August 4, 2026
Memorial of Saint John Vianney, Priest
Lectionary: 408
Reading 1
The following message came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
For thus says the LORD, the God of Israel:
Write all the words I have spoken to you in a book.
For thus says the LORD:
Incurable is your wound,
grievous your bruise;
There is none to plead your cause,
no remedy for your running sore,
no healing for you.
All your lovers have forgotten you,
they do not seek you.
I struck you as an enemy would strike,
punished you cruelly;
Why cry out over your wound?
your pain is without relief.
Because of your great guilt,
your numerous sins,
I have done this to you.
Thus says the LORD:
See! I will restore the tents of Jacob,
his dwellings I will pity;
City shall be rebuilt upon hill,
and palace restored as it was.
From them will resound songs of praise,
the laughter of happy men.
I will make them not few, but many;
they will not be tiny, for I will glorify them.
His sons shall be as of old,
his assembly before me shall stand firm;
I will punish all his oppressors.
His leader shall be one of his own,
and his rulers shall come from his kin.
When I summon him, he shall approach me;
how else should one take the deadly risk
of approaching me? says the LORD.
You shall be my people,
and I will be your God.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 102:16-18,
19-21, 29, 22-23
R. (17) The Lord will build up Zion again, and
appear in all his glory.
The nations shall revere your name, O LORD,
and all the kings of the earth your glory,
When the LORD has rebuilt Zion
and appeared in his glory;
When he has regarded the prayer of the destitute,
and not despised their prayer.
R. The Lord will build up Zion again, and appear in all his glory.
Let this be written for the generation to come,
and let his future creatures praise the LORD:
“The LORD looked down from his holy height,
from heaven he beheld the earth,
To hear the groaning of the prisoners,
to release those doomed to die.”
R. The Lord will build up Zion again, and appear in all his glory.
The children of your servants shall abide,
and their posterity shall continue in your presence,
That the name of the LORD may be declared on Zion;
and his praise, in Jerusalem,
When the peoples gather together
and the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.
R. The Lord will build up Zion again, and appear in all his glory.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Rabbi, you are the Son of God;
you are the King of Israel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus made the disciples get into a boat
and precede him to the other side of the sea,
while he dismissed the crowds.
After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.
When it was evening he was there alone.
Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore,
was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it.
During the fourth watch of the night,
he came toward them, walking on the sea.
When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified.
“It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear.
At once Jesus spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”
Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on
the water.”
He said, “Come.”
But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened;
and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him,
and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
After they got into the boat, the wind died down.
Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying,
“Truly, you are the Son of God.”
After making the crossing, they came to land at Gennesaret.
When the men of that place recognized him,
they sent word to all the surrounding country.
People brought to him all those who were sick
and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak,
and as many as touched it were healed.
or:
Some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and
said,
“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?
They do not wash their hands when they eat a meal.”
He summoned the crowd and said to them, “Hear and understand.
It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles the man;
but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.”
Then his disciples approached and said to him,
“Do you know that the Pharisees took offense
when they heard what you said?”
He said in reply, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted
will be uprooted.
Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.
If a blind man leads a blind man,
both will fall into a pit.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080426.cfm
Commentary on
Jeremiah 30:1-2,12-15,18-22
The reading is in three parts:
- a
brief introduction (vv 1-2);
- the
sufferings of Judah are deserved (12-15);
- better
times are on the way (18-22).
After so many dire predictions of terrible things going to
happen, a note of hope creeps into Jeremiah’s words with the promise of
recovery (albeit not too soon) of the kingdoms.
Today’s reading comes from the beginning of what is often
known as Jeremiah’s ‘Book of Consolation’. It speaks of the ultimate
restoration of both Israel (the Northern Kingdom, centred on Samaria) and Judah
(the Southern Kingdom, centred on Jerusalem). The passage seems to date from
the year 587 BC, just one year before Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar
and its people carried off into exile to Babylon.
The Jerusalem Bible says the greater part
of the Book (30:1—31:22) was written between the reform of 622 BC and the death
of King Josiah in 609 BC. It is written almost entirely in poetry. The decline
of Assyria had allowed King Josiah to undertake the re-conquest of Samaria and
Galilee. This gave rise to the hope that the exiles of 721 BC might return to a
restored kingdom of David. The section is the longest sustained passage in
Jeremiah concerned with the future hope of the people of God.
Yahweh still loves the Israel of the Northern Kingdom. He
will bring the exiles back to their homes, and religious unity will be restored
with Zion as its centre. Later this promise of return was extended to Judah,
the Southern Kingdom, conquered and exiled in its turn. Subsequent oracles associate
Judah with Israel, thus giving the ‘Book of Consolation’ its final, messianic
scope: Israel and Judah will unite to serve Yahweh their God, and David their
king. This gathering of scattered Israel becomes a major theme of the exilic
and post-exilic prophets. It is a dream which inspires Jews to this day.
Upcoming readings, all taken from chapters 30 and 31,
express this hope for a better future. Today’s passage begins with the
prophet’s being told by God to write down the message so that future generations
may know the predictions of better times to come.
However, the opening words of the Lord to Jeremiah begin on
a negative note. Jeremiah once again reminds the people of Judah that their
many sufferings were the consequences of their own actions:
Your hurt is incurable;
your wound is grievous.
There is no one to uphold your cause,
no medicine for your wound,
no healing for you.
All your lovers have forgotten you…
This refers to those nations, especially Egypt, on which
Judah depended for support against the Babylonians.
However, the people must realise that all of this suffering
was deserved:
Why do you cry out over your hurt?
Your pain is incurable.
Assyria and Babylon were merely instruments to teach Judah
better ways:
Because your guilt is great,
because your sins are so numerous,
I have done these things to you.
But new times are coming. The tents and dwellings of Jacob,
referring to Judah’s cities and palaces, will be restored. The city of
Jerusalem will be rebuilt on its ruins. The Hebrew word for ‘ruins’, tel(l) refers
to a mound of ruins resulting from the accumulation of debris of years or
centuries on which successive towns were built. (Archaeologists in this part of
the world often find a town built on several layers of previous structures.)
Instead of the cries of suffering now heard:
Out of them shall come thanksgiving
and the sound of merrymakers.
The population will increase and things will be as they were
in the good days of the past.
They will be ruled by one of their own and not by a governor
appointed by the conquering power—Assyria or Babylon. And this ruler, chosen
from among God’s own people, will have free access to the Lord’s presence. The
Pentateuch tells us that unauthorised approaches into God’s presence were
punishable by death. This ruler will be one fully acknowledged by Yahweh. While
not immediately intended here, Jesus Christ will be the one who will ultimately
fulfil this promise in a very special way.
And the passage ends with the great covenant statement:
And you shall be my people,
and I will be your God.
That was always true, but both the people of Israel and of
Judah had violated their side of the pact by their immorality and idolatry.
The days of restoration will not only mean a putting back of
the old structures, but a renewing of the close bond between God and his
people.
The passage is full of hope, hope that knows that no matter
how bad things get, truth, goodness and justice will prevail in the long run.
Our own lives must always be based on such a hope.
But of course, as Jeremiah implies, the realisation of our
hopes also depends on our active cooperation with doing what God wants. Many of
our problems are the results of our failure to live in harmony with the gospel
vision of life.
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Commentary on
Matthew 15:1-2,10-14
At a surface level, today’s Gospel passage is about the
scribes, purification rituals and the law. However, the challenge of today’s
message is a question of religious purification: What defiles a person? Is this
a liturgical or moral quandary? When one begins to peel the onion, the layers
reveal a rich ancient world held together by various traditions that suggest a
more nuanced reading of the text.
Scribes and the tradition of the elders
It seems that a controversial argument arises with the Pharisees and scribes on
one side of the debate and Jesus and his disciples on the other. That said, is
helpful to remember that Jesus himself embraces some aspects of pharisaical
beliefs. For example, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead,
and taught that prayer and study could bring you closer to God outside the
Temple. Jesus believed the same. Or, the fact that the writer of this
particular Gospel from Matthew could also identify as a scribe can be viewed
through a positive lens. Consider last week’s Sunday Gospel (Week 17), with its
closing lines:
And he [Jesus] said to them, “Therefore
every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the
master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is
old.” (Matt 13:52)
In this example, Jesus speaks with high regard of the scribe
who is able to discern both old traditions and new ones in light of
contemporary movements. It is not that one is bad and the other good; a person
must distinguish between the goods needed at the present moment, and recognize
when distortions of faith are taking place in the name of tradition. But in
today’s Gospel the Pharisees and scribes challenge Jesus and his disciples:
Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?
For they do not wash their hands before they eat.
What tradition of the elders are we talking about here? At
this historical period the Pharisees might be referring to the law in the sense
of Torah (or Pentateuch), the first five books of Moses. There is also the oral
tradition believed to be passed down through Moses, but not part of the written
word of Scripture. This oral tradition is codified through generations and
becomes as weighty as the written word. Matthew softens the tone in today’s
scene from the same one in Mark’s Gospel (7:1-22 ). Jesus in this scene should
be understood as fulfilling the law rather than abolishing it. Jesus does care
about ritual purity and the many other traditions within his culture. However
in this case his consideration falls to an older tradition found in the
Decalogue—the Ten Commandments:
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen
and understand:it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it
is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”
Blind guides, words and deeds
Jesus’ real confrontation is with religious leaders and anyone who leads
another person astray. Will not “both fall into the pit?” Unfortunately for us,
a key passage was omitted from today’s liturgical reading. Jesus quotes Isaiah,
saying:
This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts
are far from me. (Matt 15:8; see also Is 29:13)
As is often the case, at the core of the debate is a
reconsideration of the disconnect between lips and heart, which is another way
to express the disconnect between word and deed. The Pharisees can easily claim
to be ritually clean before their community, but they cannot so easily claim to
be pure of heart before God who sees what is hidden from the public eye. What
is needed is always a greater integration between what comes out of one’s lips,
what one holds to be true in the heart and the deeds we perform in the public
eye.
The Hebrew term for ‘word’ is dabar, which can mean ‘words’
and ‘deeds’ simultaneously. Thus, when God speaks (also dabar) he also
initiates the action of those words. There is no separation between words and
deeds in the divine life. It is no accident, therefore, that the next verses
after today’s Gospel take Jesus and his disciples into the ‘unclean’ regions of
Tyre and Sidon for his public ministry. Jesus’ integration of word and action
brings the faith to all places, clean and unclean alike.
We as readers ought to always pay attention to these telling
details.
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Tuesday,
August 4, 2026
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Father
of everlasting goodness, our origin and guide, be close to us and hear the
prayers of all who praise You.
Forgive
our sins and restore us to life.
Keep
us safe in Your love.
We
ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You
and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Matthew 15: 1-2, 10-14
Some
Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, "Why do your
disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when
they eat a meal." He summoned the crowd and said to them, "Hear and
understand. It is not what enters one's mouth that defiles the man; but what
comes out of the mouth is what defiles one." Then his disciples approached
and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they
heard what you said?" He said in reply, "Every plant that my heavenly
Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides
of the blind. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a
pit."
Reflection
Today’s Gospel
presents the discussion of Jesus with the Pharisees regarding what is pure and
impure. The text speaks about the use and religious customs of that time, it
speaks about the Pharisees who taught these uses and customs to the people and
it also speaks about the instructions which Jesus gives regarding these uses
and customs, many of which had already lost their significance. Here in the 15th
chapter, Jesus helps the people and the disciples to better understand this
very important theme concerning purity and the law of purity.
•
Matthew 15: 1-2. The Pharisees criticize the
behavior of Jesus’ disciples. Some Pharisees and doctors of the Law came to
Jesus and asked, “Why do Your disciples break away from the tradition of the
elder? They eat without washing their hands!” They pretend to be interested in
knowing the reason for the behavior of the disciples. In reality, they
criticize Jesus because He allows His disciples to break the norms of purity.
There are three points which merit our attention: (a) The scribes are from
Jerusalem, the capital. They have come to observe what Jesus does. (b) The
disciples do not wash their hands before eating! Living with Jesus gives them
the courage to break the norms which tradition imposed upon people, but which
no longer had any sense for life. (c) The washing of hands continues even now
to be an important norm of hygiene but had assumed for them a religious
significance which served to control and discriminate against people.
•
Matthew 15: 3-9.
The Tradition of the Elders. “The Tradition of the Elders” transmitted
the norms which had to be observed by the people in order to attain the purity
which the law demanded. The observance of the law was something very serious.
An impure or unclean person could not receive the blessing promised by God to
Abraham. The norms of the law of purity taught how to recover purity in order
to be able to appear once again before God and to feel at ease in His presence.
One could not appear before God just in any way, because God is the Holy One
and the law said, “Be holy because I am Holy!” (Lev 19: 2). The norms of purity
were, in reality, a prison, an enslavement (cf. Mt 23: 4). For the poor, it was
practically impossible to observe them: to touch a leper, to eat with a tax
collector, to eat without washing one’s hands, and so many other activities.
All these things rendered the person impure, and any contact with a person
contaminated the others. This is why people lived in fear, always threatened by
the many impure things which threatened their life. They were obliged to live,
fearing everything and everyone. Insisting on the norms of purity, the
Pharisees arrived at emptying the sense of the commandments of the Law of God.
Jesus gives a concrete example. They said, “A person who consecrates his goods
to the Temple can no longer use those goods to help the needy. Thus, in the
name of tradition, they eliminated the significance of the fourth commandment
which commands the honor of father and mother (Mt 15: 3-6). These people seemed
to be very observant, but they were only externally so. Inwardly, the heart was
far away from God! Jesus said, quoting Isaiah, “These people honor me with the
lips, but their heart is far away from Me (Mt 15: 7-9). The wisdom of the
people no longer agreed with what was taught, and they were waiting for the
Messiah to come to show them another way in which to attain purity. This hope
is realized in Jesus. Through His word He purified lepers (Mk 1: 40-44), cast
out demons (Mk 1: 26, 39; 3: 15, 22, etc.), and conquered death which was the
source of all impurity.
Jesus touches the woman who was
excluded, and she is cured (Mk 5: 25-34). Without fear of being contaminated,
Jesus ate with people who were considered impure (Mk 2: 15-17).
•
Matthew 15: 10-11. Jesus opens a new way to get
people close to God. He tells the crowds, “Listen and understand! What goes
into the mouth does not make anyone unclean: it is what comes out of the mouth
that makes someone unclean!” Jesus reverses things: What is impure does not
come from outside toward inside, as the doctors of the law taught, but from
inside toward outside. In this way, nobody needs to ask himself if this or that
food or drink is pure or impure. Jesus places what is clean and unclean on
another level, the level of ethical behavior. He opens a new path to reach God,
and in this way, He realizes the deepest desire of the people: to be at peace
with God. Now all of a sudden everything changes! Through faith in Jesus, it
was possible to attain purity and to feel well before God, without the need to
observe all those norms of the “Tradition of the Elders.” This was liberation!
The Good News announced by Jesus liberates people from the defensive, from
fear, and gives them back the will to live, the joy of being sons and daughters
of God.
•
Matthew 15: 12-14. Jesus affirms again what He had already said.
The disciples tell Jesus that His words have scandalized the Pharisees, because
they were contrary to what the Pharisees taught the people. Because, if the people
had seriously lived the new teaching of Jesus, the whole tradition of the
elders would have to be abolished, and the Pharisees and the doctors of the law
would have lost their leadership and their source of income. Jesus’ response is
clear and leaves no doubts: “Any plant My Heavenly Father has not planted will
be pulled out by the roots. Leave them alone! They are blind leaders of the
blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into the pit.”
Jesus did not diminish the impact of His words, and He reaffirmed what He had said
before.
Personal questions
•Do
you know any religious practice today which no longer makes any sense, but
which continues to be taught? In your life are there some practices and customs
which are considered sacred, and others which are not?
•
By what criteria would you judge these practices? Are
these criteria consistent with all of Jesus’ teaching, or just a limited
passage (a single passage is easy to take out of context)?
•
The Pharisees were practicing Jews, but
their faith was separated from the life of the people. This is why Jesus
criticizes them. And today, would Jesus criticize us? For what things?
Concluding Prayer
The angel of Yahweh encamps around those who fear Him and
rescues them.
Taste and see that Yahweh is good. How blessed are those who
take refuge in Him. (Ps 34: 7-8)
Saint John Mary
Vianney, Priest
John Baptist (Jean-Baptiste) Vianney was born at Dardilly,
near Lyons, in 1786. He was the son of a farmer, and spent his early life as a
shepherd boy. He got little formal schooling. The anti-religious violence of
the French Revolution, with the outlawing of priests who remained faithful to
their calling, also may have affected his opportunities for education. At the
age of 20 he did begin studies for the priesthood, but they were interrupted by
his being conscripted for military service.
However, like many others, he soon became a deserter and
continued his seminary studies in secret until there was an amnesty in 1810. At
this time he received the tonsure, the first step in becoming a cleric, and was
accepted by the seminary at Verrieres. After three years he transferred to the
seminary at Lyons in 1813. Studies did not come easily to him, especially the
mastery of Latin which would have been the medium of instruction in philosophy
and theology. He failed in his final oral examination, but was admitted to
major orders (subdiaconate, diaconate and priesthood) in 1815.
Although he had the reputation of being the least capable
student at Lyons, he was also regarded as the most devout. In accepting him for
the priesthood, the vicar general said that the diocese needed not only learned
priests, but also holy ones. For his first appointment, he became curate at
Ecully for two years until his parish priest, who was very austere and deeply
appreciative of Vianney, died in 1817.
Vianney was then appointed parish priest of Ars-en-Dombes, a
remote and insignificant village with only about 250 inhabitants. From now on
he would be known as the Curé d’Ars (the pastor of Ars). This would be his home
for the rest of his life. He lived a very austere and penitential life, living
mainly on potatoes. He strongly attacked all blasphemous language and
obscenities. He was the cause of village inns closing down because of a lack of
custom. He attacked all forms of sexual abuse, dancing and immodesty. But all
was not negative.
He excelled at preaching and spiritual direction, both
inside and outside the confessional. He seems to have had supernatural gifts of
looking into people’s hearts, of knowing of events which had taken place far
away and an ability to see into the future. There is well-established evidence
that he was persecuted by poltergeists, which he attributed to Satan. These included
loud noises, personal violence and even the burning of his bed.
More positively, he was responsible for the unexplained
multiplication of food, especially for the orphanage which he had founded. His
fame began to spread. Vianney himself attributed these happenings to St
Philomena, to whom he had a special devotion and for whom he set up a shrine.
But the people believed that Vianney himself was the source of all that
happened. Between 1830 and 1845, as many as 300 people a day arrived by train
from Lyons to see him. A special booking office had to be opened in Ars to deal
with them.
Every day at 11 o’clock he preached at Mass and then spent
long hours in the confessional. He could spend up to 12 hours a day hearing
confessions and, in the years preceding his death, when the number of visitors
reached 20,000 a year, he sometimes spent as many as 16 hours a day in the
confessional. With the passing of the years and his deepening and more
compassionate understanding of people, he became less severe and more
understanding of human weaknesses, although listening to lists of sinful
behaviour pained him deeply. He also began to insist more and more on the love
of God and the power of the Church’s liturgical prayer.
Three times he left Ars with the intention of entering
monastic life, but each time he returned to his parish. He turned down all
ecclesiastical promotions, but with reluctance, accepted his being made a
canon. But the canon’s robes he sold and gave the money to the poor. A rather
surprising honour was the government’s recognising his work by the conferring
of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour. However, he declined to attend
the investiture and never wore the decoration.
Worn out by the austerity of his life and the endless
numbers of people coming to him for direction, he finally succumbed on 4 August
1859 at the age of 73. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI on 31 May, 1925, and
named patron of diocesan priests.
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