Thursday, 13th Week in ordinary time – Matthew 9:1-8
Thursday, 13th Week in ordinary time – Matthew 9:1-8
The Gospel of Matthew was written in the late first century, a turbulent period following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, to help a predominantly Jewish-Christian audience redefine their identity.
Chapter nine of the Gospel of Matthew has the last of the four miracle narratives. The first six were in chapter eight. Chapter nine also has Jesus calling Matthew to be an apostle and this is followed by a teaching on discipleship. It then winds down, giving way to the second of Matthew’s discourse in chapter ten; the mission discourse.
But chapter nine will also see the first sparks of confrontation that Jesus encounters. The opposition does not come from just one group. Jesus faces critics from three distinct sides; from the legalistic scribes (9:3), the ritual focused Pharisees (9:11) and even with the ascetic disciples of his own cousin, John the Baptist (9:14).
The Greek word ‘grammateus,’ translated scribe, means writer. The scribes were the ones who drew up legal documents. They also copied the Old Testament Scripture and devoted themselves to the study of the law, and the determination of its applications on daily life. They also studied the Scripture with respect to doctrinal and historical matters. Noted scribes had their own disciples and many of the scribes were members of the Jewish council.
We are no strangers to the healing power of Jesus. On this occasion, it is the power of petition that prompts Jesus to heal a paralysed man. Perhaps this miracle would have been without incident if Jesus simply took the man’s hand like he did with Peter’s mother-in-law.
St Matthew wants to make a point. Jesus is not just some wonder working miracle man; he is the Son of God whom even satan, who had possessed two men in Gadara, acknowledged as being so. For St Matthew, while Jesus has the ability to heal, he has even more, the authority to take away sins that were seen as the cause of illness. The religious leaders counted sins; Jesus erased them.
Hence Jesus does not at first say, ‘pick up your mat and walk’ but He says, ‘your sins are forgiven’. Jesus mended the man’s soul before He fixed his steps. He is the Son of God and with Him rests the power to forgive sins, but He also has the power to extend this authority – to forgive sins, to the Church. It is for these reasons that that those who see this miracle are not merely left amazed, as in Mark’s Gospel, but they glorify God who had given such authority to men.
The paralyzed man is brought to Jesus for physical mobility, but Jesus addresses his spiritual state first by saying, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven” (Matt 9:2). His proclamation, “take heart son, your sins are forgiven” causes the scribes to be agitated. The scriptures do not tell us that they objected vociferously. Rather we are told that they had “evil thoughts in their hearts;” for they called him a blasphemer. A critical spirit will make you miss the miracle standing right in front of you.
This was the very charge that they brought against him at his trial (Matthew 26:65). The scribes correctly understood that Jesus claimed to do something that only God can do. But they were incorrect in assuming that Jesus was not God Himself.
Our Lord did not seek disputes. Yet when evil sets in our hearts we become the agents of satan and evil and then we are capable of attacking even our Lord. The evil in our mind pollutes our hearts, pushing us to train our guns against good men and women and turning the forces of evil against them. It is the little things, that we need to guard our heart from.
Finally, the Lord today was prompted to work a miracle looking at the faith of the friends of the paralytic. The paralytic perhaps had no faith at all; at least the Gospel does not seem to mention it explicitly. He was obedient, he took his mat and went home when he was told but as far as faith, we are told nothing. But it is the faith of the friends with which I want to end this reflection. True friends don’t just carry your burdens; they carry you to Jesus.
If there is anything that hits home in this text, it is the power of intercessory prayer. I have bemoaned the way the ‘prayers of the faithful’ are written and even more, prayed at Sunday mass. On one or two occasions in my parish, I have urged members in the congregation to come forward and make a spontaneous prayer. The silence that follows would make any school teacher ecstatic; but it is heart breaking for the minister.
It is a moment when he realises how poor our faith is and how limited are our expressions. The church should be a house of prayer, not a monument of silence. We have mastered reading prayers, but we have forgotten how to cry out. We don’t need eloquent speakers in the pews; we need desperate advocates for the broken.
We have failed to encourage spontaneous intercessory prayer. Such prayer when made in faith, moves mountains. It does not have to be wordy but simple words that come from the heart. ‘Heal a sister who has cancer Lord’, Help my neighbour get a job lord,’ ‘take care of our doctors and nurses who care for the sick.’ The list can be endless. God answers the weight of our burden, not the wordiness of our vocabulary.
The friends of the paralytic had their petition heard because they believed. Today, you can move mountains as you pray for those who are in need of your prayers for them. Sometimes, the greatest miracle in a person’s life is the community that won’t let them give up.
Wednesday, 13th week in ordinary time – 1st of July 2026 – Matthew 8:28-34
Wednesday, 13th week in ordinary time – 1st of July 2026 – Matthew 8:28-34
Chapters 8 and 9 of the Gospel of Matthew have ten miracle narratives punctuated by three teachings on discipleship. The Gospel of today focuses on the fifth miracle in this ten part series.
Jesus has had to deal with the incredulity of his apostles. He reprimands them, albeit gently for he found their faith lacking. The three miracles that he had worked in Capernaum had not convinced them that with Jesus in the boat they could smile in the storm. Now that the Sea of Galilee is calm once again, the apostles and the Lord arrive at the ‘other side,’ in the country of the Gadarenes. The calm of the Sea of Galilee was not the end of the journey; it was simply the runway for the next display of absolute authority.
The country of the Gadarenes was more a region rather than some sovereign nation and it got its name from the town of Gadara on the south-east side of the lake. This was most certainly a Gentile region for we are told that its people reared pigs, an animal no Jew would ever touch, lest they be defiled.
Our Lord is encountered by two demoniacs coming out of the tombs, they are fierce and no one could pass that way. Right away, the demoniacs have no problem recognising who Jesus is; they call him the ‘Son of God’. How ironic it is that the twelve apostles, just a couple of verses earlier, ask “what sort of man is this?” in response to Our Lord calming the storm. The disciples who loved Him asked who He was, while the demons who hated Him called Him by His name. If hell can confess His deity without hesitation, what excuse does humanity have for its hesitation
At the time of Our Lord, there was a belief that demons were free to roam the earth until the Judgment Day came. They did this by taking possession of people. This possession was often associated with disease, because disease was the consequence of sin and a sign of being in Satan’s power.
Now they stand in the presence of the Lord, they know that this is a battle they won’t win. There’s no negotiation here as if they were equal partners at the negotiating table; Jesus is superior, and they know it and so they chose a way out; “send us into the heard of swine.” Hell’s pride plummeted from controlling a highway to drowning with livestock.
The number of pigs isn’t mentioned in Matthew like it is in Mark 5:13 (“about two thousand”), but the herd is called large. It is when the demons go out from the two demonized men into the herd and they all perish, we get the very clear sense of how big, how large, how serious these men’s bondage was.
But what happens next is even more surprising. The demons may have chosen their next place of residence but the swine would not have satan live with them for even a moment. Even swine knew that satan never rents space without intending total demolition. They preferred death than having to live with satan. The swine chose immediate death over demonic possession, proving that creation would rather perish than be perverted. They rush down a steep bank into the sea and perish in the water.
The demons had clarity who the Lord was and seeing him they had a premonition that he was here to destroy them. It is they who say to him, “have you come here to torment us before the time.” What they did not expect is that the Lord was not here to give them a new comfortable dwelling or a change in residence. The Lord comes to conquer and destroy satan not to make him comfortable. Darkness does not negotiate with the Light; it begs for an exit strategy. The forces of hell didn’t need a theological debate; they just needed a single word: ‘Go.’
The narrative now takes an unexpected twist. For one, it does not tell us what happened to the two men in whom the demons had once taken residence. It takes for granted their new life of freedom from satan. However, we are told that the townspeople on being told what had happened begged Jesus to leave their neighbourhood. Were they scared? I think not.
The townsfolk should have asked Jesus to stay and stay forever, in order to be protected from any further attack. Why would you ask a mighty Messiah who has the power to deliver you from the clutches of satan to leave? The answer is obvious; we love our possessions more than the Lord. They would rather have their pork vindaloo on Christmas day but not the Christ who was born to save us.
Jesus drowned an entire industry to rescue two individuals, permanently settling the debate on the net worth of a human soul. The townspeople saw the healed men but missed the Messiah. This serves as a warning: it is entirely possible to know exactly who Jesus is intellectually, yet completely reject His lordship in daily life.
God often disrupts our human expectations of how a blessing should look. The townspeople wanted a predictable, safe environment, but Jesus brought a disruptive, messy deliverance that changed the entire economic and spiritual landscape of the region. We often pray for God to change our situation, then get angry when He disrupts our comfort to do it
Finally, to address the modern skeptics of the Bible, some who claim to be Christian and to whom demon-possession is rubbish. Such people claim that demon possession was just a primitive way that people described psychic or social disorders.
The scriptures have never accommodated popular superstitions; if they were false or fanciful, the scriptures would have corrected any false teaching. Rather, the scriptures clearly affirm that there is a spirit world all around us that cannot be ignored.
The Fourth Lateran council which began in Rome in 1215, clearly acknowledges the role of Satan and his fallen angels who are called demons. It’s a pity that some Christians dismiss with ‘great authority’ the role of Satan or demons as merely a creation of a superstitious mind. The war against satan is real
13th Sunday in ordinary time – Matthew 10:37-42
13th Sunday in ordinary time – Matthew 10:37-42
We come to the end of the second of five discourses found in the Gospel of Matthew. The mission discourse ends with no apology. It is not a diplomatic speech that has carefully tip toed safely past a minefield of difficult issues. The mission discourse is not a lecture; it is an ultimatum. Jesus presents the Kingdom not as a philosophy to be debated, but as a reality to be embraced immediately.
If Jesus were a salesman in the modern world, He would have surely lost His job. The art of waxing eloquent was certainly not his forte. A good salesman highlights the features and hides the costs. Jesus does the exact opposite; He puts the price tag on the front window. Modern consumer culture promises that buying a product will make life easier, smoother, and more comfortable. Jesus’ “product” is a cross. He wasn’t looking for buyers to satisfy; He was looking for disciples to transform.
Jesus never gave his disciples, even remotely, a false expectation. He did not make the mission discourse sound exciting or like some exiting adventure just to lure more people to his cause. Rather, he promised a hard trek down some dusty and challenging roads. The sales pitch that he made, would have effectively driven away any prospective disciple.
The mission discourse makes it abundantly clear that the Christian will always be to the world, a point of derision, an object of scorn. This is not merely from those who sit outside our ‘green pastures’ but also include many from within the community who mock the sheep.
Making a choice for Christ clearly sets you on a collision course with the rest of the world and the world does not have to be on the other side of the globe; they are often on the other side of the room in your very home. Those in the early Church who followed Christ, leaving their pagan faiths, were the ones who did not just feel some heat under the collar; many felt the heat literally as they were burnt for Nero’s pleasure.
Just when it sounds like it can’t get any worse, Jesus drops another bombshell. He says He has not come to bring peace to the earth but the sword. Rather strange words from the very one who came to be the ‘Prince of peace’ and who called peacemakers, blessed.
Lest we misunderstand the Lord, His intention is not to bring about bloodshed. The regrettable side effect of the Gospel is division, resulting from the uncompromising proclamation of the kingdom. The mission discourse clearly outlines the great challenges that the disciple must face in taking the Good News to the world along with the side effects it brings. For Jesus, this is moment when decisions have to be made. We are with Him in mission or we are not! Jesus leaves no room for casual fans; He only accepts committed followers.
Jesus is emphatic; luke-warm Christians who have been bathing in their watered down understanding of the Catholic faith are “not worthy of him.” While we may propagate and promote our happy-clappy, kumbaya version of Christ, that version, good as it may be, must also be confronted with verse 38 where we are told that if Christ is not first in everything, then we stand nowhere in his court; we are not worthy of him. If God is not at the centre of your heart, your boundaries will always be misplaced.
The mission discourse calls us to be a walking embassy. When you step out into the world as a disciple, you operate as an ambassador of Christ. Your presence should change the spiritual climate of the rooms you walk into. When you walk with Christ, you carry His presence into every room.
Christ does not ask us to actively seek persecutors so that we may be martyred but he actively asks us to die to ourselves in order that we may find him. He says “those who find THEIR life will lose it.” What Christ is saying is that those who make a life for themselves in which HE is not part of, that life is a life created for themselves. It is a life devoid of him. That life, as happy as it may seem to the world, is a life lost.
That brings us to the million-dollar question as the mission discourse draws to a close; what’s in it for me? There is no talk of a diadem and a palace for those that serve Him. There is however a promise of a disciple’s reward proportionate to the act of love that we show to others; to a prophet, a righteous person or a ‘little one’. That’s it!
That brings us to the million-dollar question as the mission discourse draws to a close; what’s in it for me? There is no talk of a diadem and a palace for those that serve Him. There is however a promise of a disciple’s reward proportionate to the act of love that we show to others; to a prophet, a righteous person or a ‘little one’. That’s it!
Friday, 12th week in ordinary time – 26th June 2026 – Matthew 8:1-4
Friday, 12th week in ordinary time – 26th June 2026 – Matthew 8:1-4
The Sermon on the Mount has ended and the Gospel writer Matthew, having shown Jesus as the Messiah of the word, presents Him as the Messiah of the deed. In this section spanning Chapter 8:1- 9:38, we will read of nine miracle pericopes that encompass ten individual miracles.
The first of these miracles is the cleansing of the leper. Jesus has finished preaching the Sermon on the Mount and is followed by large crowds. It is a leper who comes to Him, kneels before Him, calls Him ‘Lord’ and asks to be made clean. Right away you see a crowd following ‘a show’; the leper approached for salvation. Then, in one swift move Jesus does the unthinkable. He touches a leper.
This narrative would make a good Jew of the first century recoil in horror. If there was one disease that was abhorred by any Jew or for that matter any citizen of the Roman empire, it was leprosy. At the time of Jesus, the lepers were despised from society and forced to live in isolation. They were driven from their homes as outcasts, had to wear torn clothes, let their hair hang loose, cover their upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’
To add to the distress of the person, the physical quarantine was twisted into a moral judgment as sinners. These rules were backed by religious sanctions. One had to get a certification of healing, not from a doctor but from the priest no less; all of which was given by Moses himself with instructions in Leviticus 13 and 14.
The Biblical understanding of leprosy, ‘tsara’ath’ in Hebrew, included a variety of skin ailments. Leviticus 13 and 14 list at least seven medical conditions as ‘tsara’ath’, including scaly skin blemish.
All through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks of fulfilling the law and in doing so, goes beyond what the law asks. He not only cleanses the man but in fulfillment of the Jewish law, sends the man off to the priests to be examined. But what the Lord preached on the Mountain, He lived in the plains. Where human law built a wall, divine love built a bridge.
The authentic living of Jesus is seen in His first miracle in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus did not have to touch the leper. There are many healings that He performed that did not involve touching. Besides, this act would have made Him ‘unclean’ in the eyes of the law. Yet He touches, to demonstrate the visible sign of God’s love to even an ‘outcast’.
Jesus doesn’t distance Himself from our disease; He destroys it with His touch. The hands that shaped the universe were not afraid to touch our rot. Jesus didn’t just touch a disease; He touched a man who hadn’t been touched in years.
There is also the faith of the leper to be considered. In the Gospel, we are not told the name of this man. He is simply referred to by his condition: “a leper”. There is a reflection here for all of us. When you struggle with a problem long enough, your identity gets entirely consumed by your issues. You stop being you and start being known only by what is wrong with you. Don’t let a temporary affliction become a permanent definition.
Scripture also tells us of the humility with which the leprous man approaches our Lord. His humility is what the Gospel calls us to imitate, “if you choose, you can make we clean,” he says to Our Lord.
He risks everything to make his way to Jesus, for if discovered he could have been stoned. He sees in Jesus, a man of authority and puts his faith in Him. ‘If you wish’ he says, ‘you can make me clean’. Desperation drove him to his knees yet faith kept him there.
There is no demand or instance in a healing, just a humble request and in that moment, the leper came face to faith. The man says, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Notice that the leper never doubts Jesus’ ability to heal him; he only questions Jesus’ willingness.
Often, we suffer from the same fear of wondering if Jesus would want to heal us. We ask ourselves, ‘what if, “God does it for others, but He won’t do it for me?’ We then ‘manage our expectations’ by staying at a safe distance from God so we don’t get disappointed. Take your petition to God but leave the healing to Him.
There is another question that runs through our minds. Why are some of us, devout as we are, never healed? In the Gospels, Jesus tells us that our healing is not for ourselves but to bring glory to God. Look at this man with leprosy, there was no demand or any pressure from him. He had heard Jesus speak of love and now in love he asks for what could have been turned down by the Lord. True worship starts when we stop demanding and start submitting.
On a more reflective note, many of us also suffer from spiritual uncleanliness. Like leprosy, it ought to disgust us but sadly we may have grown used to living in our ‘sin colony.’ We were made for the kingdom, but we settle for the sin colony. The enemy doesn’t just want you dirty; he wants you comfortable in the dirt.
You cannot heal what you hide; take the mask off before the Master. Today, make an effort to take your uncleanness to the Lord with the same words of the leper, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” The moment you say ‘If you choose,’ you stop defending your past and start trusting His purpose. Jesus didn’t come to clean up the colony; He came to carry you out of it.
Hello!
Fr. Warner D'Souza is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Bombay. He has served in the parishes of St Michael's (Mahim), St Paul's (Dadar East), Our Lady of Mount Carmel, (Bandra), a ten year stint as priest-in-charge at St Jude Church (Malad East) and at present is the Parish Priest at St Stephen's Church (Cumballa Hill). He is also the Director of the Archdiocesan Heritage Museum and is the co-ordinator of the Committee for the Promotion and Preservation of the Artistic and Historic Patrimony of the Church.
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