Fr Kevin Kilgore

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Gospel: Luke 6: 12-16

Jesus went up to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew,
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew,
Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

The Gospel of the Lord.

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I wonder why it took Jesus an entire night spent in prayer with his Father to choose the Twelve Apostles.

Did he have other people in mind? Did he know their flaws? Could he sense their hesitation and fear? Did he pray their faith in him would not fail?

Maybe the Lord struggled to accept what would happen to these men if they did say “yes.”

As is always the case in the bible, whenever someone says “yes” to God, their entire future changes in ways that that person never could’ve imaged. 

Think of Mary, who became the virgin Mother of God. Saint Joseph, who became the foster father of Jesus. Or figures from the Old Testament like Moses, who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt into the desert to be tested for 40 years.

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Saying “yes” to God means the impossible suddenly becomes possible.

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Today we celebrate the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude. 

Tradition states that they were cousins of Jesus, who became his Apostles and eventually worked together to spread the Gospel as far east as Persia, where they were martyred some 30 years after the resurrection. 

Simon was sawed in half. Jude died after being struck with an ax.

The fact that 10 of the 12 Apostles preached the Gospel until they were silenced by death became one of the earliest arguments for the truth of the resurrection. 

What else would inspire these men to leave their homes and their families, traveling to the ends of the earth, enduring unimaginable forms of persecution and torture, if they had not been utterly convinced that Christ was raised from the dead?

It would’ve been far easier for them to return to their lives as fishermen.

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So, what does this mean for us?

While none of us may be called to be a missionary or a martyr, God does have a plan for each of our lives. Finding out what that plan is – even down to granular daily decisions like who we bring into our lives – requires doing what Jesus did in today’s Gospel.

Spending time in prayer.

May we find a few quiet moments each day to echo the words of the prophet Samuel: “Speak, LORD, your servant is listening.” 

And live accordingly.

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Image credits: (1) publishpeace.net (2) Christianity.com (3) Amazon.com

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Gospel: Luke 13:18-21

Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like?
To what can I compare it?
It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.
When it was fully grown, it became a large bush
and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”

Again he said, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God?
It is like yeast that a woman took
and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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There’s a story of an early Christian hermit, who dedicated his life to prayer while living in the desert. His name was Telemachus. One day while deep in meditation, Telemachus felt the Lord calling him to Rome.

So, he left his simple desert cell, made his way to Rome, and eventually to the Colosseum, where he witnessed gladiators fighting to their death, while bloodthirsty crowds cheered them on.

He was horrified.

Telemachus literally threw himself into the arena and tried physically separating one gladiator from another. Enraged, the crowds hurled stones at him until he was pounded to death.

When the emperor got word of the story, he was so moved this hermit’s sacrifice that he eventually ended the gladiator games.

Telemachus became like the mustard seed in today’s Gospel. He was a single person, but he changed an entire culture – and many lives in the process.  

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That’s also the story of Jesus, whose singular death on the cross changed the course of human history. 

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It’s also the story of the Church.

The Church began with twelve imperfect men and a band of women, each of whom dedicated their lives to sharing the Gospel. 

Two-thousand years later, that small community of believers has exploded into more than 1 billion people around the world.

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So, what might this say to us?

God is constantly at work, but often his plans start small – with a child born in Bethlehem at Christmas, a hermit leaping into the Colosseum, a person saying “yes” to God and following him into the unknown. Suddenly, the world is changed. 

May we see ourselves like tiny mustard seeds – insignificant on our own, but when empowered by grace, a force to be reckoned with. 

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Image credits: (1) YouVersion (2) CEPAD (3) Desert Streams Ministries

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Gospel: Luke 13:10-17

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.
And a woman was there who for eighteen years
had been crippled by a spirit;
she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,
“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
said to the crowd in reply,
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!
Does not each one of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his ass from the manger
and lead it out for watering?
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?”
When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;
and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.

The Gospel of the Lord.

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This is the last time we see Jesus in a synagogue. He knows he has captured the ire of the religious authorities. They are now starting to plot his death.

Breaking the Sabbath by healing a crippled woman only adds fuel to the fire.

As Christians – or simply people of good will – we can imagine the pain this woman endured. For 18 years, some 6,500 days of her life, she was unable to straighten her bent body.

The curvature of her spine produced tight knots in her shoulders and sharp pain in her neck, making simple tasks like getting dressed or looking up to see who’s in front of her torturous. 

Making matters worse, in Jesus’ day, people often viewed physical deformity as the fruit of spiritual failure, as if this woman deserved the pain she bore.

No wonder Christ was moved with compassion.

In touching her, Jesus heals more than her spine; he publicly affirms her identity as a “daughter of Abraham,” blessing her right in front of the “religious” men who ignored her suffering.

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He also intentionally heals her on the Sabbath in order to teach us all a lesson. There are times when the laws that define our lives, even religious ones, need to be stretched, re-interpreted, or updated.

There is no higher law than charity.

If we notice our neighbor hunched over, weighed down by the pressures of life, then we are obligated to help them. Neglecting them is no different than neglecting the God who created them.

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May we do something to alleviate a neighbor “hunched over” by suffering today. Doing so is not only pleasing to God; that love also covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

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Image credits: (1) Petrie-Flom Center (2) Facebook (3) The New Social Worker