Faith

Friday, 18th week in ordinary time, 7th August 2026 – Matthew 16:24-28

Stop shopping for a discounted Gospel. You see, we love the retail version of Jesus, the one where we swipe our faith and instantly walk out with a bag full of blessing, favor, and comfort. We want the crown, but we are terrified of the heavy lifting. We treat the Bible like a Spotify playlist, skipping straight to Philippians 4:13 and John 3:16 because they feel like a warm blanket. But God didn’t call you to get comfortable; He called you to get conformed to the image of His Son. Look at Matthew 16:24. Jesus doesn’t say, “If anyone wants to follow me, let them live their best life, grab a latte, and slide into destiny.” No! He says, “DENY THEMSELVES, TAKE UP THEIR CROSS, and follow me.”

Our text of today needs a bit of context. Jesus didn’t come to protect the religious status quo; He came to completely crash it. He offended the Jerusalem elite, (15:1) walked straight into enemy territory to praise the raw faith of a pagan outsider, (15:28).  and then fed thousands while refusing to audition for His critics, labeling them an inflated, hollow “evil generation.” (16:4) He stripped away all that religious noise and dragged His disciples to Caesarea Philippi, a place packed with pagan idols, to ask the ultimate question of identity, forcing them to look past the yeast of the Pharisees (16:6) and finally see Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God. (15:16)

Think about this; Jesus will always bypass your religious credentials to get to your raw dependency. He’s intentionally breaking the rules to build your faith. Jesus shattered traditional comfort zones and offended the religious elite to clear a path for raw, unfiltered revelation.

 From now on Jesus will begin his journey to Jerusalem. Mathew 16:2 tells us that “from that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he MUST go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised from the dead.” But this truth was hard for Peter and perhaps the rest to accept. Peter attempts to dissuade the Lord and as a consequence faces his ire. To his shock, he is called satan for he has become a stumbling block with his mind set on human things. Peter went from getting the keys to the Kingdom to being called the enemy because you can’t protect your comfort zone and fulfill your calling at the same time.

It is in this context that Matthew 16:24 must be read. Jesus dropped Matthew 16:24 like a holy grenade because He wasn’t just walking to His cross, He was establishing the baseline for yours! We constantly chase the crown while dodging the crucifixion, but you cannot negotiate with a call to die to yourself. Stop protecting your comfort zone and start picking up your cross.

 Let’s be honest with ourselves: God is not in the business of conscription; He is looking for willing companions. Our baptism beautifully opens the door and welcomes us into the family of Christ, but a seat at the table is never a forced contract. After all, let’s not forget that even Satan had a VIP spot in heaven and deliberately chose to walk out!

Our entire spiritual walk hinges on that one tiny, sharp word from the lips of Jesus: “IF.” If anyone wants to follow me. Following Jesus is an entirely free choice, but it is not a buffet where you can pick and choose your favorite bits. You cannot subscribe to the consolations and sweet blessings while completely opting out of the daily burdens and sacrifices. If you choose to sit at His table, you accept the entire menu, cross and all!

Too often, Christians have their basket of cherry-picked teachings of Christ. Such Christians must be called out for they are nothing but the agents of satan, who like their master ‘deceive’ others into their brand of convenient Christianity.

True discipleship demands a cross, and that cross demands you execute your ego. But we live in a culture that worships the unholy trinity of Me, Myself, and I, completely intoxicated by a counterfeit gospel called “self-actualization.” The world tells you to push people out of the way, demand your rights, and call it “assertiveness.” Let’s call it what it really is: it’s not assertiveness; it’s aggressiveness. It is a diabolical marketing campaign designed to make your pride look like progress. But the kingdom of God operates on a totally different currency: while the world tells you to assert yourself, Jesus tells you to deny yourself. You will never step into the fullness of who God made you to be, until you stop trying to market the monster He called you to crucify.

 Discipleship is never a passive inheritance; it requires a deliberate, daily choice to lift a heavy beam. There is a fascinating nuance in the text that we often gloss over. Christ does not say, “Patiently endure whatever random cross happens to be dumped upon you.” No, He says, “Take up your cross,” and in the Gospel of Luke, it is refined to “THE cross.” You see, we are not being asked to carry a custom, lightweight replica. There is only one true cross—the very one Jesus carried to Golgotha.

We often make the mistake of taking our minor human trivialities, our petty grievances, and our self-inflicted headaches, and consoling ourselves with the pious thought that we are sharing in His sacred suffering. Let us be honest: that is an insult to the crucifixion. For the early community of Matthew, the reality was stark and unmistakable. There was no room for metaphor. Christ was asking them to be entirely ready to lay down their actual lives, just as He did. If your discipleship doesn’t cost you your comfort zone, you aren’t carrying His cross; you’re just carrying your own baggage.

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Faith

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord – 6th August 2026 – Matthew 17:1-9

Think about the weight of this. What if the door was shut forever? What if you were never permitted to see the face of God, ever? But look at the grace of the house today! We are privileged to gaze at Him in the Blessed Sacrament and receive Him in Holy Communion. The God who used to be hidden behind a thick temple veil is now setting a table inside your soul

Think about the patriarchs. Think about the prophets. Even the heavy hitters of the Old Testament didn’t have this kind of access! Moses and Elijah, the two stalwarts of the Old Testament who literally showed up at the Transfiguration, never got to see God’s face. They had to hike up a brutal mountain just to get a voice memo from Heaven! The prophets spent lifetimes climbing toward a hidden God; we simply open our hands to receive Him.

So what’s with mountains? Jesus seemed to like them a lot. The second temptation is on the mountain, so is His place of prayer. The Sermon on the Mount was given on a mountain and so too, the transfiguration of today’s gospel.

 A first-century Jew wouldn’t need a commentary to explain what was happening here. The moment you mention Moses and Elijah in the same sentence; their spiritual radar would go off! Because in the Old Testament, whenever God wanted to show up, He picked a location and He brought an atmosphere. A high mountain plus a thick cloud cover? That wasn’t just bad weather. That was the ultimate setup. Put those two together, and it meant one thing: God is about to step into the room!

The presence of Elijah and Moses was not just for representational purposes to make our narrative look good. Elijah represented the prophets and Moses represented the law and no Jew would deny the importance of the law and the prophets. Besides, it makes for a great PR campaign for Jesus.

For greater clarity, (in you spare time) open your Bible to Exodus 24:12-16, 33:17-23 and I Kings 11:13. You will find a lot of parallelisms to the transfiguration of Jesus.

  1. Like Jesus, both Moses and Elijah go up a mountain; in fact, the same mountain.

  2. Moses takes a disciple, just like Jesus did.

  3. Moses and Elijah desired to see God’s face, but were denied.

  4. They both saw His glory but not His face for they were told that they would die if they saw God’s face.

  5. Both of them had their faces covered by God’s hand or His mantle.

What makes the Transfiguration an absolute turning point in history? Think about it. The same God who hid His face from Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament suddenly unveils it in the New. On that mountain, Jesus peels back His humanity and reveals His transfigured glory to Moses, Elijah, and the disciples. And guess what? They finally looked upon the face of God and lived. The lifelong quest of the prophets was fulfilled in an instant, because the hidden God had finally become a man. Heaven didn’t lower its standards; it lowered its visibility so we could finally draw close.

Here in lies another irony. It is this same face that God did not want to reveal in the Old Testament, that becomes on Good Friday, the face that WE HIDE FROM. The Prophet Isaiah in Chapter 53 says, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him; nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of suffering; as one from whom others hid their faces.”

 Think about the irony of our human hearts! In the Old Testament, we were begging, screaming, and crying out, “God, let me see you! Show me your glory!” And God had to say, “I can’t, it’ll consume you.” Then Jesus comes, the veil is torn, the restriction is lifted, and God says, “Here I am. Look at Me.” And what do we do? We look the other way! We crave the God of the spectacular mountain, but we ignore the God of the everyday mirror. ‘Away with Him, Crucify Him!’ How fickle is humankind? How quickly the Hosannas of Palm Sunday will turn to ‘Crucify Him’, on Good Friday!

So, what is the transfiguration all about, merely a Gospel guilt trip? The very word ‘transfiguration’ comes from the Greek word ‘metamorphosis’ which means change. Jesus’ appearance changed and Peter, James and John, all saw Him as God and Man. The experience left the impetuous Peter a better man. Remember Peter, the patron of spontaneous prayer who must say something every time? Well, he did so this time too, but now with greater understanding. He calls Jesus, “Lord”.

Peter has become aware of the divinity of Jesus and addresses Him with a title of faith. But even more, the change is seen in Peter’s leadership. He who, not even a chapter ago, was given the keys of the kingdom of heaven and soon after denounced for his inability to grasp the new role foisted on his shoulders, takes on the leadership, but now in humbler tones. “If you wish, I will make three dwellings.” No more arrogance, no more leaning on the disciples for support. This is the Peter who has seen the face of God and lived.

Even the highest spiritual heights cannot insulate us from human weakness. Peter, James, and John—the elite eyewitnesses of the Transfiguration—will soon fail Jesus repeatedly in the darkness of Gethsemane. Yet Jesus anticipates our collapse with radical grace. The same tender hand that touched the terrified disciples on the mountain will lift them up after the resurrection. Confronting Peter’s denial and Thomas’s doubt, He offers restoration instead of condemnation. His ultimate question to Peter, and to us, remains entirely relational: “Do you love me?” He replaces the weight of our failure with the invitation of His friendship.

Change is in the air, that’s what the Gospels invite us to.  Today we don’t have to climb a mountain to meet God. Thank God for that! But like Elijah, we can hear Him in a still small voice. Mountains don’t need to be conquered for us to be with God; pride does, hate does, anger does, and lust does. And there we find God, on our own Mt Sinai; in a chapel or in our living room, in our kitchen, or in our work place. Look around now, He is there, revealing Himself to you.

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Tuesday, 18th week in ordinary time – Feast of John Vianney – 4th August 2026 – Matthew 15:1-2,10-14

This complex text requires careful teaching to avoid losing the core message in the details. This is a hard text to teach and one that could be easily misrepresented if one misses the woods for the trees.

Reports of Jesus’ ‘disruptive’ Galilean ministry have reached the religious elite, drawing a hostile delegation straight from Jerusalem to confront him. We are told in 15:1 that the Pharisees and scribes have come from Jerusalem with a singular purpose; to question Jesus.  

They didn’t travel all that way to get clarity. They came to catch Him in a trap. See, the religious elite didn’t want information; they wanted ammunition. Their question wasn’t driven by curiosity; it was weaponized by criticism. They didn’t come to look for truth—they came looking for a fight!

One would have thought that the Pharisees and scribes have journeyed this long and arduous distance because of some doctrinal issue that has come under their scanner. Yet their question to Jesus is not doctrinal but more a ‘violation’ of a social customs that had found religious approval over the years. The Pharisees ask Jesus, “why do your disciples break the traditions of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.”

We get so caught up in the cultural customs that we completely compromise the actual commandments. We start fighting over the peripheral, and we forget the powerful! We are elevating man-made traditions above God-given truth. When you start prioritizing the social over the spiritual, you aren’t protecting your faith, you are paralyzing it!. The local practice of Catholicism, like the local practices of most religions, are filled with such ‘home-spun’ traditions.

Let us look at the ‘traditions of the elders’ that have brought the Pharisees and scribes all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee. “Why do your disciples not wash their hands before eating?” In order to understand why this question is so important to this religious delegation one needs to understand that the Jews came to believe that ‘Shibtah’, a demon, attached himself to their hands as they slept and hence ingesting food would be ingesting the demon.

For the Jew, the Christian or any person of any religious faith, what should matter, is the core teachings in its written form. For the Jews, the Torah (or the Pentateuch as Christians call it) which consisted of the first five books of the Bible, constituted the written law. This is the core of the Jewish faith. Besides this, a section of the Jews, namely the Pharisees, began to accept the oral law that they claimed came from the time of Sinai. Remember that the written law, namely the Torah, is not in question here and Jesus has not spoken a word against the Torah.  

These oral laws were then codified into the Mishna and Talmud which were commentaries on the commentaries of the Law. The Mishna is a commentary on the Torah and the Talmud is a commentary on the Mishna. The Talmud itself consisted of 8 volumes consisting of a total of 63 books. Remember that these books do not tackle the written law but the oral law and that’s a lot of oral tradition to follow.

So much of faith has been corrupted by traditions that are attached to religion. We’ve let human tradition crowd out holy truth. So many social demands are made of people in the name of religion at the time of Baptisms, Marriages, First Communion and Funerals. The sacraments of penance and the anointing of the sick, which truly deserve a social celebration, are relegated to muted responses.

The point I wish to make is crystal clear. We will fight to the death over our preferences, but won’t lift a finger for God’s precepts. We’ve put human customs on the main stage and pushed foundational truth into the wings. We are bringing massive energy to things that don’t matter, while the heartbeat of God gets our leftover devotion!

Christ deplores this behaviour and in no uncertain words takes on the Pharisees and the scribes. They came to question him with frivolities, while they themselves broke the core commandments of God. “Why do you break the commandments of God for the sake of your traditions.” There! Jesus has really got himself in big trouble!  

It is crazy to me how we can butcher the Bible and people just nod along. But the moment you challenge a cultural custom, the second you mention the flowers at the grave, the confetti at the wedding, or the specific way we do things, everyone is ready to riot! We tolerate broken doctrine, but we protect our traditions with our lives. We have become more loyal to our rituals than we are to the Truth!

Are you offended reading what I just wrote/said? I won’t be surprised if you are because no sooner had Jesus tackled the Pharisees and scribes (read  verse 4 -9) than the ‘concerned’ disciples of Jesus come running to him. “Do you know that the parish council (sorry Pharisees) took offence when they heard what you said?” Oh! I did it again! Have I stepped into a quagmire of beloved religious traditions and offended my readers and listeners?

Let me tell you Christ’s reactions to this home spun religious ‘controversy;’ he took it on by its horns, threw the political correctness into the garbage where it belonged and proclaimed that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles (him/her) (15:11)

When the high-ranking religious elite marched down from headquarters to put Him in His place, Jesus didn’t write a rebuttal. He didn’t try to win them over. He gave them two brutal words: “LET THEM ALONE.” (verse 14). Translation? Stop wasting your time on people who only want to trap your truth. They weren’t worthy of His attention, and they are definitely not worthy of yours!

I warned you at the start of this teaching that this is a hard text to teach especially when scripture holds a mirror up to us. Christ calls the Pharisees in verse fourteen “blind guides of the blind.” That is an interesting statement because he is calling out the ignorance of these religious leaders and the stupidity of their blind followers. In the final reckoning they will be “uprooted” for they have not been planted by God but have planted themselves as religious leaders (read verse 13).

So much of our beautiful Christian faith has been distorted by religious traditions. I am not calling for a boycott of a wedding reception that follows the sacrament of matrimony or any other sacrament. Celebrations are important and serve a social need but when traditions after traditions are layered one over the other and these traditions take centre stage over the essential doctrines of the faith.

When we look the other way, when a relative who never takes their child for Sunday mass insists on all the frills and fancies for their child’s first communion, or when Christian couples who have rejected the faith want to get ‘married in Church, white dress et al or when all this and much more happens in God’s name and the rest of us hold our breath because this is ‘not our business’, then we are nothing but ‘the blind leading the blind and are culpable of the corruption of the faith.

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 Long before the cross was openly displayed, early Christians used the image of a vessel navigating rough waters. Early Christians rarely depicted the crucifixion directly because it was still a shameful form of Roman execution. Instead, they utilized the boat as an ingenious cryptogram. On tomb carvings and signet rings, the mast and yardarm of the ship were purposely drawn to form a cross. This symbol stood for the Church tossed on the sea of disbelief, worldliness and persecution, but finally reaching safe harbour with its cargo of human souls. This symbol had its origins in narratives such as the Gospel of today.

Having fishermen as disciples, familiar with the sea, made it easier for Jesus to gain access to one of these many boats. It is these boats that He used as a pulpit as He spoke to the crowds on the beach, or as He crisscrossed the Galilean Sea. These were not pristine, luxury vessels; they were battered, wood-stained, and smelled of hard labor, proving that God does not wait for you to be perfect before He uses your life as a platform

Make no mistake; the Galilean Sea for all its idyllic beauty had the potential to become a fisherman’s nightmare, enough to wreck the nerves of experienced fishermen such as Jesus’ disciples. The Gospel records the condition of the sea on this occasion as ‘basanizo’, translated as ‘tortured or harassed’.

The text notes it was the “fourth watch of the night” (between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM). The disciples had likely been rowing since the evening. For six to nine hours, they were trapped in the dark, making zero progress, fighting a wind that was relentlessly torturing their muscles and their boat.  

Matthew narrates two such tempestuous incidents; in Chapter 8:23-27 and here in 14:22-36. There is a marked difference in the two texts. In the former text, Jesus is in the boat; here He is not; He comes walking to them. In the first there is a storm, here the wind and waves were against them. In the first they feared for their lives; here they are terrified because they think they see a ghost. It is the ‘little faith’ of the disciples that is in question in the first incident; now it is Peter’s little faith that is under the scanner.

For early readers, the storm was not a distant Sunday school story; it was an exact mirror of their daily survival. They lived in the throes of persecution from within and everywhere, and the meaning was quite clear.

After the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD, Jewish leaders  banned Jewish Christians from the synagogues. This forced exit was a social and emotional disaster, cutting these early believers off from their families, identity, and support networks. Even worse, leaving the synagogues stripped them of their legal protection under Roman law. The Roman Empire now viewed them as an illegal, dangerous group, leaving them completely exposed to arrest, losing their property, and execution

At stake was also the question of Jesus’ claim that He was the ‘Son of God’ (verse 33), a claim rejected by the Jews both at Jesus’ time and during the time Matthew wrote the Gospel. Then there was also the reality of their ‘little faith’ that was tossed about as a consequence of their isolation from the Jewish community into no man’s land.

The message to Matthew’s community is clear; hang in there and take heart. The community of Matthew must battle the storm as the disciples did, through a long dark night, knowing that just as for the disciples, so also for Matthew’s community, the Lord will come at the break of dawn.

It is the assuring voice of Jesus, that Matthew’s persecuted community hears; “Take heart, It is I, do not be afraid.” Jesus reveals Himself as the great “I am”. When Jesus declares Ego Emi (“It is I”), He is not just identifying Himself, He is revealing Himself as the great “I AM,” the sovereign God who rules over the chaos. This is the focus of the text.

The narrative of Peter ‘walking on the water’ distracts the modern reader who is enamoured by the spectacular walk of Peter, albeit for a few seconds. When we read this Gospel passage we often treat it like a self-help lesson on individual success. We zoom in on Peter as the hero, using his walk on the water as a metaphor for taking big risks, launching new businesses, or overcoming personal fears.

Preachers often challenge the congregation by asking, “Are you going to stay safe in the boat, or do you have the courage to step out onto the water?” This approach turns a divine encounter into a motivational speech about human potential. It implies that the main goal of the text is to teach us how to perform miracles through human willpower and bold faith. By focusing entirely on Peter’s ability to temporarily defy gravity, we turn the narrative into an audition for superheroes. We end up praising human performance rather than worshipping the divine presence, completely missing the fact that Peter ultimately failed and sank, proving that human effort alone cannot survive the storm.

The meaning of the narrative unfolds when the Lord grabs hold of Peter. Jesus steps on to the boat with Peter to a public acknowledgment of the disciples. For the first time in Matthew’s Gospel, they see Him, all twelve of them, as the ‘Son of God’ and they worship Him. Matthew’s community stands consoled.

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Thursday, 17th week in ordinary time  – Matthew 13:47-53

We have reached the grand finale of Matthew 13. Unpacking the seventh and final parable of Jesus’ kingdom teaching we are faced with the reality that the kingdom of heaven is not sanitised but is diverse and different.

We love to control our image. We filter our photos, edit our words, and carefully pick our friends. Naturally, we expect God to do the same thing. We look at the Kingdom of Heaven and expect it to be a clean and an orderly place. We would like to live in a kingdom of the righteous only but then again that would be wishful thinking. There are all kinds and all sorts in the kingdom.

A drag net was one of the many ways that fishermen employed to catch fish. Two boats would be fitted with a net and as they moved the nets collected every kind of fish that happened to get trapped. As fishermen will tell you, not every fish that is caught is edible and even more, there are some fish which have no value in the marketplace. Attempting to sell them would be a burden to the fisher monger.

When Christ spoke his truth, he used a pedagogy that is employed even today with children. It is a method of teaching that moves from the known to the unknown. Jesus’ parables were largely based on farming or fishing which was the occupation of most of his listeners. Employing this method, he made clear what he intended to teach. He didn’t use elevated theology to confuse them; He used everyday reality to change them.

Earlier, in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, Christ highlighted the presence of satan and his minions. Jesus used that parable to teach with authority the consequence of sin; sin will find us in the fires of hell. It is for the sake of those who continue to live in denial of the reality of hell that Jesus gives the second such parable. Jesus didn’t talk about hell to scare us; He talked about it because He loves us too much to lie to us

When he spoke to the crowds of his time, as he does with us through his word today, he wants us to understand that death will come, as it came to the fish. Death did not just come to the bad fish it came to all that were caught in the net. But the point of the parable is not merely to focus on the reality of death but of judgment that follows.

“The angels will come!” That is what we will experience at death. But don’t think that because you see an angel when you die you have won a seat in heaven. We are told that they come with a clear mission. The dragnet may have caught fish but not every fish has value. There are good fish and bad fish and the bad fish must be got rid off. Grace gathers all, but truth sorts the catch.

For the second time in Chapter 13, Jesus talks of the ‘furnace of fire’ reserved for the evil. Interestingly, in both the parables that speak of judgment, the consequence of evil is clearly enunciated; ‘evil will be bound and burnt in a furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (verse 30 and 50). Yet, heaven is not described with the intensity that hell is. The parable of the wheat and weeds refers to heaven as “my barn” and nothing more. The point of the parable is not to tell us of the joys of heaven but the reality of the suffering in hell.

To my mind, Christ is reiterating the reality of hell over heaven. He wants to stress this reality lest we begin to think that hell is a tool used by parents to drive their children into submission. Hell, for many, has become symbolic and casual talk. We say, “go to hell” or use it as an exclamation of frustration when we say, “Oh hell.” We have turned the fate of our souls into a piece of frivolous conversation. Yet that reality will come to burn us if we do not take it seriously.

This truth must be proclaimed especially when clearly understood. In verse 51 Jesus ask the disciples if they have “understood all this?” Their answer is yes. If our answer is also yes, then we become ‘the scribe’, the priest, the religious, the laity who then must proclaim this truth. If we are trained for the kingdom, as Christ says, then we have to proclaim the truth of Christ; both old and new.

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