Parishable Items

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr. Victor Feltes

An Army private gets called in by his commanding officer for reportedly sleeping while on duty at his guard post:
“But sir, I wasn’t sleeping, honest—I was just keeping my eyes closed!”
“Private, it’s your solemn duty not to let anyone to get past you!”
“Yes sir, I keep my eyes closed so that nobody can bribe me!”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents two lessons back-to-back; lest, understanding only half of his message, we would reach a dangerous conclusion like that Army private. First, Jesus insists that we must keep him as our top priority. We must be even more devoted to Jesus Christ than to our parents, or to our children, or to our own personal comfort.

Jesus tells his apostles: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” In fact, it is only by first and foremost loving our Lord that we can have the wisdom and grace to love our family, our friends, and ourselves as each deserves. Whoever seeks goals apart from the Lord will lose them along with this life, but whoever seeks the Lord’s goals will gain from them along with eternal life. As Jesus says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” This passage marks Jesus’ transition to his second major lesson in this Gospel: that deeds done in his service will be richly rewarded.

Jesus says, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.” The things we do for Jesus, especially for him veiled within our neighbor, will surely be rewarded.

So Jesus presents to us with two important lessons, side-by-side. If we only heard that Jesus expects be our top priority, we might despair, thinking he is practically impossible to please. And if we only heard that Jesus rewards good deeds, we might become presumptuous, thinking God can be bribed or bought off by occasional gestures without true devotion. Rather, we should hold Jesus as our dear Lord while remembering that he will richly reward even the smallest things we do for him.

The young St. Therese of Lisieux, “The Little Flower,” dedicated herself to doing even little things for Jesus with great love. She called this her “Little Way” to holiness. In her highly-recommended autobiography “Story of a Soul” she writes: “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.” “You know well enough that our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.” “Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.” “To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.” So we should not close our eyes to our solemn duty to Jesus, for if we love and serve him even in small ways we shall see his great rewards.

This entry was posted on June 27, 2026 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Christian Perfection, Homily, Jesus Christ, St. Therese of Lisieux, Sunday Homilies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.