July 9, 2026
Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 386
Reading 1
Thus says the LORD:
When Israel was a child I loved him,
out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them,
the farther they went from me,
Sacrificing to the Baals
and burning incense to idols.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
who took them in my arms;
I drew them with human cords,
with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
they did not know that I was their healer.
My heart is overwhelmed,
my pity is stirred.
I will not give vent to my blazing anger,
I will not destroy Ephraim again;
For I am God and not man,
the Holy One present among you;
I will not let the flames consume you.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (4b) Let us see your face, Lord, and we shall be
saved.
O shepherd of Israel, hearken.
From your throne upon the cherubim, shine forth.
Rouse your power.
R. Let us see your face, Lord, and we shall be saved.
Once again, O LORD of hosts,
look down from heaven, and see:
Take care of this vine,
and protect what your right hand has planted,
the son of man whom you yourself made strong.
R. Let us see your face, Lord, and we shall be saved.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Kingdom of God is at hand:
repent and believe in the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to his Apostles:
“As you go, make this proclamation:
‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts;
no sack for the journey, or a second tunic,
or sandals, or walking stick.
The laborer deserves his keep.
Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy person in it,
and stay there until you leave.
As you enter a house, wish it peace.
If the house is worthy,
let your peace come upon it;
if not, let your peace return to you.
Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words--
go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet.
Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment
than for that town.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070926.cfm
Commentary on Hosea
11:1-4,8-9
This lovely chapter on the relationship between Yahweh and
Israel relates to chapter 2 of Hosea, part of which we read on Monday (of Week
14 of Ordinary Time), though here Israel is not the beloved, unfaithful wife,
but rather the child ungrateful for all the love he has received:
When Israel was a child, I loved him…
For Hosea the beginnings of Israel’s history begins with
dark days of slavery in Egypt and the liberation of the Exodus. As we saw
before, he sees the long journey through the desert as a golden age in Israel’s
relations with Yahweh. He does not seem to know or ignores some of the great
incidents of the earlier patriarchal period.
The imagery, too, as mentioned, changes from Israel as the
unfaithful spouse to that of the ungrateful child. And that “childhood” is seen
as beginning with the liberation from Egypt.
He uses the loving expression of that liberation:
…out of Egypt I called my son.
This is cited by Matthew in his Gospel (2:15) as a
foretelling of Jesus’ returning from the flight into Egypt back to Galilee.
But for Hosea, it is a call that is now being spurned more
and more:
The more I called them,
the more they went from me…
Perhaps there is an image of this in the parable of the
Prodigal Son.
Hosea continues:
…they kept sacrificing to the Baals
and offering incense to idols.
These are seen as acts of total ingratitude. He continues:
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk…
“Ephraim” is another name for the Northern Kingdom of Israel
and the passage refers to walking in the Lord’s way. It was Yahweh who took Israel
lovingly in his arms. It would be difficult to find a more tender image of
Yahweh in the whole of the Hebrew Testament.
The prophet continues:
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
By this he describes the truly intimate and loving
relationship. Yahweh does not force them as one leading draft animals, but
rather draws them to himself with gentleness and affection.
He says:
I was to them [the people of Israel-Ephraim] like
those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
Could one find a more gentle and touching image, or picture
a more tender scene of love between father and child?
In spite of that:
I took them up in my arms,
but they did not know that I healed them.
They did not recognize that it was Yahweh, not the Baals,
who made them whole and fulfilled the deepest needs of their lives. The tender
love of the Father is spurned and brushed aside.
In other passages of the Old Testament where God’s reaching
out to his people is spurned, the response of the prophet is to speak of
Yahweh’s rage, anger, vengeance and the threat of terrible punishment. Here
God’s reaction is shown as altogether different:
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
How could Yahweh treat Israel, his beloved child, with the
fate of Admah and Zeboiim, two cities which were destroyed with Sodom and
Gomorrah (mentioned in Deut 29:23)?
On the contrary, God says:
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
Yahweh is angry with his child, but he will not destroy him
again. The reaction is less of anger than one of grief and of compassion for a
people who do not know the significance of what they are doing.
And the reason is very clear:
…for I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.
Although Israel has revealed the unreliability of the human
character, God will not be untrue to the love he has shown toward Israel.
Israel will be chastised, but not destroyed. Yahweh is:
…the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath….
He will not stoop to human ways of reacting. This is a
breakthrough in Old Testament thinking—something quite new.
It is normal for us humans to hit back when we are rejected,
humiliated and insulted. We call it ‘only being human’. And it is
understandable to project our ways of behaviour onto our image of God. But our
God is not ‘only human’. He transcends our tendency to react emotionally. He
rather sees the weakness and the blindness of the one who rejects and insults.
God does not need to defend himself or his good name. Nothing can change that.
He thinks only of the one who is showing hurt in trying to hurt another.
We can see this demonstrated so clearly in the whole life of
Jesus, and most clearly in his Passion. Jesus is:
…the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. (Is 43:3)
It was he who told us to “turn the other cheek” and to pray
for our enemies and those out to destroy us, and who showed us this way by his
own example. We are called to go beyond being merely ‘human’. This means we are
not to yield blindly to our feelings, but to operate out of a deeper level of
understanding and from a position of inner security which does not need to hit
back or to lower oneself to the level of the attacker.
Today’s passage should be an inspiration for us to try to
become more and more like our God, with the help of the example of Jesus’ life.
It is this frame of mind that Jesus urges on us when he says:
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is
perfect.
(Matt 5:48)
Or as it is put in Luke’s Gospel, to:
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke
6:36)
Let us react less in brittle anger and touchiness and reach
out more in compassion to those who can only relate out of the fear and
insecurity of which their abusive language or anger is a symptom.
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Commentary on
Matthew 10:7-15
We continue the apostolic discourse of Jesus to his
disciples. Jesus now instructs them on what they are to say and do. They are to
proclaim that:
The kingdom of heaven [God] has come
near.
This, of course, is true because of the presence and work of
Jesus. Jesus is himself the very embodiment of the Kingdom; he is the ultimate
Kingdom person. The Kingship of God is fully present in him. But it will also
be present in the Twelve who will do the same things that Jesus is doing:
curing the sick, raising the dead, healing lepers, liberating people from evil
spirits. Later, we will see the Apostles doing all these things in the Acts of
the Apostles, and the Church continues to do these things.
Today, all of us are called to proclaim the Kingship, the
Lordship of God by our words, actions and lifestyle. The Church is still called
to bring healing into people’s lives. We may not raise people literally from
the dead, but there are many who are virtually dead, though physically alive,
and who need to be brought back to a fully human life.
Most of our societies today do not have lepers, but we have,
in every society, people who are marginalised and pushed out to the fringes.
They need to be reintegrated. There may be people in some places who are
genuinely in the possession of evil spirits, but there are far more who are in
the grip of more mundane demons such as nicotine, alcohol and other drugs, or
who are caught up in the materialism, consumerism, hedonism and sexism of our
time. They too need to be liberated. Yes, there is a lot of work to be done—by
each one of us in our own way and in accordance with our gifts and life
situation.
Jesus also tells his disciples to travel light. They are not
to charge for their service. They are not to find their security in the
possession of material things, especially money. To increase their freedom,
they should go around with the absolute minimum. In our lives, possessions, and
our concern about them, can be very controlling.
Of course, what Jesus does expect is that everyone working
for the Kingdom has their needs looked after by those they serve. This is where
their security lies: in being sure of a place to sleep and food to eat. In
return, the missionary brings the Lord’s peace to any home that offers
hospitality. This is a vision of a society which is hard to find in our own
day, although it is lived in varying degrees of commitment by religious in the
Catholic Church, as well as by some followers of other religions like Hinduism
and Buddhism.
St Teresa of Calcutta’s (Mother Teresa) Sisters come pretty
close to the Gospel vision, as do the Little Sisters/Brothers of Charles de
Foucauld. And that is really the meaning of the second half of today’s passage.
St Teresa once said: “I do own things, but they do not own me.” That is where
she differed from so many of us.
Jesus expects the missionary to find a place to stay
wherever that person goes. And, once a suitable place is found, the missionary
should stay there and not be moving around looking for more desirable
conditions. On the other hand, Jesus has hard words for those who refuse
hospitality to his messengers. Shaking the dust from one’s feet was symbolical.
The dust of any gentile country was regarded as unclean. By implication, so was
the dust of an inhospitable community. Jesus tells them:
…it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and
Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
In the Middle East, hospitality has always been important.
Unfortunately, in our security-conscious urban Western world, it does not
flourish—largely because of those unnecessary possessions which Jesus would
liberate us from.
There are two things for us to reflect on today:
First, where is our security? Are we burdened down by the
things we own? Are we owned by them? How free are we to live a fully Christian
life as envisioned by the Gospel? How free are we to do the things that Jesus
says we should be doing: bringing healing and wholeness into people’s lives?
Second, what kind of hospitality do we give to those—whoever
they are—who are generously doing the Lord’s work? Or, if they are not
Christians, who are doing the work of the Kingdom?
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Thursday, July 9,
2026
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Father,
through the obedience of Jesus,
your servant and your Son, you raised a fallen world.
Free us from sin and bring us the joy that lasts for ever.
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 10: 7-15
Jesus said to his disciples: "As you go,
proclaim that the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand. Cure the sick, raise the
dead, cleanse those suffering from virulent skin-diseases, drive out devils.
You received without charge, give without
charge. Provide yourselves with no gold or silver, not even with coppers for
your purses, with no haversack for the journey or spare tunic or footwear or a
staff, for the laborer deserves his keep. 'Whatever town or village you go
into, seek out someone worthy and stay with him until you leave.
As you enter his house, salute it, and if the
house deserves it, may your peace come upon it; if it does not, may your peace
come back to you. And if anyone does not welcome you or listen to what you have
to say, as you walk out of the house or town shake the dust from your feet. In
truth I tell you, on the Day of Judgement it will be more bearable for Sodom
and Gomorrah than for that town."
Reflection
The Gospel today presents the second part of
the sending out of the disciples. Yesterday we have seen that Jesus insists in
directing them first toward the lost sheep of Israel. Today, we see the
concrete instructions to carry out the mission.
•
Matthew 10: 7: The objective of the mission: to
reveal the presence of the Kingdom. “Go and announce the Kingdom of Heaven is
close at hand.” The principal objective is that of announcing that the Kingdom
is close at hand. This is the novelty which Christ brings to us. For the other
Jews there was still a long time before the coming of the Kingdom. It would
have come only after they would have done their own part. The coming of the
Kingdom depended, according to them, on their effort. For the Pharisees, for
example, the Kingdom would be attained only after the perfect observance of the
Law. For the Essences, when the country would have purified itself. But Jesus
thinks in a different way. He has a different way of reading the facts of life.
He says that the hour has already arrived (Mk 1, 15). When he says that the
Kingdom is close at hand or that the Kingdom is already among us, in our midst,
he does not mean to say that the Kingdom was just arriving at that moment, but
that it was already there, independently of the effort made by the people. What
they all expected was already present among the people, gratuitously, but the
people did not know it, nor perceived it (cf. Lk 17: 21). Jesus is aware of
this, because he sees reality with different eyes. He reveals and announces to
the poor of his land this hidden presence of the Kingdom in our midst (Lk 4: 18).
It is the mustard seed which will receive the rain of his word and the warmth
of his love.
•
Matthew 10: 8: The signs of the presence of the
Kingdom: accept the excluded. How should the presence of the Kingdom be
announced? Only through words and discourses? No! The signs of the presence of
the Kingdom are above all concrete gestures or acts, done gratuitously: “Cure
the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out the devils. You received
without charge, give without charge.” This means that the disciples should
accept within the community those who have been excluded. This practice of
solidarity criticizes both the religion and society which exclude and indicates
concrete solutions.
•
Matthew 10: 9-10: Do not take anything for the
journey. Contrary to other missionaries, the disciples of Jesus should not take
anything: “Provide yourselves with no gold or silver, not even with coppers for
your purses, with no haversack for the journey or a spare tunic or footwear or
a staff, for the laborer deserves his keep.” This means that they have to trust
in the hospitality of the people. Because the disciples who go without
anything, taking only peace (Mk 10: 13), show that they trust the people. It is
certain that they will be welcomed, that they will be able to participate in
the life and the work of the people of the place and that they will be able to
survive with what they will receive in exchange, because the laborer deserves
his keep. This means that the disciples should trust in sharing. By means of
this practice they criticize the laws of exclusion and recover the ancient
values of community living together.
•
Matthew 10: 11-13: To share peace in the
community. The disciples should not go from house to house but should seek
persons of peace and remain in that house. That is, they should they in a
stable manner. Thus, through that new practice, they criticize the culture of
accumulation which characterized the politics of the Roman Empire, and they
announced a new model of living together. Once all these requirements were
respected, the disciples could cry out: The Kingdom of God has arrived! To
announce the Kingdom does not mean, in the first place, to teach truths and
doctrine, but lead toward a new fraternal manner of living and of sharing
starting from the Good News which Jesus has brought to us: God and Father and
Mother of all men and women.
•
Matthew 10: 14-15: The severity of the menace.
How is such a severe menace to be understood? Jesus has brought us something
completely new. He has come to rescue the community values of the past:
hospitality, sharing, communion around the table, acceptance of the excluded.
That explains the severity against those who reject the message. Because they
do not reject something new, but their own past, their own culture and wisdom!
The objective of the pedagogy of Jesus is to dig out from the memory, to
recover
the wisdom of the people, to reconstruct the community, to
renew the Covenant, to reconstruct life.
Personal Questions
•
Today, how can we put into practice the recommendation
not to take anything for the journey when going to a mission?
•
Jesus orders to seek for persons of peace, to be
able to remain in their house. Today, who would be a person of peace to whom to
address oneself in the announcement of the Good News?
Concluding Prayer
God Sabaoth, come back, we pray, look down from heaven and
see, visit this vine; protect what your own hand has planted. (Ps 80: 14-15)
“The Chinese Martyrs” is the overall name given to a large
number of Christians, specifically Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, who
were killed in China during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They are
celebrated as martyrs by their respective churches. Most were Chinese
laypeople, but others were missionaries from various countries. Many of them
died during the Boxer Rebellion.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 120 Catholics who died
between 1648 and 1930 as its “Martyrs in China”. Of the group, 87 were Chinese
laypeople and 33 were missionaries; 86 died during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
The ‘Boxer’ movement to persecute Catholics and expel
foreigners from China began after the coup d’état of 1898 when the Dowager
Empress Ci Xi imprisoned her nephew, the young Emperor Guangxu. China had
signed a treaty with France in 1858 that allowed Catholic missionaries to
re-enter China, and the Church steadily flourished. Some people were hostile to
Catholics because they did not take part in the public festivals honouring
China’s deities. The anti-Catholic and anti-foreign bias boiled over at the end
of the century when a quasi-religious movement known as Yihe tuan began a
systematic movement to destroy the Church. The English gave them the name by
which they are best known, the Boxers, because strenuous gung fu training was
part of their preparation. During the violence of the Boxer Rebellion
approximately 30,000 Catholics were put to death.
Four of the martyrs were Jesuit priests: Leon Mangin, Paul
Denn, Rémy Isoré and Modeste Andlauer. Modeste Andlauer and Rémy Isoré were the
first Jesuits to die in the rebellion. Killed as well were Mary Zhu Wu, who
died defending the priests, and a teenage girl, Anna Wang. They all died when
Boxers attacked the missions at Wuyi and Majiazhuang.
Remi Isoré was born in Bambecque in the diocese of Lille on
22 July, 1852. He began studies for the diocesan priesthood, but decided to
join the Jesuits before he was ordained. He entered the novitiate at
Saint-Acheul in 1875 and was sent to China in 1882. After four more years of
training, he was ordained a priest.
Modeste Andlauer was born in Rosheim, in the diocese of
Strasbourg, in 1847. He entered the Jesuits in 1872 and was ordained priest in
France before setting out for China in 1882.
When the Boxer Rebellion began, Isoré was stationed in
Weixian, in the Zhili district of Tianjin. He had left his mission for a rest
break at another Jesuit community when news arrived that Boxers were present
near Weixian. Isoré did not want to leave his people alone in this moment of
danger, so he attempted to return to his own mission. When he got to the
village of Wuyi, where Andlaeur was stationed, Isoré noticed the Boxer insignia
on the village gate, indicating that they were inside. The Boxers had come to
free some companions who had been captured and imprisoned there since the
previous winter.
Isoré decided to stay with his brother Jesuit. The next
afternoon the two Jesuits heard swords pounding on the door of their residence.
They went into an adjoining chapel and locked the door behind them, but the
Boxers easily broke through the outer door and then the chapel door. They found
the two priests kneeling on the floor in prayer and attacked them with lances,
killing them immediately. Then they beheaded them and displayed their heads on
the village gates as a brutal warning of what awaited Christians who did not
return to their ancestral religion.
Leon Mangin was born in Verny, in the diocese of Metz, on 31
July, 1857. He entered the Jesuits in 1875 and arrived in China in 1882. He
studied theology and the Chinese language and was ordained in 1886. He arrived
in Zhujiahe in 1900, when the Boxer Rebellion was already under way. When he
arrived, the number of inhabitants in the area had swelled from 400 to almost
3,000 because of the threat of attacks. The French Jesuit fortified the town as
well as he could and stockpiled supplies. He also asked Paul Denn, another
French Jesuit, to leave a nearby village and join him. Denn had worked as a
bank clerk before entering the Jesuits to become a missionary. He was ordained
in China in 1880.
The Boxers attacked the fortified village on 15 July, 1900,
but the villagers were able to drive them back. Another attack the following
day was also unsuccessful, but then 2,000 soldiers of the imperial army
interrupted their journey to Beijing to reinforce the Boxers. When Mangin saw
the size of the attacking group, he knew the village was doomed. Some people
were able to slip away at night, but the two Jesuits chose to remain with their
flock.
The attackers constructed towers that enabled them to scale
the barricades, and on the morning of July 20 they fought their way into the
village. The two Jesuit pastors gathered women and children into the church and
led them in prayer, preparing them for what was to come. The few men left alive
staggered into the chapel shortly before the Boxers broke down the church doors
and confronted the assembled Catholics. They gave people one last chance to
renounce their faith, but only a few did so. Then the shooting began. Denn
intoned the Confiteor and Mangin pronounced the words of absolution. They were
among the first to be killed, and then the attackers fired into the
congregation and slashed at people with swords, before setting fire to the
church roof. Their bones remained in place until 1901 when they were collected
and placed in coffins, and then buried in the new church erected on the same
site.
Along with their fellow martyrs, all four priests were
canonized as saints by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000.
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