind of relationship in which God is bound to the people as they are bound to God. We are his people: the sheep of his flock, Psalm 100 proclaims, he made us; his we are! God’s compassion toward his people is evident in his infinite kindness and faithfulness, forever! 

    Jesus’ compassion for humankind is likewise extraordinary. In Matthew’s Gospel, seeing people who are troubled and abandoned, Jesus’ heart is moved with pity, and he addresses their needs. Then Jesus sends out his disciples to be his presence in the world, to reveal him to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The disciples are sent out to take eternity to the world, to gather the lost sheep back to the God of infinite compassion, restoring them to relationship with their Lord. That restoration, Paul tells the Romans, finds its fullness in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Thus we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son. We can’t effect reconciliation, but God can and does, in an extraordinary and ongoing way; we can but participate in that forgiveness that is already active, and celebrate it! 

    The compassion of God is extraordinary, beyond our ability to comprehend, yet it is revealed again and again and again every time we open ourselves to it. That infinite compassion is meant to work in our lives as well, recreating us as a kingdom of priests, sent out to bring the promise of eternal life to all the world! 

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