August 24 through August 30, 2025
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(August 24, 2025: Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time)
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“Go out to all the world and tell the good news.”
Pope Paul VI defined evangelization as "bringing the Good News into all strata of humanity and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new."
In their book entitled Creating the Evangelizing Parish, Paulist Fathers Frank DeSiano and Kenneth Boyack challenge us to accept this simple truth: each of us is called to be an evangelist, to “go out to all the world and tell the Good News,” and to give witness to the power and promise of God's redeeming love in our lives. (Paulist Press, 1993)
While the good news is essentially the same, the authors insist that the manner and method in which each of us evangelizes must be rooted in the state and stage of life in which we find ourselves. For a deeper understanding of what this means, they turn to our old friend and companion, St. Francis de Sales:
“St. Francis de Sales wrote a marvelous book entitled The Introduction to the Devout Life. In it he makes the simple yet profound point that a follower (a disciple) of Jesus should look at his or her situation in life and then live a Christian life accordingly. A wife and mother will find holiness in the way she lives in relation to her husband, and in taking care of the family. She could hardly leave her family many times each day, like monks or nuns, to attend Liturgy of the Hours...Her spirituality, her way of following Christ is determined by her vocation and lifestyle...and if she works, living out her vocation as a married woman bearing witness to Christ in the workplace.”
We are made in the image and likeness of God. We are redeemed by the life, love, death and resurrection of Jesus. We are inspired and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. This acclamation is indeed Good News! This Good News should make a difference in our lives and in the lives of those with whom we love, live, work pray and play. This Good News should transform and renew us. Through us, this Good News offers the possibility of transformation and renewal to others.
How we share this Good News -- how we evangelize -- depends on who we are, where we are and how we are. How we share this Good News must match the state, stage, circumstances, responsibilities, routines and relationships in which we find ourselves each day. Following Jesus is not about forsaking our ordinary lives. No, it is about making real the life and love of God in our thoughts, feelings attitudes and actions.
Evangelization has a lot to do with what we say. After all, it is about ‘telling’ something, which in this case, is the Good News of God. However, evangelization also has a lot to do (perhaps even more) with what we do. What we say is a convincing sign of God's love only insofar as it is congruent with how we relate to one another.
By all means - by any means - "go out to all the world and tell the Good News" of God's love, God's forgiveness, God's justice and God's peace. But most especially, do it in the places - with the people - where you live, work, pray and play every day.
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(August 25, 2025: Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time)
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“We give thanks to God always…unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love.”
You can hear the happiness in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. His joy flows from reminding himself of the “work of faith and labor of love” in the members of that early faith community.
In his Treatise on the Love of God, Francis de Sales wrote:
“When our mind is raised above the natural light of reason and begins to see the sacred truth of faith, O God, what joy ensues! The holy light of faith is filled with delight!” (Select Salesian Subjects, #0263, p. 58)
What a contrast with how Jesus describes the scribes and Pharisees! Their faith produces no good works; their love is lacking. Their faith is anything but happy. Jesus simply describes what is painfully obvious about them in his litany of “woes” that begin with today’s Gospel and continue thorough Wednesday’s Gospel. In a word, these people were just plain miserable.
How do people experience the gift of faith in us? Are we sources of happiness – or woe – in the lives of others?
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(August 26, 2025: Tuesday, Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time)
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“You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity.
In his commentary of this selection from Matthew, William Barclay makes the following observation:
“The Pharisees were so meticulous about tithes that they would tithe even one clump of mint; and yet these same people were guilty of injustice, could be hard and arrogant and cruel, forgetting the claims of mercy. They could take oaths and pledges and promises with the deliberate intention of evading them, forgetting fidelity. In other words, many of them kept the trifles of the Law and forgot the things that really mattered.”
“There is many a person who wears the right clothes to church, carefully hands in his offering, adopts the right attitude at prayer, is never absent from the celebration of the Sacrament, all the while not doing an honest day’s work and is irritable, bad-tempered and stingy with his money…There is nothing easier than to observe all the outward actions of religion and at the same time be completely irreligious.”
“There is nothing more essential that having a sense of proportion to save us from confusing religious observances with true devotion.”
As Jesus reminds us in other places, while we must pay attention to the letter of the law, those letters are not there to take the place of true religion. The letter of the law exists to support the spirit of the law: which is the law of love.
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(August 27, 2025: St. Monica)
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“Walk in a manner worthy of God.”
“St. Monica was married by arrangement to a pagan official in North Africa, who was much older than she, and although generous, was also violent tempered. His mother lived with them and was equally difficult, which proved a constant challenge to St. Monica. She had three children: Augustine, Navigius, and Perpetua. Through her patience and prayers, she was able to convert her husband and his mother to the Christian faith in 370. He died a year later. Perpetua and Navigius entered the religious life. St. Augustine was much more difficult, as she had to pray for him for seventeen years, begging the prayers of priests who - for a while - tried to avoid her because of her persistence at this seemingly hopeless endeavor. One priest did attempt to encourage her by saying, ‘It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish.’ This thought, coupled with a vision that she had received, strengthened her in her prayers and hopes for her son. Finally, St. Augustine was baptized by St. Ambrose in 387. St. Monica died later that same year in the Italian town of Ostia, on the way back to Africa from Rome.” (http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=1)
We can all relate to Saint Monica. We all have people in our lives for whom we want the best. We all have people in our lives that we want to be happy. We all have people in our lives about whom we have concerns and heartaches. Of course, as much as we might love someone else, we cannot live their lives for them. Sometimes the most we can do is to pray for them, encourage them and support them. As for the rest, we need leave it in the hands of God and hope that God will do His best.
Saint Monica is a model of courage. We see in her struggles the power that flows from a life of prayer and perseverance. Even as she prayed that her son might eventually walk in ways worthy of God, she put those prayers into action in her own life. How can we imitate her example today?
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(August 28, 2025: Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church)
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“Be blameless in holiness before our God and Father…”
“This famous son of St. Monica was born in Africa and spent many years of his life in wicked living and in false beliefs. Though he was one of the most intelligent men who ever lived and though he had been raised a Christian, his sins of impurity and his pride closed his mind to divine truth. Through the prayers of his holy mother and the marvelous preaching of St. Ambrose, Augustine gradually became convinced that Christianity was indeed the one true faith. Yet he did not become a Christian even then, because he thought he could never live a pure life.”
“One day, however, he heard about two men who had suddenly been converted after reading the life of St. Antony, and he felt terribly ashamed of himself. ‘What are we doing?’ he cried to his friend Alipius. ‘Unlearned people are taking heaven by force, while we, with all our knowledge, are so cowardly that we keep rolling around in the mud of our sins!’ Full of bitter sorrow, Augustine cried out to God, ‘How long more, O Lord? Why does not this hour put an end to my sins?’ Just then he heard a child singing, ‘Take up and read!’ Thinking that God intended him to hear those words, he picked up the book of the Letters of St. Paul and read the first passage upon which his gaze fell. It was just what Augustine needed, for in it, St. Paul said to put away all impurity and to live in imitation of Jesus. That did it! From then on, Augustine began a new life.(http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=418)
Yesterday in his Letter to the Thessalonians, we heard Paul who had such a powerful influence in the life of Augustine challenges us to “walk in a manner worthy of God.” Desirable as that goal may be, the ability to walk in God’s ways – to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father – doesn’t necessarily happen overnight. For most of us, walking in a blameless manner worthy of God isn’t a sprint – it’s a marathon!
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(August 29, 2019: The Passion of St. John the Baptist)
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“We earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus…”
In his Treatise on the Love of God, Francis de Sales wrote:
“All the martyrs died for divine love. When we say that many of them died for the faith, we must not imply that it was for a ‘dead faith’ but rather for a living faith, that is, faith animated by charity. Moreover, our confession of faith is not so much an act of the intellect as an act of the will and love of God. For this reason, on the day of the Passion the great St. Peter preserved his faith in his soul – but lost charity – since he refused in words to admit as Master Him whom in his heart he acknowledged to be such. But there are other martyrs who died expressly for charity alone. Such was the Savior’s great Precursor who suffered martyrdom because he gave fraternal correction…” (TLG, Book VII, Chapter 10, pp. 40-41)
As the herald of Jesus both before and after the latter’s baptism in the Jordan, John respected, honored and loved the Lord, as well as the things, values and standards of the Lord. His willingness to stand firm in the Lord and in the ways of the Lord impelled him to call Herod on his immoral lifestyle (taking his brother’s wife to be his own) in a very public forum. His willingness to exhort (in both word and deed) for what was right ultimately cost John his life.
John didn’t lose his head over some mere intellectual principle: he gave it because of something he believed from – and in – the depth of his heart.
How far are we willing to go for the things, the values and the people that we hold deeply in our hearts, presuming, of course, we possess such deep, heartfelt convictions?
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(August 30, 2025: Saturday of the Twenty-first Week of the Year)
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“Mind your own affairs, and work with your own hands…”
In a conference to the Visitation Sisters, Francis de Sales wrote:
“It in indeed for us to labor diligently, but it is for God to crown our labors with success. Let us not be at all eager in our work – for in order to do it well, we must apply ourselves to it carefully indeed – but calmly and peacefully, without trusting in our own labor, but in God and in His grace.” (Conference VII, “Three Spiritual Laws”, p. 112)
Perhaps this is what was lacking in the case of one of the three servants cited in the parable of the talents in today’s Gospel. Two of the servants present their master, who had just come home, with a return on the talents. Whereas the third servant merely returned single talent to his master (after retrieving it from the spot where he had buried it earlier) without having made any attempt of doing something with it.
Why did the one servant fail to make even the slightest attempt to return his master’s talent with some semblance of interest? It turns out he was afraid of his master. Paraphrasing Francis de Sales’ words above, perhaps the reason the servant didn’t trust in his own labor was that – ultimately – he did not trust in his master. By contrast, the other two servants appear to have had every confidence and trust in their master, regardless of how much – or how little – a return that they would ultimately make on their master’s investment.
In an exhortation to the Sisters of the Visitation, Jane de Chantal once remarked:
“Let us redouble our efforts at serving God and one another faithfully, especially in small and simple ways. God expects only that which we can do, but that which we can do God clearly expects. Therefore, let us be diligent in giving our best to God, leaving the rest in the hands of God’s infinite generosity.” (Based upon St. Jane de Chantal’s Exhortation for the last Saturday of 1629, On the Shortness of Life. Found in Conferences of St. Jane de Chantal. Newman Bookshop: Westminster, Maryland. 1947. Pages 106 – 107)
We may not always know how God wants us to make use of all the talents, gifts and blessings that he has given us, but one thing is certain: doing nothing with them in the eyes of God is not an option.
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