13 July 2026 – Monday of the 15th week – even-numbered year
Isaiah 1:10–17; Matthew 10:34–11:1
H O M E L Y
This Gospel reading is somewhat puzzling – as the Gospel often is. The final part, concerning welcoming others, and in particular welcoming Christ’s messenger, is reassuring and easy to understand. The central part of the text, however, which states, ‘Whoever loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me’, is more difficult to understand. It is as though there were a competition between the two kinds of love. Yet this does not fit with the image of God that Jesus usually presents to us.
This is preceded by an earlier passage in which Jesus says: ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth… I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother… a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ This is certainly no easy text either, but its meaning is clear. The meaning is that the peace which Jesus came to bring to the world is not ‘peace at any price’. It is not the kind of peace ‘that the world can give’. It is not the peace that consists of compromise with the established order, even when that established order is built on injustice and the oppression of the weakest and the least. It is not the peace proclaimed by false prophets who seek only to be accepted and honoured, but rather the peace proclaimed by true prophets—a peace that is the fruit of the restoration of a just order, and whose echoes are found in the Magnificat: ‘He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate… he fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich away empty-handed’.
Anyone who has chosen to serve God rather than Mammon – anyone who has chosen to live according to the precepts of the Gospel and to accept all the consequences of doing so – can expect that, in certain circumstances, this choice will bring them into conflict with those around them and sometimes even with those closest to them, including their parents or children. It is at such times that these words of Jesus come to mind: ‘If anyone loves their father or mother more than me, they are not worthy of me’. Apart from this situation of conflict and the inevitable choice between the Gospel and that which opposes it, it is clear that there can be no opposition or even tension between the love of God and the love of one’s parents – the latter being, in fact, merely an expression of the former.
The Son of God devoted Himself entirely to His mission. According to the Letter to the Philippians (ch. 2), He did not wish to ‘cling’ to His equality with God; He emptied Himself – ‘humbled Himself’ –; He renounced all His rights to become one of us; and that is why the Father exalted Him... So it is for us, Jesus tells us. Anyone who wishes to keep his life—that is, anyone who clings to his life as if it were private property, and who is all curled up in on himself—has in reality already lost his life, for it is thereby emptied of its meaning. But whoever accepts the cross, whoever accepts the conflicts that arise from fidelity to the Gospel, whoever accepts to model his life on the Gospel even if this means choosing between Jesus and those closest to him, such a person already possesses life in its fullness – even if, in some cases, this may lead to physical death.
To those who followed Him in this spirit – His Apostles – Jesus gave the affectionate name ‘little ones’. It is of them that He speaks when He says that whoever gives even a simple glass of water to ‘one of these little ones’ will not lose his reward. That person, says Jesus, will receive a prophet’s reward. The expression ‘the reward of a prophet’ does not mean the reward befitting a prophet, but rather the reward one receives from a prophet – a true prophet like Elisha – who, wherever he goes, brings life. Just as ‘the reward of a righteous man’ means the reward one receives from a righteous man.
This Gospel passage is very demanding. It calls us to hospitality and to welcoming others, especially the least among us, but also to an ‘orderly’ hospitality, where we know how to establish a hierarchy of importance, and to choose Christ whenever circumstances or people force us to choose between Him and something else, or between Him and other people, even if this entails the cross, that is to say, even if it means coming into full possession of life by losing it.
Armand Veilleux