Faith

Thursday, 16th Week in ordinary time – 23rd July, 2026 – Matthew 13:10-17

Chapter 13 is the third of the five major bodies of teachings found in the Gospel of Matthew. This section has seven parables and uses examples from everyday Palestinian life that involved farming, trading and fishing.

The parables show how God’s kingdom operates in the world. They also challenge listeners to live by its principles through difficult times until God’s ultimate purpose is fulfilled.

The word ‘parable’ appears twelve times in chapter 13 and one-third of the teaching of Jesus are in parables. A parable comes from a Greek word which means ‘to throw alongside.’ That is, basic to the parable genre is the notion of comparison; one entity is set alongside something else to be illuminated by the comparison.

Scripture tells us that the parables were given ‘that same day’, namely the Sabbath which we learn of in Chapter 12. Chapter 12 narrates several narratives of Jesus’ conflicts with the Pharisees, who are now plotting to destroy him (12:14) and have accused him of working for Satan (12:24).

 By the end of chapter 12, Jesus appears to be at odds even with his own family (12:46-50). In spite of the personal attacks of the Pharisees against him in 12:24 and his own rejection by his family members, Jesus chooses to carry on teaching and working; he did not let the barbs of the religious establishment get to him.

Yesterday, because we celebrated the Feast of St Mary of Magdala and being a feast day it had privileged texts at the Eucharist. It is for this reason that the first of the seven parables is skipped and we arrive at verses 10-17.  

In the text of today, Jesus has just concluded the first of the seven parables found. The disciples ask Jesus why he speaks to a certain ‘THEM,’ when he uses parables to communicate his message. While I will address who the ‘them’ is, it would be good to hypothesize what was behind this rather curious question.

Perhaps to the mind of the disciples, the presentation of the parable of the ‘soil’ (read previous reflections why I say this) could have been presented in a more scholarly way as the rabbis did. Perhaps, Our Lord could have just dropped the storytelling and gotten to the heart of the matter.

In all probability, the disciples were referring to the Pharisees of chapter twelve as the ‘them’ in verse ten. Their question to Jesus would read, “Why do you speak to the Pharisees in parables?” The answer of Jesus fits in better if we safely assume the ‘them’ to be the Pharisees and this is with good reason, especially when we read this chapter in the context of the attacks on Jesus by the Pharisees in chapter twelve.

It is to the simple and worldly unwise, that Jesus has given the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. If you have any difficulty believing this then all you have to do is to search the annals of history to see that this is a fact. History may be written by the powerful, but the kingdom is inherited by the unassuming.

From the apparitions in Fatima to the ones in Velankanni. From the Popes who sit on the throne of Peter to this author who could not pass his standard seven math examination. God has chosen those who are considered foolish in the eyes of the world and made them his witnesses. True wisdom doesn’t require a resume, just a relationship

Christ is unapologetic with his criticism of the Pharisees. He was never interested in managing their egos, only in exposing their hypocrisy.  They have not and will not receive the secrets of the kingdom. They may claim to have ‘knowledge’ but that it seems, is a figment of their imagination; they ‘do not know the scriptures nor the power of God.” (Matthew 22:29). Christ is emphatic, for him the Pharisees are no more than ‘empty vessels’ who know nothing. To add insult to injury, he says that he will take away even that ‘nothing’ from them. (13:12)

It is not without reason that Christ takes on the Pharisees. These were the ‘separated ones;’ the religious elite who set themselves as desirous of being pushed to a higher calling. What they ended up being is not righteous but self-righteous. They became so consumed with looking holy that they forgot how to be human.

Christ now accuses them of, seeing (the works he has done) and yet not perceiving (who he is). Of hearing, (his words) and yet refusing to listen. The problem wasn’t that the words were too quiet, but that their hearts were too hard. They didn’t miss the message; they dismissed it. Having traded their capacity to hear for the comfort of control, they now face judgment—guilty of choosing blindness in broad daylight.

 The Pharisees were too buried in heavy theological jargon and religious traditions to find joy in a simple, down-to-earth faith. They rubbished Jesus’ parables as absolute gibberish, completely missing the kingdom secrets that ordinary minds welcomed with open arms. Heaven’s deepest secrets, it turns out, have always been kept in the humblest hands.

Christ continues to speak to us! While theologians have their places in their hallowed study halls of technicality and hair-splitting definitions of the faith and scripture, Our Lord is often heard the loudest by a humble preacher who speaks from his heart and wins over a sinner for heaven. Ink belongs in books, but the Spirit belongs in hearts.

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Faith

Monday, 16th Week in ordinary time – 20th July 2026 – Matthew 12:38-42

A text taken out of its context is a pretext. It is for this reason that texts must be read in their context. Matthew chapter twelve places us right at the epicenter of the ultimate rejection of Jesus. On Friday, of the last week, we began chapter twelve and at once you will notice that the Pharisees have their swords drawn out to attack Jesus. Our Lord turns the tables on their wickedness, using the very scriptures they claimed to guard, as the weapon to expose them.

While the first controversy was directed towards embarrassing Jesus by pointing at his disciples who were ‘breaking the Sabbath’ (12:1-8) the second attack was more pointed; directed to Jesus; “is it lawful to cure on the sabbath.” (12:10) Jesus’s truth left them burning with embarrassment, but they didn’t back away. They walked out of that room, huddled in the shadows, and began orchestrating a plan to eliminate Him.

Their angst against Jesus was so obvious that word got to Jesus and he departs from that place. Jesus may have relocated, but He never resigned! While our Lord may have left that place, he did not leave his ministry. Again and again, the scriptures bear witness to the attacks against our Lord only to follow it up with his resolve to “cure all of them” (12:15). A change in your geography does not mean a cancellation of your calling.

Sadly, the opposition to Jesus never took a day off. Our Lord’s enemies are a constant shadow. No sooner had the words left the mouth of a newly healed, once-blind-and-mute man than the Pharisees launched their foulest slander: that Jesus was operating under the authority of Beelzebub.

This was the ultimate tipping point: Jesus draws a definitive line in the sand, declaring, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30). Stripping away all diplomacy, Jesus unleashes an unfiltered rebuke, branding the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” and explicitly calling them “evil” (12:34). Jesus didn’t just critique their theology; He exposed their genealogy, calling them a family of snakes. When mercy is mocked, judgment speaks clearly. It is against this backdrop of intense confrontation that we enter today’s text.

For the fourth time in a single chapter, the Pharisees step to Jesus—and this time, they’ve brought backup. Flanked by the scribes, they demand a miraculous sign, but Christ refuses to perform for their political theater. Instead, He holds His ground and exposes their true identity, calling them exactly what they are: “evil and adulterous”.

The Lord has worked two great miracles in this one chapter and yet they want a sign. They clearly did not want revelation; they wanted a regular routine! They wanted to treat the Son of God like a magician! They wanted Him to jump through their hoops, perform a cheap trick, and satisfy their curiosity. Jesus doesn’t give them a circus show; He gives them a straight-up reality check. He looks right through their religious pedigree and strips away their titles. He exposes their DNA and calls them out on the spot: “An evil and adulterous generation demands a sign!”

Asking for a sign was nothing short of a demand that the heavens open up; a sign was always something from above. Yet they could not see, that the God from whom they wanted a sign, was the God who stood in their midst. Hate takes a terrific hold on us as it did with the Pharisees. It is a terrible architect; it builds walls high enough to block out the Son of God.

Our Lord will not perform on command. He denies their demand for a spectacular display, choosing instead to point toward the only sign that matters: the empty tomb. Using a character from the scriptures, he highlights their incredulity. The people of Nineveh, a hated race of the Israelites, took heed to the words of a very reluctant prophet Jonah, who did not want to preach repentance to them. Jonah gave Nineveh minimum effort and got maximum repentance; Jesus gave Israel maximum grace and got ultimate rejection.   

What an absolute twist of divine justice: on Judgment Day, the very outcasts whom these religious leaders looked down upon with such disdain, will step onto the witness stand. Using their own history of heartfelt repentance, they will hammer the final nail into the coffin of Pharisaic pride.

We often focus so much on the fury of the Pharisees that we completely overlook the fractures in the Saviour’s heart; we forget that before the cross pierced His hands, the rejection broke His heart.  The true agony of Matthew 12 is not the threat of physical violence; it is the deep, aching grief of a Saviour who came to give His life for a people who couldn’t even stand His presence.

Today, examine your heart. Is there someone you hate so much that it has consumed you? If so it’s time to get RID of ‘hateRID’

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Saturday, 15th week in ordinary time – 18th July 2026 – Matthew 12:14-21

Chapters 11 and 12 of the Gospel of Matthew see the unfolding hatred for Jesus. Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. The Pharisees believe Jesus broke the Law by healing; yet, they see no contradiction in plotting a murder on the holy day of rest. Verse 14 makes their intention abundantly clear; “the Pharisees went out and took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.”

The cornfield controversy and the subsequent synagogue healing pushed the Pharisees over the edge. By claiming to be “Lord of the Sabbath,” Jesus directly threatened their monopoly on spiritual authority. Unable to defeat Him in a theological debate, they resort to the ultimate tool of insecure institutions: elimination.

The Pharisees became monsters while trying to protect their rules. It is a sobering warning for any religious person or institution. When our primary goal becomes defending the system, our traditions, or our personal comfort, we quickly lose the capacity for mercy. The moment we value the “structure” more than the “person,” we are just one step away from joining the council that plots to destroy the work of God.

Interestingly Jesus is least bothered about being on the popularity charts of the Pharisees. He is literally a man for the masses, a man on a mission and that’s what he does in the face of constant opposition. Human tendency, by and large, responds negatively to criticism often causing one to withdraw. For Jesus that was a luxury he could not afford. He had a mission and doing the will of the father was paramount for him.

Scripture tells us that, “When Jesus realized this (the plot of the Pharisees), he withdrew from that place. Many people followed him, and he cured them all.” Jesus does not retreat out of fear, but because his “hour” has not yet come. His mission is governed by a divine timeline, not the anger of His critics.

Jesus neutralizes their conspiracy by continuing to do good in secret. Matthew looks at this quiet, non-violent resistance and realizes it matches the blueprint of Isaiah’s Servant perfectly. The Pharisees brought a knife to a spiritual battle, completely unaware that victory would be won through the very vulnerability they sought to destroy.

We live in a culture that screams in the streets. We think that whoever shouts loudest wins the argument. Our Lord did not bring a microphone to a shouting match; He brought a healing touch to a hurting crowd and won the war through quiet resilience. Jesus reminds us that divine strategy often looks like a quiet withdrawal. Choosing not to engage in toxic arguments, refusing to trade insult for insult, and quietly continuing to heal and help people in the background is not cowardice; it is the ultimate display of Kingdom authority

Perhaps there is something for us to ponder about. It is essential to reflect both on the message and the man, for Jesus’ words were backed by his actions. Jesus is fully human and fully divine and hence Jesus surely experienced the rejection, hate and animosity. He was not protected by a divine shield that sanitized him from human emotions of pain and suffering, yet he chose to focus on the positive, he chose to move on and do not merely good work but God’s work.

If in any way you are experiencing rejection, pain or anxiety, look to the Lord Jesus. Often pain makes us wallow in self-pity. We end up looking at our loss rather than the possibility of making others gain. If you want to step out of negative emotions then fill your life with positive ones. Jesus stepped out and healed people, he continued to bring light to others despite the darkness of men that surrounded him.

You cannot always think your way out of a negative feeling, but you can serve your way out of it. When life deals you pain, the most therapeutic thing you can do is become the answer to someone else’s prayer. You can’t control the storm outside, but you can always choose to be the shelter for someone else. By shifting your focus from your own wounds to someone else’s needs, you break the cycle of self-pity. You don’t have to wait for your circumstances to get better to start doing good. Remember, Self-pity demands a mirror, but purpose gives you a window.

Fr Warner D’souza  

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Faith

In Matthew chapters 11 and 12, Our Lord faces a painful reality: He is met not only with hate-filled religious opposition but with the deadening indifference of the masses. He is rejected for not fitting our expectations, despite all the miraculous enlightenment He shared. This profound apathy sets Him on a trajectory straight to the cross.

It is with a heavy, sorrowful heart that Jesus decries the unrepentant towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. He warns that the very people who witness His greatest miracles will face a harsher judgment than Sodom, and, in a striking display of spiritual gravity, these villages ironically remain uninhabited to this day. Miracles often mean nothing to a heart that refuses to move.

 When the crowd walked away, Jesus didn’t chase their approval—He changed His focus and locked eyes with the Father. Listen to me: when rejection hit Him square in the face, Jesus didn’t look for a distraction, because the Father was already the ultimate attraction in His life! He stood up right in the middle of that pushback and said, “Thank You, Father, for hiding this from the experts and revealing it to the underdogs!”

It is a tragedy when the very people who spent generations memorising the prophecies could not even recognise the Presence. They were so busy looking for the Messiah of their expectations that they completely missed the Messiah of their reality standing right in front of them!

Faith must open our eyes, yet often it is men and women of faith who become the greatest hurdles to seeing what the simple and unlettered see so easily. The danger of spiritual maturity is assuming that because we know the text, we automatically know the Heart behind it. To the unlettered and simple Jesus says, “come to me.” Jesus is calling his faithful to him. That call is specifically made to those who are overburdened and weary.  

In a celebrity-driven culture where influencers build empires on likes, a true preacher’s only job is to go completely invisible so that Jesus can be seen. As preachers, we have a bonded duty to direct our faithful to Jesus alone. It is he who has the power to give the overburdened rest. In our media-saturated world, the modern temptation is to curate a personal brand and gather a crowd of fans rather than a community of disciples.

A preacher who draws people to himself is a false teacher. We are not the source of the living water; we are merely the pipes through which it flows. We are but instruments of the Master, pointing broken hearts away from our platforms and toward His presence.

Jesus never promised an escape room from life’s trouble; He promised a shelter right in the middle of the storm. Some of us are waiting for God to change your circumstances, but He wants to change your capacity! To the overburdened, the Lord does not make a false promise to take away the weight. The Lord is crystal clear when he says, “I will give you rest.” He never said, “If you become my disciple and keep my word, I will delete every trouble from your timeline.”

His promise isn’t a problem-free life—His promise is rest! Jesus doesn’t offer a relief from our obligations or a permanent vacation from reality. Instead, it’s a promise of partnership. We are invited to step into a shared yoke where the load feels lighter because we aren’t pulling it alone.

What he says next is even more intriguing. Our Lord says, “shoulder my yoke.” I like this translation to the words, “take my yoke.” Take my yoke almost sounds like Jesus is about to add to our burdens and walk away. That is not his intention; his intention is for us to go to him with the challenges of life and together, Jesus and you, shoulder this burden together. Our Lord shares in your burden, he does not leave you alone.

And while he shoulders the burden with you, he makes another proposition, “learn from me,” he says. It is as if our Lord is saying, while we carry this burden together, let’s make the best of the time we have together; you and I. Let me talk to you, let me tell you how a Christian disciple should handle his stress and burdens. The weight that forces you to your knees is actually an invitation to sit at the feet of the Master

One might still feel a bit cheated even though the Lord makes all this sound so nice. After all, did he not say shoulder my yoke and did he not say his burden, which he wants us to shoulder in addition to our burdens, is easy? Easier than what? Yes, the Lord does want us to shoulder his burden so that he can teach us his ways while we are at it, but his burden is not just easy it is ‘well fitting’. You see, the translation of the word “easy” in Greek is ‘chrestos’ and ‘chrestos’ does not accurately translate as ‘easy’ as much as it translates as ‘well fitting.’ Jesus isn’t offering a zero-gravity lifestyle; He’s offering a weight distribution plan that actually works.

As I said earlier, the Lord did not promise to take away our burden, he promised to give us rest and while he did invite us to shoulder his burden the purpose was to grab an opportunity to learn from him. But even more, Jesus reveals a secret about the burden he asks us to share with him. He tells us that he has ‘measured us’ and found the burden well fitting for us. He has not overburdened us with his burden, he has just helped us to understand that what we carry has been measured for us. He won’t give us a burden we cannot handle. The tragedy of modern stress isn’t that the load is too heavy, but that we are trying to pull a two-man rig all by ourselves

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Faith

Friday, 15th Week in ordinary time – Matthew 12:1-8

Chapter 12 of the Gospel of Matthew throws Jesus straight into a ringside scrap with the Pharisees. It is tragic when religious leaders totally lose the plot, especially when they drew up the plan! To really grasp this drama, we have to look at the backstory of His critics

The Pharisees rose to prominence in the second temple period, which is somewhere between 586 BC-AD 70; from the time the Jews returned from exile in Babylon to the fall of the second temple of Jerusalem. The English word Pharisees originated from the Hebrew “Perisha” (the singular of “Perishaya” and translates as “one who separates himself,” or keeps away from persons or things impure, in order to attain the degree of holiness and righteousness. By doing this, they hoped to represent the religious views, practices, and hopes of the Jewish people. Their separation from others was also included their opposition to the priestly Sadducees.

The Pharisees were scrupulous observers of the Law, as interpreted by the scribes and in accordance with tradition. They formed a league or brotherhood of their own (“ḥaburah”), admitting only those who pledged themselves to the strict observance of Levitical purity, to the avoidance of any association with the ‘Am ha-Areẓ (the ignorant and careless boor), to the scrupulous payment of tithes and other contributions due to the priestly class and the poor and to a conscientious regard for vows and for other people’s property.

 Ironically, the ultimate planners completely lost the plot; the very group that isolated themselves to stay pure ended up networking to orchestrate a murder. They were so consumed by the fine print of religious tradition that they completely missed the headline of the Law.

Today’s Gospel is a controversy set in a field of grain. A simple and natural response to hunger on the Sabbath becomes an excuse for the Pharisees to pick up an argument with Jesus. Jesus was not anti-Torah or anti-Sabbath, He just challenged the interpretations of the Pharisees with regard to the Sabbath.

The field of grain becomes a courtroom where a simple act of human survival is treated as a major crime. When the hungry disciples pluck heads of grain on the Sabbath, the Pharisees do not see people in need; they only see rules being broken. Jesus does not trash the Sabbath here. Instead, He tries to rescue it from the suffocating trap of legalism.

The Sabbath was always meant to be a day of restoration, freedom, and life, but the critics turned it into a day of heavy burdens and anxious restriction. By challenging their narrow interpretations, Jesus reminds us that whenever our religious traditions cause us to value the rule over the person, we have completely lost the heart of God.  They built an empire of regulations on a postage stamp of Scripture, trading the heartbeat of God’s word for a checklist of restrictions.

Ironically the Old Testament, especially the First five books of the Law, have just one thing to say about the Sabbath; keep it holy (Exodus 20: 8- 11). Humanity, it seems, loves to make complex what the divine chose to simplify. The Rabbis, it appears, seemed unhappy with such a basic law and found it necessary to specify thirty-nine actions as those which are forbidden on the Sabbath. The Divine wrote a one-sentence rule to protect rest, but humanity wrote a thirty-nine-chapter manual to weaponize it.

Amongst these forbidden actions were reaping, winnowing, threshing and preparing a meal; the very actions that the disciples ‘broke’ on the Sabbath. But every law has an exception and this was no different. Humanitarian grounds exempted one from considering these actions as broken on the Sabbath. Saving a life took precedence over keeping the law. Scripture itself makes it clear that mercy trumps compliance; the Law was never designed to hold a life hostage to a calendar.

For the record, it was the disciples who plucked the grain and ate, not Jesus. Yet the nit-picking (should have been grain picking) Pharisees don’t correct the disciples but find fault with Jesus; “your disciples are breaking the law.” In reality, the disciples broke no law. Remember the exception made on humanitarian grounds? That comes into play now! The disciples were hungry and if the Sabbath rule was broken, then in was done so on humanitarian grounds.

To our modern, property-obsessed minds, the disciples look like thieves; but under God’s original law, walking into a neighbor’s field to satisfy immediate hunger wasn’t a crime, it was a safety net.  The laws of the Old Testament were laid down with great sensitivity for the good of human kind. While we might see property damage, the Old Testament saw a welfare system; the law expressly permitted a hungry traveler to snack from a field, proving God prioritized survival over strict ownership.

Unfortunately, human kind interpreted God’s laws very narrowly if not for their own convenience. There was no crime committed on this occasion because the law permitted a hungry traveler to pick grain so long as they did it with their hands and not a sickle. Simply put it, if you are hungry, eat and don’t starve.

Jesus flips the script on the Pharisees by pulling a page straight from their own playbook. He drags them back to the Torah, reminding them of the time David and his starving men marched right into the holy place and ate the showbread—the bread exclusively reserved for the priests. Let’s be honest: the shock value shouldn’t have been when they ate, but what they ate! Yet, strangely enough, the ancient critics didn’t bat an eye at David’s rule-breaking, proving that the Pharisees were just manufacturing a cause to trap Jesus.

Jesus then drops another truth bomb on the Pharisees. He points right at the temple priests. They who were supposedly the guardians of the Sabbath, were literally working double shifts on the day of rest because the required sacrifices doubled! They were breaking the letter of the law every single week just to keep the religious machinery running.

Ultimately, Jesus is forcing them to look into the mirror of the Divine mind through the prophet Hosea. He reminds them of a God who fundamentally desires mercy, not sacrifice—proving that the Pharisees were so busy clocking the mileage of ritual compliance that they completely missed the heart of the Master.

If the Pharisees wanted to stage a coup against the King, they should have brought a better weapon than a petty grievance over a cornfield snack.

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