Scripture Reflections for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Old Zechariah a long time ago makes this strange prediction. Didn't come true in his lifetime, didn't come true for 500 years and finally fulfilled in Christ the King whose reign now is meant to extend through us the Church to the ends of the world.”

“thereby showing as fully and radically as possible how odd this story is, how odd these texts are, how counter-cultural, how unlike the assumptions of the world. And Christians, it's in that oddness of love, compassion, peace, nonviolence that we find our way.”

“prayer is ultimately about relationship with the One who created us, who sustains us, who knows us better than we know ourselves, who saves us, who loves us, and who is our most tender and dear friend”

“For it is in the humility of the child who asks questions, who wants to learn, and who wants to change that war and pestilence can be banished, and peace and wellbeing reign”

“Jesus bears our burdens. In doing so, he is calling us to help others carry theirs...We are promised rest for ourselves, but only if, in imitation of Jesus, we endeavor to lighten the burdens of our brothers and sisters who call to us for help from all corners of the world.”

“As this diverse group of migrant women from different cultures and regions came together, we experienced the healing presence of the Holy Spirit who bonded us to each other as sisters. This bond even inspired one person to literally give a part of her body to save another.”

“This present invitation is given to us not just in the letter of the scriptures but in the Holy Spirit who calls us to conversion from false certainties to a receptivity to discipleship under a meek and humble Master, who speaks to us and offers peace to our hearts”

“Dare I suggest we can become so confident in our own integrity, righteousness, or decency that it never occurs to us to admit to man or God that we have done wrong? When this is the case, the need to apologize and seek forgiveness from God and man will be far from our minds.”

“We do not love God because he loves us — we love God because he has loved us first, which therefore makes it all possible”

“rest, it doesn't mean like lying in a hammock. It means fulfillment, it means peace, it means the joy that we all want. How do you get it? You get it by imitating the rhythms and dynamics of the divine life, by entering into this love between the Father and the Son”

“Jesus calls us to him, invites us to tie ourselves to him like the disciples without fear because he is gentle and humble of heart and learn from him. This will be easy and in doing this we'll find rest for our souls, the rest that comes from knowing that he is with us always until the end of time.”

“Finding rest in Christ, the outpouring of the divine life, there's the path to joy. Those are the things that Jesus knows the little ones are able to take in.”

“The only way to receive the divine life is to become conformed to that life”

“Jesus is not in command of his life but he receives his life as a gift. This I think is what it means to be a 'little child'...to have an attitude of receptivity where you allow yourself to be moved by God and by God's way.”

“I would imagine most of us prefer to be free and in control of our lives, but the truth is that we are all yoked to something, even though we may not be aware of it. Jesus knows our reality...He too experienced being yoked during His earthly life and found ways of lessening the burden.”

“has Satan found a way to stop so many good people by having them focus on their differences in beliefs, rather than on the good of being Christ in the world? Has he sown choking briars in the rich soil of modern communication, levels of education, and capacity to live a flourishing life?”

“I look back on this and think of the table fellowship of Jesus. This was the main venue for his mission: making disciples, making friends, building relationships. In a more significant way, this was where he began building the Kingdom of Heaven, the Reign of God, the reign marked with justice, compassion, and mercy.”

“When the Spirit leads the prayer, the soul enjoys the serenity of his presence and the effect is felt in the physical realm”

“The Holy Spirit enables us to live joyfully, with a peace that “transcends understanding”—i.e. doesn’t make sense from an earthly perspective!—because he lives in our hearts and consoles us by reminding us of heaven!”

“If we’re willing to listen, if we seek answers, and know that by ourselves nothing is possible and it is only through God that anything is truly possible – Christ will reveal himself to us completely out of the blue and have exactly what we need at the time. We can’t explain it – He just Is there.”

“God reveals himself to us in Christ. But God isn’t all that Jesus reveals – he also reveals us to ourselves, shows us what our humanity is called to be.”

“Don’t we all seek this deep down sense of peace, of healing, of rest and refreshment? Why do we struggle alone with so many things? We often do though. We forget to pray. We forget to turn to Jesus and give him our cares and concerns, our worries, our problems, our heartaches.”

“We are invited not to be ‘religious petty bureaucrats’, who follow punctiliously rules because they have to be followed, but to discern the spirit of love which underlies them”

“Human wisdom tells us that freedom is a solitary thing, me against the world, refusing to submit to those who would control me. As in so many things, it takes the foolishness of God to teach us that true freedom is to be had through being yoked to Christ.”

“When we surrender to the path of love which he's laid out to us...our lives become infinitely lighter, easier, more joyful and they begin to move according to the divine rhythm and the divine purpose. See, what makes our lives burdensome, everybody, is that we are held captive to the old way of ordering things.”