Unfortunately, when those closest to us start examining how we act, it can quickly turn into them nitpicking our every move. The people in today’s Gospel immediately start questioning Jesus’ credibility (Matthew 13:55-56). Christ never promised that life as a Christian would be easy, and that is on full display in this story. We are in a sort of transparent glass box when we let others know we are Christians; what this means is that we are held to a higher standard, and every move we make is examined by those around us to make sure we are practicing what we preach. When we say we are Christian, it is easier for others to begin noticing when we don’t act Christian; we are simply examined more closely. If another notices a sin you commit and decides to lay into you for it, you must not let this discourage you. We all sin, and every time, God is waiting for us, with His infinite mercy, to come back home to Him. He is our ultimate home.

Jesus acknowledges that “a prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house” (Matthew 13:57). In response, “he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith” (Matthew 13:58). Their lack of faith blocked them from being able to fully open themselves up to God and receive His love; they didn’t use their free will to accept him. In our earthly homes, we may see this happen to those we love. However, we need not let this discourage us. We must do what we can to show Jesus, but ultimately, those other people are in the hands of the Father. We must run to our ultimate home and let Him take care of it.

Matthew 13:47-53

47 Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kind of fishes. 48 Which, when it was filled, they drew out, and sitting by the shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth. 49 So shall it be at the end of the world. The angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked from among the just. 50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

51 Have ye understood all these things? They say to him: Yes. 52 He said unto them: Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old. 53 And it came to pass: when Jesus had finished these parables, he passed from thence.

Saint Peter, and several of the Holy Apostles, were fisherman. Therefore, throughout the history of Christianity, the Church has often been compared to a ship. Indeed, Jesus stated that His Apostles would be “fishers of men.” Noah’s Ark was a type of the Church, an ancient symbol of the Catholic Church whose mission would be to save all of humanity, much as the Ark of the Covenant is a type of the Blessed Virgin Mary who would carry within herself the Word of God and upon whom the Spirit of God would descend as was described in today’s first reading.

For 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has gone out to every nation and people with its nets of doctrine, theology and faith. Men are not like fish – we must willingly enter the net, just as the animals willingly entered the ark. Even then, some men who come to believe in the truth of Christianity rebel and leave the ship of the Catholic Church. Protestant doctrine teaches that “faith alone” is all that is necessary to be saved. They also teach the heresy of “once saved always saved.” This false doctrine states that if one “accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior,” no sin or rebellion can prevent his eternal salvation – even if commits multiple murders and renounces faith in Christ, he will still be saved.

Once again, Protestant doctrine proves to be false as the angels will sort even the fish in the net, just as they will sift the wheat from the chaff and separate the wicked from the just. These wicked are not the fish not caught in the net, but those who claim to be Christian. Saint Cyprian of Carthage wrote in the 3^rd century, “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”. Or outside of the Church there is no salvation. In modern times, the Catholic Church teaches that those outside of the Church will be judged according to what they understand and by their sins, so a non-Catholic may be saved. But, it is much more difficult. The safest and surest course of action is not to try to escape the net of the Catholic Church, but to run to it!

Judson Carroll is the author of several books, including his newest, A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings July - December, 2026 It is Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRGY1D15

A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings January - June, 2026 It is also available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDK16N45

and

Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNK

His podcast is The Uncensored Catholic https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-uncensored-catholic

Today’s Gospel records for us one of the most important teachings for the spiritual life that Our Lord gives in the gospels. While there are numerous lessons we can learn from these beloved sisters, the final line in this passage runs at the very heart of the interior life. Here, I want to quote from the Douay-Rheims translation, as it reflects the original meaning a bit better:

As I wrote last week, I believe the evidence that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are the same person is highly likely. And that is important for this. As I said last week, this is indicative of the contemplative life of Mary. Mary sits at the feet of Jesus while her sister is serving at table. Martha complains that she is doing all the work, and Our Lord takes the moment to teach her, and us, that of the two, entering into communal conversation with Him is the best part; it is the one thing necessary. Our Lord is not rebuking her for working. Far from it. Work is good, and there is ample time to do what needs to be done during the day.

But when one has chosen to sit at the feet of the Lord and to enter into an intimate conversation with Him, that is better. So much so that the Lord uses the phrase the one thing necessary. This is the heart of the interior life: that we put the worldly cares aside so as to enter into intimate communion with the lover of our soul.

The words of the Song of Songs are reflected in this intimate union between the devout soul and the Lord. We are called by Him to enter the interior room and converse with Him who loves us. This union with the beloved is the one thing necessary.

Yes, there are many cares that those in the secular world have to take care of, and the Lord is not telling those of us in the world to abandon them. Many of these things are attached to the vocation that the Lord has called us to. But the contemplation of St. Mary is one that all the baptized are called to, regardless of their state in life. This means that, for those who are in the world, we must make room for the better part. This means that we must dispose ourselves to the interior life and make it a prominent part of our day.

The Lord desires us to sit at His feet in loving rapture. He reminds us that it is the one thing necessary for us—union with Him.

A Thomist

On Ordinary and Extraordinary Mysticism

Introduction…

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4 days ago · 1 like · Andrew McGovern, Th.D.

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For more from Dr. McGovern, visit his Substack at A Thomist, Dedicated to the Theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Exploring Thomas’ Spiritual Theology and topics in Christology and Mariology.

Jeremiah is weeping without rest.

What he sees is bad - and it’s everywhere: slain in the field, starving in the city, prophet and priest foraging in a land they no longer recognize. The wound of the daughter of his people is incurable. He has no consolation to offer because he has none himself. He looks at what is there and weeps.

And then he prays.

He doesn’t pray an argument for his own innocence or a protest against injustice. He begins with confession: “We recognize, O LORD, our wickedness, the guilt of our fathers; that we have sinned against you.” He does not petition from a viewpoint of deserved rescue. He is not claiming to have been wronged. He is acknowledging, in the middle of catastrophe, that the catastrophe has roots.

But then his appeal shifts. “For your name’s sake spurn us not, disgrace not the throne of your glory; remember your covenant with us, and break it not.”

God, You made promises. Please keep them. The petition is rooted not in merit but in the God’s own nature and character, in the covenant that precedes and survives every human failure. And then a question that expresses understanding: “Among the nations’ idols is there any that gives rain? Or can the mere heavens send showers? Is it not you alone, O LORD, our God, to whom we look?”

No one else gives rain. No one else sends the showers. In the middle of famine and sword and weeping without rest, Jeremiah has found the one thing that cannot be taken from him: the question that has only one answer.

In the Gospel, the disciples have a question of their own.

Jesus has dismissed the crowds and gone into the house, and they follow him privately. They have heard the parable of the weeds in the field - the man who sowed good seed, the enemy who came in the night and sowed weeds among the wheat, the servants who wanted to pull the weeds immediately and were told to wait. They did not understand it. “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”

Jesus explains. The sower is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom, the weeds the children of the evil one, the enemy the devil, the harvest the end of the age, the harvesters the angels. Nothing is left mysterious. The servants who wanted to pull the weeds immediately were asking for something that would have damaged the wheat. The separation belongs to the end of the age, to angels, to the Son of Man - not to us, not now.

And this image ends and resolves the parable: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.”

The echo of Daniel 12:3 is deliberate - “those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever” - and it tells you where the parable is really going. This is not primarily a story about weeds being burned. It is primarily a story about wheat shining. The burning is real and the warning is genuine, but the final image Jesus leaves his disciples with is luminous, not punitive. Then. Not yet. Then.

Augustine, reading this parable, saw in it a counsel of patience that shapes how the Church understands herself in time. He used the phrase corpus permixtum - the mixed body - for the condition of the Church in time: wheat and weeds growing together, the good and the not-yet-good, the faithful and the failing, inseparable until the harvest that only God can bring. And he drew from it an important outcome of this mixed life: “Many are at first tares but then become good grain,” he wrote, adding that “if these, when they are wicked, are not endured with patience, they would not attain their praiseworthy transformation.”1

Patience is not indifference. It is the condition that makes conversion possible. The servant who pulls the weeds immediately has decided, before the harvest, who is wheat and who is weed - and has foregone the possibility that the weed might, given time and the slow work of grace, become grain. The patience of the householder is the patience of a God who waits without giving up.

Every household is a corpus permixtum.

Not only because households contain people at different stages of faith and different relationships to God - though they do. But because the same person is both wheat and weed, at different hours of the day, in different seasons of a life.

The doubt that enters when providence seems to have gone silent - when the prayer isn’t answered, when the loss doesn’t resolve, when the famine in the field is real - is the weed growing alongside the wheat. It is not a sign that the faith has failed. It may be the ground in which the faith is being formed into something it could not become in easier soil.

Jeremiah does not resolve his doubt before he prays. He names it in his prayer - “have you cast us off completely? why have you struck us a blow that cannot be healed?” - and then prays from inside it, turning to the only one who gives rain. The “we recognize our wickedness” and the “remember your covenant” are in the same breath. The confession and the appeal are simultaneous. The weed and the wheat are in the same prayer, offered by the same prophet, to the same God.

The household that prays from the heart of this mixed reality - from inside doubt and fidelity and the felt absence of a God it still believes in - is praying exactly as Jeremiah prays. Not from a resolved position but from a turned one. Turned toward the one who alone sends rain. Waiting for the then.

The righteous will shine like the sun.

Not yet. But the then is coming. The wheat that endures the mixed field, that keeps turning toward the God who gives rain even when the field is full of what the enemy has sown, is already beginning to learn what it means to shine.

“Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

The domestic church doesn’t form itself. Domus Formation’s & Altar app gives your household a daily rhythm of Catholic prayer and formation - tracks for families, men, women, teens, and those in the second half of life. Start a free trial at WeAreDomus.com/start.

If Catholic fiction that takes the Communion of Saints seriously - as doctrine, not sentiment - is what you are looking for, I am writing two things. Lux Perpetua is a serial novel publishing weekly in two tracks, set in Alton, Illinois, at the edge of the Mississippi - a story of custody and fidelity and a flame passed forward across centuries. And Two Lamps is a weekly short story on Substack, each one braiding two saints from different centuries into a single imagined meeting. Both are for the kind of reader who believes the imagination is also a faculty of faith.

Deacon Michael Halbrook is husband to Suzanne, father of four sons, and a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. He serves at St. Elizabeth Parish in Granite City. He is the founder of Domus Formation, a collection of Catholic prayer and formation resources for every stage of life, and he writes at DeaconMichael.net.

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’”

He spoke to them another parable.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened.”

All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:

I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation
of the world.
— Matthew 13:31-35

The parable of the mustard seed presents a striking and very truthful image of the way that the Kingdom of God comes into the world — and into each individual soul.

The mustard seed is a particularly small seed. Pressed into the dark soil it’s almost invisible to the eye, seemingly insignificant. And yet, beneath the surface, it grows, with a stubborn persistence and a seemingly unstoppable will.

This is exactly how grace works in us. It usually enters quietly, through a word spoken at the right moment, a prayer whispered in exhaustion, a movement of the heartstrings when beholding great beauty, or a grace received at the altar. Even though to an outside observer it might seem like nothing has changed, in the soil of the soul, the Kingdom has taken root.

The yeast parable further strenghtens that image: the woman hides the yeast within the dough. And once hidden, it cannot be contained. It moves through the whole batch and transforms everything it touches.

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And if you think about it, this is the logic of the Incarnation as well: God doesn’t arrive as a conquering emperor. He comes as a baby, hidden in a manger, in a forgotten town, to a young mother in an occupied land. The world largely missed it. And yet that small, hidden Presence has been leavening human history ever since.

May we all allow grace to grow in us like a mustard seed, and may we open our eyes to the fullness of the Truth by directing our eyes towards all that’s good and pure.

In Christ,

Juan — Simple Man

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Romans 8:28-30

28 And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints. 29 For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son; that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. 30 And whom he predestinated, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified.

The Douay Rheims explains:

[29] “He also predestinated”: That is, God hath preordained that all his elect should be conformable to the image of his Son. We must not here offer to pry into the secrets of God’s eternal election; only firmly believe that all our good, in time and eternity, flows originally from God’s free goodness; and all our evil from man’s free will.

Today’s second reading is one that has been so twisted and taken out of context by Protestants that Presbyterians were taught that only 100,000 or so people would make it to heaven. Think about that, in all of the history of the world and humanity, only 100,000 would be saved... and, their salvation was predestined. Nothing they could do would jeopardize that and, for the rest of us, nothing we could do would matter. The greatest saint, the most faithful Christian, the martyr, no one would go to Heaven unless God had apparently picked them at random before all time. On its face, this is ridiculous. But, this is one of the foundational doctrines of the Presbyterian church, which is one of the largest Protestant denominations in the world. Why anyone would even bother being a Christian who holds that belief is beyond my understanding. Why live a good life? Why not sin? Why not indulge every greed and pleasure? But then, while Luther taught that anyone who has faith in God may go to Heaven, he also taught that a Christian may engage in any sin without jeopardizing their salvation and encouraged his followers to commit adultery and even murder! So, as the old saying goes, it is “six of one and half a dozen of the other.” The bottom line is that all Protestant doctrine that disagrees with the teachings of the Catholic Church is heresy; it is false and not inspired by God.

So, who was “predestined”? Well, many have been, from the prophets to the present day God has chosen special people to attain a level of holiness far beyond ordinary. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the best example of this, preserved from the stain of original sin and whose place in time that was necessary to bring Jesus into the world required hundreds of generations and could not have happened without the active will of God. So, too, were the Apostles. Our Lord knew each man before they existed, and He called them by name to lead His Church. To none other was such honor and authority given. Just as God called Abraham and Moses, etc., God calls those who lead the Catholic Church and they are justified both through faith and obedience. Just as God used the Apostles to choose one to replace Judas among the 12 through the power of the Holy Spirit, the successors of the Apostles choose the Pope. The Holy Spirit ensures that the man they choose will be infallible in official teaching of morals and doctrine. God’s Divine Providence means that He knows each man who will serve in the office of Pope, cardinal and bishop before all time. Even when bad men fill those offices, like Judas, they are instruments of God’s will.

Luther, Calvin, Knox, etc. were never predestined to lead God’s Church. They are not the “firstborn of many brethren”, nor are they justified. They were apostates and anti-Christs, no different than the cult leaders of today who take advantage of the ignorant to enrich and glorify themselves. As our Lord said of the false religious leaders among the Jews, they are children of their father, “the father of lies.”

Judson Carroll is the author of several books, including his newest, A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings July - December, 2026 It is Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRGY1D15

A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings January - June, 2026 It is also available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDK16N45

and

Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNK

His podcast is The Uncensored Catholic https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-uncensored-catholic

This fiery spirit can be seen in today’s Gospel, in which the Sons of Thunder asked their mother to request that Christ bestow honors upon them. The brothers asked to sit at Christ’s left and right in His Kingdom. Our Lord, in return, asked if they were willing to drink His chalice, and when they affirmed their willingness to do so, He said that they would indeed drink of it. This chalice refers to the chalice of martyrdom. While St. John willingly faced martyrdom, he was miraculously spared harm from the boiling oil intended to take his life.

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St. James the Greater was the first of the Twelve Apostles to be martyred, receiving death by decapitation at the order of King Herod. He is the patron saint of Spain because, according to tradition, he traveled throughout Spain and Portugal preaching the Gospel after receiving the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. After his death, the body of St. James was brought back to Spain and buried in what is today known as the Basilica of Santiago de Compostela, where thousands of pilgrims flock each year, often after walking one of the many pilgrimage routes to the shrine on foot, a tradition dating back to the 9th century.

St. James’s fiery spirit led him to unhesitatingly answer Our Lord’s question in today’s Gospel, giving his “yes” to the prospect of martyrdom even if he did not fully understand what this meant at the time. On this his feast day, may he pray for us to share that same enthusiasm and zeal for Christ, by which we might be willing to endure any suffering in order to attain Heaven ourselves and to save souls.

St. James, ora pro nobis!

Matthew 13:10-17

10 And his disciples came and said to him: Why speakest thou to them in parables?

11 Who answered and said to them: Because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven: but to them it is not given. 12 For he that hath, to him shall be given, and he shall abound: but he that hath not, from him shall be taken away that also which he hath. 13 Therefore do I speak to them in parables: because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. 14 And the prophecy of Isaias is fulfilled in them, who saith: By hearing you shall hear, and shall not understand: and seeing you shall see, and shall not perceive. 15 For the heart of this people is grown gross, and with their ears they have been dull of hearing, and their eyes they have shut: lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

16 But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. 17 For, amen, I say to you, many prophets and just men have desired to see the things that you see, and have not seen them, and to hear the things that you hear and have not heard them.

Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel are harsh. For centuries, the Jews had persecuted and killed the prophets, turned constantly to idol worship and foreign Gods, and now the scribes and Pharisees had turned the religion revealed to them by the prophets into a burdensome and legalistic system. The heart of the true religion was “love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” The emphasis had become on sacrifice, not mercy. So, our Lord teaches through parables and reveals Himself subtly, fulfilling the prophesies of the Messiah in the Scriptures. The Jews would have to search the Scriptures and search their hearts to understand His teachings and to develop faith in Him.

But, Jesus words were not just to the Jews. Notice that He reveals the meaning of His parables to His Holy Apostles. “Because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven: but to them it is not given.” Jesus taught His Apostles and Disciples in a unique and exclusive way. To no one else on earth did He explain His words and reveal Himself as God. As Saint John tells us, only a few of Jesus’ parables and teachings are explained in the Bible. The vast majority of what He revealed to His Apostles is not recorded in the Bible, especially what He taught them following the Resurrection.

Two Jehovah’s Witnesses just came to my door. They were nice, sincere elderly women. They asked if they could read a passage of Scripture to me, so I said that would be fine. I thanked them and they left me with a pamphlet that was full of heretical and false teaching. You see the Jehovah’s Witnesses take the Bible as their sole authority, but deny the divinity of Christ! Just as The Jews could hear the words of Jesus but could not understand them, millions of sincere Protestants read the Bible but do not understand it. There is only one truth, and one correct interpretation of the Scriptures. Yet, there are around 50,000 Protestant denominations each of which disagree with each other on matters of doctrine and theology, and all of which reject the Catholic Church.

Nowhere does the Bible state that all who read it will understand it. But, Jesus constantly guarantees that His Apostles will be guided into full understanding by the Holy Spirit. He commands them to form a Church and to teach in His stead saying, “those who hear you hear me and those who reject you reject Him who sent me.” It is the Catholic Church that gave us the Bible and guarantees it to be true through the authority of Christ. Jehovah’s Witnesses are confounded when you quote Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, “All authority under Heaven and Earth has been given to me,” and really any passage that speaks of His authority, His divinity and the establishment of His Church. Yet, they claim to base all of their beliefs on the literal interpretation of the Bible. Such confusion and error is sad, but it is certainly nothing new.

Judson Carroll is the author of several books, including his newest, A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings July - December, 2026 It is Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRGY1D15

A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings January - June, 2026 It is also available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDK16N45

and

Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNK

His podcast is The Uncensored Catholic https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-uncensored-catholic

Today’s gospel records the meeting of the Risen Lord with St. Mary Magdalene on the morning of Easter Sunday. It is here that we find what I believe to be the beginning of the tradition of St. Mary as a holy contemplative after the Ascension of Christ. One tradition records that St. Mary journeyed to modern-day France and passed the rest of her life as a hermit in a cave. I want to lean into this tradition, considering the words of Christ: Noli me tangere. There are various ways to translate this phrase; some translate it as “do not touch me,” but it can also be translated as “do not hold me.”

It is a curious interaction between Our Lord and St. Mary that, in passing, amounts to Him not wanting to be touched. But with all things, there is an intentional desire behind this interaction, and it gives birth to the contemplative who would spend the rest of her life in deep prayer. The basis of this is found in the instruction from the Lord not to hang on to Him. Those closest to the Lord had just gone through a terrible dark night at the crucifixion and the three days without Him. Up to that point, Our Lord’s presence was consoling their sensible desires. They were with Him. How often do we hold onto the sensible consolations found in the early stages of the spiritual life? Our Lord was exhorting Magdalene to leave the sensible consolations behind. Why? Because they were no longer going to serve her, because in forty short days, Our Lord would ascend into heaven, and that physical presence that she had been consoled by for the last three years would be gone. St. Thomas comments on this matter:

“It is that touch is the last stage of knowledge, when we see something, we know it to a certain extent, but when we touch it our knowledge is complete. Now this particular woman had some faith in Christ, which was that he was a holy man; and this was why she called him Master. But she had not yet reached the point of believing that he was equal to the Father and one with God. Thus Christ says, do not touch me, that is, do not allow what you now believe of me to be the limit of your faith, for I have not yet ascended to my Father, that is, in your heart, because you do not believe that I am one with him; yet she did believe this later. In a way, Christ did ascend to the Father within her when she had advanced in the faith to the point of believing that he was equal to the Father.”1

So many souls turn back when the sensible consolations are taken away. Through the retraction of these consolations, the Lord is beckoning us deeper into the obscurity of faith. He does this with Mary at His tomb and through it, lifts her into a deeper mysticism that would characterize the rest of her life. Mary Magdalene stands as an immense exemplar for the contemplative life. All souls are given at least a remote and general call to this level of mysticism. It is indicative of the climb that all souls must make of the mountain of the spiritual life toward union with God. St. Mary enters into a hidden life away from the world to be united to her greatest love.

A Thomist

On Union of the Soul with God

Introduction…

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2 months ago · 16 likes · 31 comments · Andrew McGovern, Th.D.

Our Lord is calling us to that same depth of spiritual union. He is calling us to reject our reliance on sensible consolations and enter into the obscurity of faith, that place where the light of faith is so bright that we must enter the darkness of the night in order to see the brightness of the stars. This is the obscurity of infused contemplation, where the soul is lifted into an intimate conversation with God in the depths of the wine cellar of their interior life.

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For more from Dr. McGovern, visit his Substack at A Thomist, Dedicated to the Theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Exploring Thomas’ Spiritual Theology and topics in Christology and Mariology.

Introduction

As God leads the Hebrew people through the wilderness of Sinai, He commands Moses to make an ark to contain the covenant that God has made with the people. Within the ark, the people place three objects: the tablets of the Law,1 a jar of the manna that was sent from heaven,2 and the rod of Aaron.3 Each of these items has an important role in the liberation of the people from slavery in Egypt, and more than that, foreshadows what is to come in the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

In an allegorical sense, the Ark of the Covenant foreshadows the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Evangelist Luke draws numerous parallels between the bringing of the Ark to Jerusalem and Mary’s visit to Elizabeth after the conception of Jesus Christ. The parallels in both the journey and the contents of the Ark and the Blessed Virgin are important exegetical realities. Truly, God veils in the shadow of the Old Testament, the light that is coming in the New Testament. To that end, St. Luke’s usage of these parallels will be considered, and the connection between the Old and New Covenants will be shown below.

Finally, I want to conclude in the Book of Revelation and look at the Woman clothed with the sun.4 While she is a figure who is frequently commented on, what is often missed is the mention of the Ark of the Covenant immediately preceding her at the end of Chapter Eleven. I want to draw the parallels between the Ark being seen in Heaven and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.

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The Ark of the Covenant

The Ark of the Covenant, as given to the people of Israel, is the mercy seat of God from which He meets with Moses and speaks to him. It is the throne of God upon the Cherubim angels,5 signifying His presence among the people. While the people wander in the desert, before coming into the Promised Land, the Ark dwells within the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle.6 Prior to the construction of the Tabernacle, the Ark would be placed in the Tent of Meeting, where the Lord would descend and speak to Moses:

Here, we can see that the Ark was far more than just a container; it was the dwelling place of God, where Moses would go to speak with God, face to face. Moreover, once Joshua takes up the mantle from Moses, we can see the Ark leading the people in their conquest of the Promised Land, not more famously known than the fall of Jericho:

The fall of the walls of Jericho follows. Numerous other passages can be listed, but the common theme that is found here is that the Ark of the Covenant is a visible sign of the dwelling of God. It should not be interpreted that the Ark is God. But, instead, God has given His people a sensible reality which foreshadows the incarnational reality to come. Speaking on things like these ceremonial precepts, such as the building of the Ark, St. Thomas writes:

“Now the end of the ceremonial precepts was twofold: for they were ordained to the Divine worship, for that particular time, and to the foreshadowing of Christ; just as the words of the prophets regarded the time being in such a way as to be utterances figurative of the time to come…”7

The building of the Ark is one such ceremonial precept. It is not merely coincidental that these things were commanded by God; it was all a preparation for Christ and what was to come.

As listed above, three significant items are placed in the Ark according to the command of God. The fact that God has commanded such a thing should be considered important since God does not command anything or act in a certain way randomly or without a providential purpose. To that end, the common exegetical tradition in the Catholic Church is that the contents of the Ark foreshadow Jesus Christ. Beginning with Christ is necessary since all things concerning Mary begin with her Son. If He is the perfection and fulfillment of the contents of the Ark, then she must be the perfection and fulfillment of the Ark itself.

The Tablets of the Law

The first object placed in the Ark was the tablets upon which the Law of God was written. Originally, these tablets had been solely the work of God.8 But once Moses comes down from Sinai and sees that the people have already broken the Law of God, in his anger, he smashes the tablets before the people.9 In response to this, God commands Moses to cut two more tablets out of stone so that God could rewrite the law on them.10 This is succinctly recorded later on in the Book of Deuteronomy:

The Books of Moses make clear that the tablets which contain the Ten Commandments are placed within the Ark and carried with the people. This law is the covenant between God and His people. Fidelity to the law is the sign of love the people have for God. In a perfect sense, Christ is the law that comes to man. He is the fulfillment of all that was commanded and promised in the Law of Moses. Christ Himself affirms this fulfillment:

Here, we can see that Christ did two things with the Law: first, He fulfilled it, and second, He expounded upon it, not adding or taking away anything. Concerning fulfillment, St. Thomas lists five ways in which Christ fulfilled the Law of Moses:

First, because those things that were prefigured in the law and the prophets concerning Christ, he fulfilled in his actions: what is written must be fulfilled in me (Luke 22:37). Second, by observing the legal requirements to the letter, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son (Gal 4:4). Third, by working through grace, which the law of nature could not do: for every law is for the sake of making us just men, but Christ did this by the Holy Spirit: for what the law could not do, God has done by sending his own Son (Rom 8:3). Fourth, according to Augustine, by satisfying for the sins by which we were made transgressors of the law; hence having borne the transgression he is said to have fulfilled the law: whom God proposed to be a propitiation (Rom 3:29). Fifth, by applying certain perfections to the law which were either for the understanding of the law or for the greater perfection of justice, for the law brought nothing to perfection (Heb 7:19); and these things seem to be the intention of Christ, since, when he made mention of all legal restrictions, he added be you therefore perfect (Matt 5:48).11

Along with the fulfillment of the Law, Christ also expounded upon it. He opened man’s eyes to how to keep the law in its perfection, aided by grace. For example, when speaking on adultery, He expounds on the sixth commandment. Not only does it forbid bodily adultery, but it also forbids adultery of the heart:

The Law that was originally laid up in the Ark was a preparation for what was to come in Christ. The Law was not intended to remain on stone tablets but to be written on the very heart of man by the Incarnate Law Himself.

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The Jar of Manna

During the wandering in the desert, the people complained to Moses that they were hungry, and so God provided for them heavenly bread that fell every morning.12 This Manna, as it was called, came to be known as the bread from heaven, “and He rained down upon them manna to eat, and gave them the bread of heaven.”13 This bread from heaven was miraculous and was considered a sign from God of His provision for His people as they wandered in the wilderness of sin.

This Manna held such a high significance to the Israelite people that they cited it as a sure sign of the working of God in the time of Christ: “So they said to him, ‘Then what sign do you do, that we may see, and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”14 When in doubt about Christ, the people ask for a sign like the bread from heaven. However, Christ responds to the people by reminding them of the limitations of the Manna. Their fathers did, indeed, eat the Manna in the desert, but in the end, they still died.15 Instead, the bread that Christ promises to give brings the eater to eternal life. Christ Himself, just as He did with the Law, affirms that He is the true bread from heaven:

Just like with the Law, Christ surpasses what was given in the Old Testament with something that both fulfills and expounds upon what was originally given. God gave the people bread from heaven. This bread was meant to give them physical sustenance on their journey to the Promised Land. But with Christ, this bread from heaven is not simple bread; it is the flesh of Christ given for the life of the world. It is not given for bodily sustenance but instead, for spiritual sustenance. Their fathers ate Manna in the desert and died, but the true food that Christ gives brings eternal life:

Christ does not give us bread; He gives us His flesh and blood in the Holy Eucharist.

The Rod of Aaron

The final object in the Ark is the rod of Aaron, the brother of Moses. This staff was used multiple times in the Exodus story to perform numerous miracles, such as turning it into a serpent,16 the parting of the Red Sea,17 and drawing water from the rock.18 In addition to these miracles, the Rod of Aaron was a sign of his priesthood. Aaron was instituted by God as the first priest of the Israelite people, ordained to offer sacrifice on behalf of the people.

Our Lord fulfills this as well since He is the true high priest of the people of God. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews beautifully draws this out:

Citing both Psalm 2 and 110, the writer of Hebrews connects Jesus Christ to the Old Testament priesthood and yet draws a greater significance from it. His priesthood is not identical to that of the Old Testament; Christ both fulfills and expounds upon the priesthood that was instituted in Aaron. Where the Old Testament priests offered sacrifice on behalf of the people, so too does Christ offer sacrifice. But this sacrifice is not just any lamb; He offers Himself. He then expounds upon this priesthood and this sacrifice, in that what He offers is a singular sacrifice:

This, of course, is perpetuated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which makes present that one sacrifice to all people throughout all time with the ordained priest acting in persona Christi.

The Visitation

The Angel Gabriel reveals to Mary that her cousin, Elizabeth, has miraculously conceived a child, and so the first thing that Scripture records that Mary does after the Annunciation is journey from Nazareth to the hill country of Judah and visit Elizabeth. This detail forms just two verses in the Lukan narrative and seems to be overshadowed by the Visitation itself. But there is immense significance to this journey as detailed by St. Luke.

Here, we want to draw the parallels between the Visitation narrative in Luke and the bringing of the Ark to Jerusalem in 2 Samuel:

St. Luke draws upon the written tradition in 2 Samuel to bring out the similarities between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant. But the parallels are not limited to these occurrences. St. Luke, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, places an even more explicit connection to the Ark in the response of Elizabeth to Mary’s greeting.

St. Luke uses a unique Greek word in this passage that is translated as exclaimed. The Greek ανεφωνησεν is noted by Scott Hahn as only being used in this singular instance in the New Testament.19 More significantly, it is only used five times in the entire Old Testament, and it is always in connection to the Ark. Hahn writes:

In particular, it refers to the melodic sounds made by Levitical singers and musicians when they glorify the Lord in song. It thus describes the “exulting” voice of instruments that were played before the Ark as David carried it in procession to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 15:28; 16:4-5) and as Solomon transferred the Ark to its final resting place in the temple (2 Chronicles 5:13).20

St. Luke is communicating to his readers that Mary’s journey with the newly conceived Christ in her womb is a liturgical procession in which we find the exulting voice of praise being given to the New Ark of the Covenant and the fulfillment of the Law, Manna, and Priesthood that she carries within her Immaculate Womb.

The Woman of Revelation

The woman of Revelation stands as one of the most prominent Marian symbols in the New Testament outside of the Gospels themselves. The woman is seen as a symbol for numerous things at once: The Virgin Mary, the Faithful of the Church, and the Church herself. Here, I want to concentrate on the Marian image.

In this passage, we find the Woman depicted as a parallel to the Woman of Genesis at odds with the great serpent that she was predestined to war with:

St. John envisions that which Genesis foretold, the Woman who crushes the head of the serpent through her Seed, Jesus Christ. The connection between the Woman of Genesis and the Woman of Revelation is undeniable. The Woman in both passages is tied intimately to her Seed and is put at odds with the great serpent, the devil. She, representing the whole body of the Church and Israel, crushes the serpent and is victorious over him.

Where does the Ark come in then? At the conclusion of chapter eleven, immediately before the Woman is seen in chapter twelve, St. John sees the Ark of the Covenant:

This curious addition to chapter eleven almost seems out of place, as it comes after the cataclysms of the seven seals and the seven trumpets. In addition to this, historically, the Ark of the Covenant hadn’t been seen for centuries. With the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC by the Babylonians, the prophet Jeremiah takes the Ark and hides it to keep it safe according to the command of God.22 In this interesting move, Jeremiah hides the Ark, and when he finds that some try to mark the location, he rebukes them and keeps the location secret, saying, “The place shall be unknown until God gathers His people together and shows them His mercy.”23 This is a curious act. Why would Jeremiah hide the Ark, and specifically keep its location hidden from those with him and subsequent generations? This is the last time before the vision in Revelation that the Ark of the Covenant is seen by God’s people.

The answer to this question lies in Jeremiah’s response. The resting place of the Ark will remain unknown until God gathers His people together and shows His mercy. There are two clauses here that indicate the return of the Ark:

God gathering His people

God showing His mercy

Both of these things happen through Jesus Christ, and they have a particular tie to the Virgin Mary as seen in Revelation 12. The gathering of the people is symbolized by the Woman clothed with the sun having a crown of twelve stars. This crown of twelve stars represents two things:

The twelve tribes of Israel reconstituted

This reconstitution in the Church under the twelve Apostles.

God showing His mercy to His people is then seen in the bringing forth of the Child who is destined to rule the people. This Child is, of course, Christ, who has come to bring salvation to His people. The bringing forth of the Child is the central act of the Woman through which the infernal serpent is put under foot.

Jeremiah rightly prophesies that these two things must come to pass before the Ark will be seen again. It can be argued that these two things are embodied in the Woman of Revelation, which is why St. John sees the Ark in immediate proximity to the Woman. This seamless transition from the Ark to the Woman is a revelation of identity. The Ark is the Woman. It is here that we also find an allusion to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. The incorruptible Ark is taken from earth and brought into God’s temple to rest there for all eternity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to return to the hiding and loss of the Ark of the Covenant. This is a significant fact in the overall connection between the Ark and Mary. This event should not be seen as an absent-minded accident. This was a providentially ordered event that God moved Jeremiah to accomplish for a specific reason. That reason was that the Ark was no longer needed in the state that it was in. As I said above, it was a sensible sign and contained within it items which foreshadowed what was to come. That which foreshadows is necessarily less than what is actualized later. Just as He who is the fulfillment of the Law, the true bread from heaven, and the perfection of the priesthood is greater than the objects within the Ark, so too must be that which contains Him be greater than what came before.

The people no longer needed the Ark of the Covenant, as it was at the time of the Exile. Something greater was coming. God was preparing the people, even as they labored in their sin and seeming abandonment, for the fulfillment of all that He promised. The Prophet Micah foretells this Exile-Return fulfillment in the same prophecy in which He foretells the coming of the Messiah in connection to His mother:

The prophecy from Micah fits perfectly with the prophecy from Jeremiah concerning the return of the Ark. It is in the gathering of the people and God showing His great mercy that the Ark will be revealed again. This great mercy is further magnified and prophesied by Mary herself:

Mary affirms herself, in the very meeting foreshadowed by the Ark coming to Jerusalem, that the scattering of the people is over, their exile is being healed, and the dawn of mercy has broken. The true and everlasting Ark has come, and she has brought with her God’s presence to His people. No longer in sign but in person.

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A Thomist

The Five Harms of Disordered Appetites According to John of the Cross

One dark night…

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3 months ago · 70 likes · 15 comments · Andrew McGovern, Th.D.

For more from Dr. McGovern, visit his Substack at A Thomist, Dedicated to the Theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Exploring Thomas’ Spiritual Theology and topics in Christology and Mariology.

Someone interrupts Jesus mid-sentence.

He is speaking to the crowds - teaching, proclaiming, doing what Matthew has shown him doing through the whole of these chapters - and someone comes to tell him that his mother and brothers are outside, waiting, wishing to speak with him. The interruption carries the weight of family obligation: come out. They are here. This matters.

Jesus does not go out. He says: “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”

And then he stretches out his hand toward his disciples - toward the people sitting around him, the ones listening, the ones staying - and says: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

This passage has sometimes been misread as a slight against Mary. It is the opposite.

Jesus is not contracting the family. He is expanding it - beyond blood, beyond tribe, beyond the boundaries that human kinship had always drawn - to include everyone who does the will of the Father. The definition he gives is not a demotion of natural family. It is a revelation of a deeper family, one that natural family was always meant to point toward.

And the question that hangs over the passage, once you see it, is this: who does the will of the Father most perfectly in all of Scripture?

Augustine, preaching on this very passage, asks it directly: “Did the Virgin Mary - who believed by faith and conceived by faith, who was the chosen one from whom our Savior was born among men - did she not do the will of the Father?”1 His answer is unambiguous. “Indeed the blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will, and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood.”

Mary is not standing outside the definition Jesus gives. She is its exemplar and its fullest expression. When Jesus stretches out his hand and says here are my mother and my brothers - he is describing the family whose founding act was a young woman in Nazareth saying let it be done to me according to your word. The fiat gave way to the Incarnation. She did the will of the Father before the Word took flesh in her. So when Jesus defines the new family by the will of the Father, Mary is already inside that definition more completely than anyone else who has ever lived.

Augustine says it plainly elsewhere: “Mary is more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ.”2 Not because the physical motherhood was insignificant - it was the hinge of history - but because the physical motherhood was itself the fruit of something deeper. She bore him in her heart before she bore him in her womb. The fiat is the deeper thing. And the fiat is exactly what Jesus names as the basis of the family he is defining.

Behind the Gospel stands Micah, and Micah is asking a question that has no answer.

“Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance; who does not persist in anger forever, but delights rather in clemency?”

No one. There is no one like this God - the one who delights in clemency, who does not persist in anger, who turns back toward his people again and again despite everything they have done and failed to do.

“You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins.”

Not file them, archive them, or hold onto them, ready to be retrieved at the next failure. Cast them into the depths of the sea - where they are unreachable, where the water closes over them, where they are as gone as anything in this world can be. The Hebrew tashlikh - to throw, to cast - is the word used when you are done with something. God is done with the sins. He throws them in.

This is the God whose family Jesus is defining in Matthew 12. The family of the Father is the family of the one who casts our sins to the bottom of the ocean. Membership is not earned by a sufficient record of obedience. It is received by those who turn toward this Father with whatever will they have - imperfect, incomplete, repeatedly failing - and keep turning.

The domestic church can live this definition.

The household of faith is not the same as the household of blood, though they can and often do overlap. The family that gathers at the Eucharistic table, that prays together, that does the will of the Father in the ordinary space of daily life - is a family in the deepest sense Jesus intends here. Not a metaphor for family. The thing itself.

And Micah’s prayer is the prayer available to every such household: the God who heads this family casts our sins into the depths of the sea. He does not bring them back at dinner. He does not file them for reference in the next argument. The Psalm refrain today is the petition and the confidence at once: “Lord, show us your mercy and love.” Show us what you are always already showing - the mercy that covered the guilt, the love that withdrew the burning anger, the kindness that precedes our asking.

The hand Jesus stretches out toward his disciples is still stretched out. Toward everyone who hears the word and keeps it. Toward everyone who, however imperfectly and with however many failures, is trying to do the will of the Father in the place where they have been put.

Here are my mother and my brothers.

Mary said yes before any of us. She shows us what the yes looks like at its fullest. And the family she belongs to - the family defined not by blood but by the will of the Father who casts our sins into the sea - is the family we have been given to inhabit.

Domus Formation offers tracks of daily prayer and formation for families, men, women, teens, and those in the second half of life. The first school of faith is the home, and every member of it deserves to be formed. WeAreDomus.com

If Catholic fiction that takes the Communion of Saints seriously - as doctrine, not sentiment - is what you are looking for, I am writing two things. Lux Perpetua is a serial novel publishing weekly in two tracks, set in Alton, Illinois, at the edge of the Mississippi - a story of custody and fidelity and a flame passed forward across centuries. And Two Lamps is a weekly short story on Substack, each one braiding two saints from different centuries into a single imagined meeting. Both are for the kind of reader who believes the imagination is also a faculty of faith.

Deacon Michael Halbrook is husband to Suzanne, father of four sons, and a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. He serves at St. Elizabeth Parish in Granite City. He is the founder of Domus Formation, a collection of Catholic prayer and formation resources for every stage of life, and he writes at DeaconMichael.net.

Matthew 13:24-43

24 Another parable he proposed to them, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seeds in his field. 25 But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way.

26 And when the blade was sprung up, and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle. 27 And the servants of the goodman of the house coming said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle? 28 And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up? 29 And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it. 30 Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.

31 Another parable he proposed unto them, saying: The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. 32 Which is the least indeed of all seeds; but when it is grown up, it is greater than all herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come, and dwell in the branches thereof. 33 Another parable he spoke to them: The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened. 34 All these things Jesus spoke in parables to the multitudes: and without parables he did not speak to them. 35 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.

36 Then having sent away the multitudes, he came into the house, and his disciples came to him, saying: Expound to us the parable of the cockle of the field. 37 Who made answer and said to them: He that soweth the good seed, is the Son of man. 38 And the field, is the world. And the good seed are the children of the kingdom. And the cockle, are the children of the wicked one. 39 And the enemy that sowed them, is the devil. But the harvest is the end of the world. And the reapers are the angels. 40 Even as cockle therefore is gathered up, and burnt with fire: so shall it be at the end of the world.

41 The Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and them that work iniquity. 42 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then shall the just shine as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Today’s readings are all about God’s justice. In our time, Christians tend to minimize sin, while focusing mainly on the mercy of God. But, sin is very real and we will all be judged for what we have done and for what we failed to do. Jesus’ parables all contain imagery with which the people of His time would have been familiar. Bread was essential to survival in this time. The great nations of the ancient world, especially in the Middle East, rose to power due to their ability to cultivate wheat. When the wheat crop was good, the nation was strong, the people were prosperous and healthy. When the wheat crop failed, the people starved and nations fell.

Bad weather was not the only danger to wheat. An enemy may very well have damaged the fields of a rival power. One of the most common weeds to grow among wheat is darnell. This weed is often called cockle or tares. It resembles wheat in its early stages of growth. So, like the parable states, had the servants attempted to gather the weeds while the wheat was immature, much wheat would be lost. Only at harvest could they separate the good from the bad. But, darnell has another property that our Lord’s listeners would have known. If it was not removed, and its grains were ground with the wheat, the bread made would be toxic and hallucinogenic. Darnell caused madness and poisonings. This was the reason an enemy might sow darnell in his rival’s field. That is not the only danger of wheat. If the mature grain is not properly stored, it can develop ergot fungus, which is also hallucinogenic... it is a natural form of LSD.

Many of the ghost stories, tales of witchcraft, curses and enchantment and such, were likely due to the very bread that people depended on for survival. It is also true that pagan peoples used such hallucinogens in their religious ceremonies and for divination. The hallucinogenic state makes one very susceptible to demonic possession. Our Lord’s parables regarding sowing good seed and how a wholesome crop may be spoiled by evil influence were very understandable warnings about the spiritual life. There is also significance in that He is the Bread of Heaven – the good bread that nourishes and is trustworthy.

The Protestant heresy of “Once saved always saved” is entirely untrue. Many Christians receive the seed of faith and the Word of God, only for it to be lost due to sin, discouragement in times of difficulty and the business of life. The enemy is constantly trying to ruin the crop sown by our Lord. The mustard seed mentioned in the other parable is not common garden mustard, but a tree that was native to His region (Salvadora persica). This “mustard tree” was an evergreen; evergreens often symbolize eternal life. In order for our tiny mustard seeds of faith to grow into great trees, we must cultivate them through prayer and the Sacraments, and not allow them to be ruined by sin.

Judson Carroll is the author of several books, including his newest, A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings July - December, 2026 It is Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRGY1D15

A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings January - June, 2026 It is also available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDK16N45

and

Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNK

His podcast is The Uncensored Catholic https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-uncensored-catholic

St. John Chrysostom continues by pointing out that Christ possessed—and indeed still does possess—the ability to break those bruised reeds, quenching their “rage with all readiness” (Catena aurea). However, He did not, and He continues to permit the bruised reeds of sinful souls to persist in their errors in this earthly life. Why? Many saints and spiritual writers have written volumes about this question, but in short, God has given man free will in order to love Him more fully. God is more glorified when we choose to love Him with our free wills, because such a choice engages our rational intellect whereby we recognize God as the ultimate Good to be attained.

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St. Thomas Aquinas says that our free will “is the subject of grace” (ST, I, q. 83, a. 2). By grace, we are able to recognize God as the supreme Good and freely choose to love and obey Him. God desires for each one of us to use our free wills in this way, for He desires union with each of our souls. For this reason, He does not break the bruised reeds of our souls, even when we fall and disobey Him, but instead gives us every opportunity to rise again by His grace and return to His loving embrace.

St. Thomas Aquinas writes that God’s mercy precedes His justice, and we can see this in today’s Gospel. God does not break the bruised reed of sinful souls or extinguish the smoking flax, until “[H]e send[s] forth judgment unto victory” (Mt 12:20). In the end, God’s justice will prevail over all evil. He gives us our entire lifetimes on earth to repent and return to Him, but if we persist in our wickedness and refuse His grace, we will face His just punishments. If we die unrepentant without the state of grace, we will experience an eternity of the worst possible suffering for any creature: eternal separation from God.

Our time on earth is but an instant in light of eternity. We do not know when we will stand before our God at our particular judgments, but that day will eventually come for each of us. The saints have often said that if we put off our pursuit of sanctity and virtue until “tomorrow,” we will end up never responding to the graces that God mercifully offers us, to the detriment of our souls. May we resolve today to no longer delay in pursuing union with God. May we spend the rest of our lives responding readily to the graces He mercifully bestows on us each day, using the gift of our free wills to choose Him above all else in our lives and seeking nothing else than to rest for all eternity in His Sacred Heart.

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Perhaps the most impactful statements from this Gospel comes next: Jesus says, “I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned these innocent men. For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.” (Matthew 12:6-8). The only one that can be greater than the temple, the dwelling place of God Himself, is God Himself. He is telling us that He is God among us. In addition, He had contradicted the rules of the Pharisees before, saying that it was lawful for those in the past to do good on the sabbath. Yahweh alone is Lord of the sabbath; therefore, by declaring definitive rules for the sabbath, He is claiming to be Lord of the sabbath, which he says in verse 8. Once again, He is telling us that He is God among us.

In verse 7, God speaks to each of us individually. He says that rather than desiring sacrifice, He desires mercy. The Lord longs for us to run to Him when we make mistakes and sin against Him. He does not want us to just give him sacrifices in order to make reparation; He doesn’t want us to feel like He only desires these things. In saying that He truly desires mercy, He is telling us that above all else, He just wants us. That is why He chose to come to earth in the person of Jesus and die for our sins - so that we might live in eternal peace with Him forever.

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Matthew 11:28-30

28 Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. 29 Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. 30 For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.

While the message of Christ that was most scandalous to the religious Jews was His claim to be God, committing the crime of blasphemy if not true and punishable by death, He did many things that violated their religious laws. He repeatedly violated the Jewish Sabbath. He associated with gentiles, tax collectors, sinners and lepers. He called the religious leaders, “whitewashed tombs” and charged them with using the law for financial gain. He said that they made the Law unnecessarily burdensome, enforcing trivialities and details while lacking compassion for man and true love of God.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers us the alternative of Christianity. He does not require the keeping of the Jewish sabbath, circumcision, temple sacrifice, dietary regulations or any of the burdens of the Mosaic Law. Of course, the basics remain – don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, worship the one true God. This was summed up in His explanation of the true meaning of the Law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy neighbor as thyself.”

The burden of the Torah was so heavy that very few of even the most religious Jews could uphold and follow every tenant. Whether individually or as a people, they were in constant violation of the Law and that was why offerings for sin were constantly sacrificed in the Temple. Jesus took upon Himself the penalty of death for all sins that had ever been or would ever be committed throughout time and everywhere on earth. For that reason, He could say that the Law of Moses no longer applied to the Christian. A yoke is something with which one controls beasts of burden – oxen and such. The yoke of the Jewish Law was heavy. The yoke of Jesus is light.

When we read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we may feel somewhat restricted by this yoke. After all, it is human nature to desire sin. Concupiscence means that we are more inclined to do wrong than right. Even so, we know that God is the author of all creation and He alone has the authority to decide what is right and wrong. This authority, He gave to His Church when He said such things as, “He who hears you hears me and he who rejects you rejects Him who sent me.” He commanded His apostles to teach in His stead to all peoples and He ensured their authority stating, “what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” We not only can, but we must follow the teachings of the Catholic Church in matters of morals and doctrine. That is the yoke Jesus promised.

He also knew that we would fail. He knows that no matter how hard we try, we are no more able to keep His teachings perfectly than were the Jews under the Law. But for us, the sacrifice has already been made in His crucifixion. All we have to do is confess our sins to His priests, who stand in His stead, and express sorrow for our sins, resolving to amend our lives as best we can. Jesus, through His priests, gives us absolution because He has already suffered the punishment for us. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Catholic may truly participate in the sacrificial death of Christ and realize that His yoke is truly light. It is our sins that are heavy. Trading one for the other is an incredible joy and relief!

Judson Carroll is the author of several books, including his newest, A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings July - December, 2026 It is Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRGY1D15

A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings January - June, 2026 It is also available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDK16N45

and

Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNK

His podcast is The Uncensored Catholic https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-uncensored-catholic

Today’s gospel reveals the necessary spiritual state that one must be in to come to truly know and ultimately see God. Our Lord speaks of these hidden things that are revealed to the infants or the childlike. Many times, this passage is read, and it is assumed that He means being immature in some way. This is not the case. A spiritual infancy is likened to one that is truly humble and completely reliant on God. This is indicated by what comes after today’s Gospel passage. Our Lord continues His teaching:

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a month ago · 9 likes · 15 comments · Andrew McGovern, Th.D.

In other translations gentle and lowly in heart is translated as meek and humble of heart. This is the context that today’s Gospel passage needs to be read in. Our Lord is exhorting us to a humility that is imitative of Him. Once we reduce ourselves and are brought low, we will be disposed to see the One whom Christ reveals.

Truly, this is the most necessary work to be done in our souls. God is always ready to lavish His grace on us, but in many cases, we must be predisposed to receive it and to cooperate with it. Yes, this preparation is also a work of grace, but we are not stagnant. We are not the Quietists of old who advocated for a total passivity in the spiritual life. Quietism is a fraudulent abandonment. True abandonment surrenders ourselves to Christ and takes His yoke upon ourselves. This is not passive. It is an active abandonment to God’s will and His transformative power in our souls. This yoke is humility. Humility transforms us from someone who thinks they can do everything on their own, even save their own souls, to one who embraces and rejoices that, apart from Him, we can do nothing.1

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For more from Dr. McGovern, visit his Substack at A Thomist, Dedicated to the Theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Exploring Thomas’ Spiritual Theology and topics in Christology and Mariology.

Note: Today is the Optional Memorial of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. I have chosen to reflect on the weekday readings, though Kateri herself appears where the readings invite her.

Two kings are marching against Jerusalem.

Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel - the Syro-Ephraimite coalition - have set their sights on the city, and the news has reached Ahaz before they arrive. The text records what happens to the king and the city in a single image: “the heart of the king and the heart of the people trembled, as the trees of the forest tremble in the wind.”

It is a precise and honest description of a particular kind of fear. Not the sharp fear of sudden danger but the trembling fear of anticipated catastrophe, the whole body vibrating with what has not yet arrived but is certainly coming. The trees of the forest in the wind - every branch shaking, no stillness anywhere.

Into this trembling, God sends Elijah with a child.

The child’s name is Shear-jashub - “a remnant shall return” - and the name is itself a prophecy carried into the presence of the terrified king. Isaiah is to meet Ahaz at the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the fuller’s field, and say to him: “Take care you remain tranquil and do not fear.”

The enemies, God says, are “two stumps of smoldering brands.”

A smoldering brand looks threatening - there is smoke, there is heat, there is the suggestion of fire and burning. But a stump is already burned. The burning is over. What looks like a threat in motion is, in God’s sight, already spent. Rezin and Pekah are marching with real armies toward a real city - and God names them stumps.

“Unless your faith is firm, you shall not be firm.”

The Hebrew plays on two forms of the same root - ta’aminu... te’amenu. If you do not stand firm in faith, you will not stand at all. The word is not primarily an exhortation to try harder. It is a description of how reality works: the person whose stability rests on political calculation, on military assessment, on the trembling consensus of the city’s heart - that person is standing on something that cannot bear the weight. The only firm ground is the one the faith stands on. And the faith is in the God who already sees the smoldering brands as stumps.

Ahaz does not take the word. He will go on to make alliance with Assyria, to desecrate the Temple, to close its doors. He mistakes the smoldering brand for fire and the stump for a living tree, and he spends his reign in the fear that the word was given to release him from.

Jesus, in Matthew, is upbraiding cities.

He has gone through Chorazin and Bethsaida, teaching and healing and proclaiming. Mighty works have been done in these towns - works that Isaiah promised the Messiah would do, works that leave no room for ambiguity about what is happening and who is doing it. And the cities have not repented.

Jerome, in his commentary on this passage, names the precise weight of the indictment: “Tyre and Sidon had trodden under foot the law of nature only, but these towns after they had transgressed the natural and the written Law, also made light of those wonders which had been wrought among them.”1 The Gentile cities were without the Law and without the prophets. Chorazin and Bethsaida had both - and then they had the works of Christ done in their streets. The accountability is proportional to the gift.

Chrysostom adds a detail that cuts deeper: he notes that Jesus names Bethsaida specifically as the town from which the Apostles had come - Philip, Peter and Andrew, James and John.2 The disciples came from Bethsaida. The same soil that produced men who would turn the world over produced a city that would not repent. The grace does not guarantee the response. The same work that hardens one heart opens another.

This is the logic of Isaiah applied to the Gospel age. Ahaz trembled before smoldering brands and would not stand firm in faith. Chorazin and Bethsaida witnessed what Tyre and Sidon would have received with sackcloth and ashes - and remained unmoved. In both cases the gift was given. In both cases the trembling was chosen over the tranquility.

Today the Church celebrates Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks, canonized in 2012 - the first Native American saint.

She was born in 1656 in present-day New York. A smallpox epidemic killed her parents and a brother when she was four; she survived but with scarred skin and damaged eyesight. She was baptized in 1676 at the age of twenty, after years of quiet inquiry, in the face of family opposition and village ridicule. She fled her Mohawk village under cover of night to live among Christian Iroquois at a mission near Montreal, took a vow of virginity, and died at twenty-four in 1680.

At the moment of her death, witnesses reported that her scarred face became radiant and smooth.

What Kateri had, Chorazin did not. She received the faith on far less external evidence than the cities Jesus upbraided - no mighty works done in the streets of her village, no prophet sent to her by name, no long inheritance of the Law and the prophets. She received it in a body marked by suffering, in a community that mocked her, in a household that was the hardest possible place to remain firm. And she stood firm in it.

Unless your faith is firm, you shall not be firm. Kateri’s faith was firm. Her ground did not tremble, though everything around her did.

The domestic church is often the Bethsaida of our own lives.

It is the place where we have seen the most - where the faith has been present longest, where prayer has been practiced, where the sacraments have been received again and again. And it is therefore the place most at risk of the failure Jesus names in the Gospel: not ignorance, not paganism, not the trodden-down law of nature, but the familiarity that mistakes witness for repentance. The household that has heard the word for decades without being changed by it is in more danger than the household that has never heard it at all.

The word given to Ahaz is the word given to every trembling household: take care you remain tranquil and do not fear. Not because the threats are not real. Not because the marching armies are imaginary. But because the God who sends the word already sees the smoldering brands as stumps. The child with the prophetic name walks into the presence of a terrified king, and the name itself is the reassurance: a remnant shall return. Even from this. Even from Ahaz’s failure. Even from the city that would not repent.

The faith that stands firm is not the faith that never trembles. It is the faith that, trembling, turns toward the one who has already named the enemies stumps - and stands.

Domus Formation offers tracks of daily prayer and formation for families, men, women, teens, and those in the second half of life. The first school of faith is the home, and every member of it deserves to be formed. WeAreDomus.com

If Catholic fiction that takes the Communion of Saints seriously - as doctrine, not sentiment - is what you are looking for, I am writing two things. Lux Perpetua is a serial novel publishing weekly in two tracks, set in Alton, Illinois, at the edge of the Mississippi - a story of custody and fidelity and a flame passed forward across centuries. And Two Lamps is a weekly short story on Substack, each one braiding two saints from different centuries into a single imagined meeting. Both are for the kind of reader who believes the imagination is also a faculty of faith.

Deacon Michael Halbrook is husband to Suzanne, father of four sons, and a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. He serves at St. Elizabeth Parish in Granite City. He is the founder of Domus Formation, a collection of Catholic prayer and formation resources for every stage of life, and he writes at DeaconMichael.net.

Etching by Rembrandt van Rijn, ca. 1657.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus warns us: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.”

This is quite the statement, especially since we know Christ as the Prince of Peace, not “Beacon of Chaos” or “Harbinger of Swords.” So, we can only imagine just how angry and resentful the Pharisees must’ve felt! This rabbi, this teacher… how dare He try and invoke the wrath of Rome! How dare He try to destroy this fragile peace we’ve built with this great, powerful empire! Now surely, they’ll stomp on us all!

But Jesus, though He would end up bringing purpose, hope, and yes, inner peace to us all, would also never be fully accepted by the world. This is in part due to Him not being its “prince.” Christ is, instead, mocked, belittled, and thought up to be a mere myth. Some argue He never even existed. If only they knew the Truth!

Jesus goes on to say He has come to “set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” This is relevant especially today, as we Christians are often teased and poked at by those we care about.

What this means, though, is that when we choose to follow Christ, we choose a life of pain, but also one of immense rewards. This is why when we welcome Him, we are judged and persecuted by those who don’t. They just don’t understand why we follow Him or reject the world and all it offers! And yet this tenacity is exactly why He chose us! We are to be ambassadors of Christ and love Him more than anything in this world.

This does not mean we cannot love our family or our jobs or our country. However, if we fully focus on them and push God away, then we will certainly fall apart. Idolatry is a powerful thing, and we must avoid it at all costs, and that is what Jesus means. We shouldn’t hate our family or those we love, but we should detach ourselves from the world.

In the end, we are being sent out to receive and welcome others. And in welcoming each other, we welcome Christ. This is why small acts of kindness are always important. You never know when someone might be having a bad day. Sometimes a cup of water is all one needs.

Jesus ultimately wants us to risk everything for His glory. Today’s Responsorial Psalm says: “To the upright I will show the saving power of God.” So, when we’re righteous, we will receive righteous rewards! And though this may be challenging, the fruits of our labor will always be worth it, for we shall be happy, and all shall be well.

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1 The same day Jesus going out of the house, sat by the sea side.

2 And great multitudes were gathered unto him, so that he went up into a boat and sat: and all the multitude stood on the shore.

3 And he spoke to them many things in parables, saying: Behold the sower went forth to sow.

4 And whilst he soweth some fell by the way side, and the birds of the air came and ate them up.

5 And other some fell upon stony ground, where they had not much earth: and they sprung up immediately, because they had no deepness of earth.

6 And when the sun was up they were scorched: and because they had not root, they withered away.

7 And others fell among thorns: and the thorns grew up and choked them.

8 And others fell upon good ground: and they brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold.

9 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

10 And his disciples came and said to him: Why speakest thou to them in parables?

11 Who answered and said to them: Because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven: but to them it is not given.

12 For he that hath, to him shall be given, and he shall abound: but he that hath not, from him shall be taken away that also which he hath.

13 Therefore do I speak to them in parables: because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

14 And the prophecy of Isaias is fulfilled in them, who saith: By hearing you shall hear, and shall not understand: and seeing you shall see, and shall not perceive.

15 For the heart of this people is grown gross, and with their ears they have been dull of hearing, and their eyes they have shut: lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

16 But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.

17 For, amen, I say to you, many prophets and just men have desired to see the things that you see, and have not seen them, and to hear the things that you hear and have not heard them.

18 Hear you therefore the parable of the sower.

19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, there cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart: this is he that received the seed by the way side.

20 And he that received the seed upon stony ground, is he that heareth the word, and immediately receiveth it with joy.

21 Yet hath he not root in himself, but is only for a time: and when there ariseth tribulation and persecution because of the word, he is presently scandalized.

22 And he that received the seed among thorns, is he that heareth the word, and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choketh up the word, and he becometh fruitless.

23 But he that received the seed upon good ground, is he that heareth the word, and understandeth, and beareth fruit, and yieldeth the one an hundredfold, and another sixty, and another thirty.

(Matthew 13:1-23 DRA)

Our Lord’s parables, including today’s Parable of the Sower, are some of the most commented-upon passages in Scripture, and due to their intrinsically mysterious character, they have been interpreted and applied in countless ways throughout the centuries, more or less true to their intended message.

For this reflection, I would like to give a few tips or caveats to help us understand this Parable of the Sower, not to interpret it so much as to help us interpret it with a full picture and to point out elements that are sometimes overlooked in popular commentaries on it.

1. What is Christ’s Answer to the Disciples’ Question?

After Our Lord delivers His parable, the apostles ask for Him to interpret it for them, and He does so, but they also asked why He preached in parables at all. Christ’s answer seems to be simply, “because you can and are willing to understand, but they are not”. But one might wonder, why preach to those whose ears are closed to the truth at all, and why seemingly make it harder for them to understand by using ambiguous, symbolic parables instead of clear, doctrinal statements? This leads to our second caveat:

2. God is the Sower

The identity of the sower in Christ’s parable isn’t told explicitly, as the seeds are simply described as being distributed on various types of soil, but it may be inferred that God is the sower, as Scripture and Tradition attest. This indicates an answer to our first question: Christ preached to those without ears to hear – who, we should remember, were His followers, i.e. proto-Christians, those who went to listen to Him preach, not His opponents – because, as God, He honors our free will. He distributes His seeds, i.e. the Word of God who is Christ Himself, to all men, giving every person a chance to hear, understand, and follow Him and thus to be saved, even those whom He knows will ultimately not receive His Word.

3. The Soil is Not a Static Image

It should also be noted that the different types of soil, or levels of spiritual receptivity, which are described by Christ in a static way, but with human nature and free will, we grow (or diminish) over time. What was initially rocky ground could someday become fertile soil, or vice versa, depending on our choices. We shouldn’t wait, of course, since we could be called to Judgment at any time, but we also shouldn’t give up hope in ourselves or others while we still have time to till. It could be that some of those to whom Christ preached in parables eventually gained the wisdom to see and to hear and thus became true Christians, while one of the apostles to whom Christ preached openly – Judas Iscariot – ultimately closed himself to Christ and was therefore damned.

4. Omnipotence Does Not Override Freedom

Today, many Catholics and Protestants alike claim that God’s Divine Mercy is so omnipotent that it can overcome even our free choice to reject it. God is so kind and understanding that, if there are any influences or temptations or ignorance in us, He will take that as a total negation of culpability and therefore show us mercy, no matter what. But as Christ shows in this parable, there are indeed some who don’t accept His Word – as we said before, we can always hope for our future correction, but once this life ends, the time for repentance, at least for mortal sin, is over, and the types of soil Christ lists apply especially to people at the end of our lives, when our souls are permanently set according to our lifelong choices either to accept or reject Him.

5. Truth Matters

Many people, today and in the past, have believed that it doesn’t really matter what you know or believe – all that matters is what you do. To take a quote from the movie Batman Begins, “It’s not who we are underneath, it’s what we do that defines us.” But as Christ tells His apostles in today’s parable, it really does matter – we will be judged not only on our exterior acts, on whether or not we’re a “good person,” but also on whether we know the divine Wisdom of the Gospel and whether we believe in the fullness of the truth which subsists in the Catholic faith. The people in the crowd, to whom Christ preached in parables, may have been great people otherwise – charitable, polite, law-abiding (both divine and secular law) – and they may have even been learned in worldly knowledge, but they were voluntarily ignorant of the truth, because they had chosen to close themselves to it. They were unwilling to know and therefore could not learn. This is why St. Paul says,

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim 2:3-4)

Again, these caveats aren’t meant to function as an interpretation of Christ’s parable – you will surely hear that today at Mass, as you likely have many times in your life – but as a guideline to help your own understanding of Our Lord’s words, by His grace.

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus. (2 Cor 4:6)

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