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June 15 Our Lady of Consolation Weekday in Ordinary Time Today's Gospel: Matthew 5:38-42 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator.   The world has always run on retaliation. You hit me, I hit you back. You take from me, I take from you. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. It is the oldest system of justice human beings have ever invented, and it makes perfect intuitive sense, until Jesus stood up on a hillside and dismantled it completely. Do not resist the evildoer. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other. If someone wants your tunic, give them your cloak too. If someone forces you to go with them one mile, go two miles. The crowd must have got very quiet. This is not a weakness. This is the most demanding thing Jesus ever asked of His followers. It takes infinitely more strength to absorb a blow and choose not to return it than to simply swing back. Anyone can retaliate. The world is full of people who retaliate. What the world has very few o...
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June 14 Our Lady of the Wayside Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Today's Gospel: Matthew 9:36-10:8 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator.   He looked at the crowd, and His heart broke. The gospel says He saw them troubled and abandoned, like sheep with no shepherd, and something moved inside Him that could not look away. Then He turned to His disciples and said, The harvest is abundant. The workers are few. Ask the master to send workers into the harvest. He didn't just feel it. He did something about it. God said to Moses on that mountain, I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. God carried them, every step and through every mile of the desert. Every impossible moment. I was underneath you the whole time. And Paul said it plainly to the Romans, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Yes, while we were still a mess, He was already on the cross for us. That is love with no conditions and no fine print. My heart breaks for the...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 13 The Immaculate Heart of The Blessed Virgin Mary St. Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church 3rd Apparition of Our Lady of Fatima Today's Gospel: Matthew 5:33-37   He cut right through their performance. The Pharisees had built an elaborate system of oaths, swearing by heaven, swearing by the Temple, swearing by Jerusalem. The more impressive the oath, the more seriously people took your word. Jesus looked at all of it and said, Stop. Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Anything beyond that comes from the evil one. Just mean what you say and say what you mean. Your word is either worth something, or it isn't. All your worldly oaths won't change that. St. Anthony of Padua said yes to God with everything he had. He was brilliant, bold, and completely on fire for souls. He preached with such power that hardened sinners wept and heretics fell silent. But beneath all that fire was a heart completely surrendered to Our Lady. He called her t...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 12 Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Today's Gospel: Matthew 11:25-30 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator   Jesus didn't say come to me if you have it all together or come to me when you've cleaned yourself up or figured it out or when you stop making the same mistakes. He looked out at the crowd of tired people, broken people, people carrying weight they couldn't name and burdens they couldn't put down, and He simply said: Come to me. All of you. I will give you rest. Moses told the people of Israel something that should have stopped them immediately. God didn't choose them because they were the greatest nation. God chose them because He loved them. No other reason. Just love deciding to love and nothing else. That is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in one sentence. A heart that loves not because we earned it, but because that is what it does. It loves. Relentlessly. Without condition. Thro...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 11 Our Lady of Consolation St. Barnabas, Apostle Today's Gospel: Matthew 5:20-26 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator.   Jesus stopped the offering. The gift is being placed on the altar. He said, wait. Before you bring me that gift, go. If your brother has something against you, go be reconciled first. Then come back. He put relationship before ritual. Every single time. St. Barnabas understood this better than almost anyone in the early Church. His name means Son of Encouragement, and everything we know about him lives up to it. When Saul of Tarsus showed up claiming to be a changed man, the entire Church backed away. Nobody trusted the man who had been hunting Christians for sport. Nobody except Barnabas. He walked across the room, stood next to Paul, and said, " Trust him. I believe him. That one act of courageous reconciliation changed the history of Christianity. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is walk toward the person everyone else is ...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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  June 10 Our Lady of the Snows Weekday in Ordinary Time Today's Gospel: Matthew 5:17-19 Photo created using Google AI Image Creator. Every time Jesus healed on the Sabbath, every time He ate with sinners, every time He touched the untouchable, the Pharisees watched with narrowed eyes and sharpened accusations. This man is destroying everything Moses built. Jesus stopped them before they could finish the thought. Do not think I have come to abolish the Law. I have come to fulfill it. Not one letter. Not one stroke of a letter will pass away until all is accomplished. He wasn't tearing anything down. He was completing it. The Law was the blueprint. Jesus was the building. Every line of that blueprint, every prophecy, every commandment, every word spoken through Moses and the prophets, was always pointing toward Him. The Old Testament didn't end when the New Testament began. It arrived perfectly. And then Jesus said something that cuts right through every generati...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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  June 9 Our Lady of Grace St. Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church Today's Gospel: Matthew 5:13-16 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator.   Jesus looked at the crowd on that hillside and said something that should have been impossible. “You are the light of the world.” Exactly as you are sitting on that hillside with your dusty sandals and your ordinary life and your collection of doubts and failures and half-kept promises. You are the light. Don't hide it. St. Ephrem was a deacon. Not a priest or a bishop. Just a man with a pen and an unquenchable love for God and Our Lady. He wrote hymns, hundreds of them, because he understood that truth set to music reaches places that arguments never can. He called Our Lady the most pure dwelling place of Christ. He sang it until people couldn't forget it. A deacon with a song. That was enough to make him a Doctor of the Church. You don't have to be the most powerful person in the room to light it up. I wa...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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  June 8 Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Monday - Tenth Week in Ordinary Time Today’s Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator.   Jesus sat down on a hillside and began to teach. No Temple, or altar, no ceremony. Just an open hillside, and a crowd of ordinary hungry people, and Jesus speaking words that would echo through every century that followed. He wasn't quoting scripture or debating the Pharisees. He was describing a completely different way of seeing the world, one that turned everything the crowd thought they knew completely upside down. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the persecuted. Eight very powerful statements, each one a gentle earthquake. The world says blessed are the powerful. Blessed are the comfortable. Blessed are the ones who w...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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  June 7 Our Lady of the Cenacle   The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Corpus Christi Today's Gospel: John 6:51-58 Photo created using Google AI Image Creator.   Jesus said it plainly, with no room for misunderstanding. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.   The crowd argued among themselves. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? It was too much. Too strange. Too real. And Jesus didn't soften it. He didn't say, relax, I'm speaking symbolically. He said it again. And again. And again. Most of them walked away. Because what He was offering was not an idea to be debated. It was a life to be received. Completely. Without reservation. On His terms, not ours. God fed His people manna in the desert for forty years. Every morning. Without fail. They didn't plant it. They didn't earn it. It was just there when they woke up. E...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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  June 6 Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii St. Norbert, Bishop Today’s Gospel: Mark 12:38-44 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. Jesus was watching the offering box. The rich walked up and dropped in large amounts. Impressive. Visible. The kind of giving that turns heads. Then a poor widow walked up quietly and dropped in two small coins. Barely worth counting. Jesus turned to His disciples and said, "She gave more than all of them." Not because the amount was greater. Because she held nothing back. The rich gave from their surplus. She gave from her poverty. Everything she had. Two small coins. Her whole life in her hands, and she let it go. St. Norbert understood that kind of surrender completely. He was a wealthy, pleasure-seeking nobleman riding his horse one afternoon when lightning struck the ground in front of him and threw him to the earth. When he got up, he was a different man. He gave away everything he owned. Built a religious order from nothin...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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