July 2, 2025
Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 379
Reading 1
Genesis
21:5, 8-20a
Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born
to him.
Isaac grew, and on the day of the child's weaning
Abraham held a great feast.
Sarah noticed the son whom Hagar the Egyptian
had borne to Abraham
playing with her son Isaac;
so she demanded of Abraham:
"Drive out that slave and her son!
No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance
with my son Isaac!"
Abraham was greatly distressed,
especially on account of his son Ishmael.
But God said to Abraham: "Do not be distressed about the boy
or about your slave woman.
Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you;
for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name.
As for the son of the slave woman,
I will make a great nation of him also,
since he too is your offspring."
Early the next morning Abraham got some bread and a skin of water
and gave them to Hagar.
Then, placing the child on her back, he sent her away.
As she roamed aimlessly in the wilderness of Beer-sheba,
the water in the skin was used up.
So she put the child down under a shrub,
and then went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away;
for she said to herself, "Let me not watch to see the child die."
As she sat opposite Ishmael, he began to cry.
God heard the boy's cry,
and God's messenger called to Hagar from heaven:
"What is the matter, Hagar?
Don't be afraid; God has heard the boy's cry in this plight of his.
Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand;
for I will make of him a great nation."
Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.
She went and filled the skin with water, and then let the boy drink.
God was with the boy as he grew up.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
34:7-8, 10-11, 12-13
R. (7a) The Lord hears the cry of the poor.
When the poor one called out, the LORD heard,
and from all his distress he saved him.
The angel of the LORD encamps
around those who fear him, and delivers them.
R. The Lord hears the cry of the poor.
Fear the LORD, you his holy ones,
for nought is lacking to those who fear him.
The great grow poor and hungry;
but those who seek the LORD want for no good thing.
R. The Lord hears the cry of the poor.
Come, children, hear me;
I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
Which of you desires life,
and takes delight in prosperous days?
R. The Lord hears the cry of the poor.
Alleluia
James
1:18
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth
that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Matthew
8:28-34
When Jesus came to the territory of the Gadarenes,
two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him.
They were so savage that no one could travel by that road.
They cried out, "What have you to do with us, Son of God?
Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?"
Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding.
The demons pleaded with him,
"If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine."
And he said to them, "Go then!"
They came out and entered the swine,
and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea
where they drowned.
The swineherds ran away,
and when they came to the town they reported everything,
including what had happened to the demoniacs.
Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus,
and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.
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Commentary on
Genesis 21:5,8-20
At last God keeps his promise and Sarah, old though she is,
bears her one and only son, the son through whom the promises to Abraham and
his descendants will be kept. Abraham himself is exactly 100 years old.
The child Isaac grew and on the day that he was weaned
Abraham threw a large feast. Weaning took place in the ancient Near East
between the ages of two and three. However, when Sarah saw her son Isaac
playing with his half-brother, Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the maidservant, she
became very angry (while there is an impression in the story that Isaac and
Ishmael are the same age, Ishmael would have been in his mid teens by this
time). Sarah had not forgotten how Hagar had mocked her for sterility and not
being able to give Abraham a son. She was also afraid that, if the brothers got
too close, it would affect Isaac’s share of the inheritance. In fact, Isaac
will get everything.
The word ‘playing’ here is another allusion to Isaac’s name,
where the verb means ‘to laugh’ or ‘to play’. She tells Abraham to get rid of
both Ishmael and Hagar. She does not want Ishmael to share any of the family
inheritance with Isaac.
Abraham was very unhappy with this because he saw Ishmael as
a real son whom he loved. But also according to law and the customs of the day
the arbitrary expulsion of a servant girl’s son was forbidden and, especially
as in this case, where the father is the head of the household. However, God
tells Abraham to follow Sarah’s demands because Isaac and only Isaac is to be
the father of future descendants.
At the same time, Ishmael, the son of the slave woman, will
become a patriarch in his own right as a token of honour for Abraham, his
father. God tells Abraham:
As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation
of him also, because he is your offspring.
On the following day, Abraham sent Hagar off with her son
and a supply of bread and water—in view of Abraham’s wealth only minimal
provisions. She left with her boy and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
When the water ran out, she put her son in the shade of some bushes and then
went to sit down some distance off. She prays:
Do not let me look on the death of the child.
And she wept. It was the second time she had received this
treatment. The boy too must have been crying because an angel spoke to Hagar
from heaven:
Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the
boy….Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a
great nation of him.
‘God has heard’ is a play on the meaning of Ishmael’s name.
When Hagar opened her eyes, there nearby was a well. She filled her waterskin
and gave the boy to drink. And now, says Genesis:
God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the
wilderness and became an expert with the bow [i.e. an excellent
huntsman].
In the next verse, not part of the reading, we are told that
Hagar found an Egyptian wife for Ishmael. We remember that Hagar too had been
brought from Egypt by Abraham. But this marriage only confirms Ishmael and his
descendants as outsiders and leaving the field to Isaac.
We are seeing here, of course, the evolution of the
Israelite people told through the eyes of the sacred authors. Certainly not
everything in this story would meet with our approval today, neither the
mockery of Sarah’s barrenness nor the sending away of Hagar. We are dealing
with a much earlier society where many of the values which we take for granted
had not yet developed in people’s consciousness.
But we also have to acknowledge that these values have not
been appropriated by everyone in our own societies. We have only to think of
the millions of people who have been driven from their homes and are without even
the basic necessities of living. Most of these situations are the result of
human (inhuman) behaviour.
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Commentary on
Matthew 8:28-34
Matthew’s version of this strange story is quite different
from and much shorter than that told in Mark’s Gospel. It is usual for Matthew
to pare down stories to just the essential details, while Mark tends to give a
more dramatic presentation. In Matthew’s version, there are two possessed
people instead of just one (as in Mark’s Gospel). This is similar to the
version of the Bartimaeus story told by Mark (10:46-52) where Matthew
(20:29-34) also has two blind men instead of one.
In the previous story about the calming of the storm, we saw
that Jesus and disciples were crossing the lake. They now come to their
destination, a place known as the Gadarenes. It got its name from the town of
Gadara on the south-east side of the lake.
Here Jesus was met by two people possessed by demons who
completely controlled them. Unlike many of the ordinary people, the demons in
these two men have an insight into Jesus’ identity although they may not
recognise it fully:
What have you to do with us, Son of God?
Jesus usually refers to himself as Son of Man and never as
Son of God.
The two men continue shouting:
Have you come here to torment us before the time?
There was a belief that demons would be free to roam the
earth until the Judgment Day came. They did this by taking possession of
people. This possession was often associated with disease, because disease was
the consequence of sin and a sign of being in Satan’s power. That is why when
Jesus expels a demon there is often a cure as well. By driving out these evil
spirits, Jesus inaugurates the Messianic age which many of the people do not
recognise, but which the demons do. Later Jesus will hand over this exorcising
power, together with the ability to effect cures, to his disciples. We will see
that in the discourse in chapter 10.
The demons then begged Jesus to let them go into a nearby
herd of pigs. Jesus consented to this. As soon as they had entered the pigs,
the whole herd rushed headlong over a cliff and into the water below. The
swineherds rushed off to the nearest town to tell what had happened.
The townspeople immediately came out in search of Jesus and,
not surprisingly, begged him to go somewhere else. It might seem rather
high-handed of Jesus to destroy a whole herd of pigs in this way. We have to
remember, however, that in Jewish eyes these pigs were abominably unclean.
There was not a better place to put demons, and it was they who really brought
about the destruction of the animals. But understandably, the owners of the
pigs found it difficult to see things in the same way.
The purpose of the story, of course, is to focus on Jesus’
power to liberate people from evil influences which were destroying their
lives. What these men were suffering could not be compared to the loss of the
pigs’ lives and the pigs would have ended up in a cooking pot anyway! We, too,
need to ask Jesus to liberate us from any evil influences or addictions which
enslave us and prevent us from being the kind of persons he wants us to be.
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Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Father,
You call Your children to walk in the light of
Christ.
Free us from darkness and keep us in the
radiance of Your truth.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever
and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Matthew 8: 28-34
When Jesus came to the territory of the
Gadarenes, two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him. They were so
savage that no one could travel by that road. They cried out, "What have
you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the
appointed time?" Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding. The
demons pleaded with him, "If you drive us out, send us into the herd of
swine." And he said to them, "Go then!" They came out and
entered the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea
where they drowned. The swineherds ran away, and when they came to the town
they reported everything, including what had happened to the demoniacs.
Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they
begged him to leave their district.
Reflection
Today’s Gospel stresses the power of Jesus
over the devil. In our text, the devil and the power of evil is associated with
three things:
1) the cemetery, the place
of the dead. The death which kills life!
2) The pig, which was
considered an impure animal. The impurity
which separates from God!
3) The sea, which was
considered the symbol of chaos before creation. The chaos which destroys
nature.
The Gospel of Mark, from which Matthew takes
his information, associates the power of evil with a fourth element which is the
word Legion (Mk 5: 9), the name of the army of the Roman Empire. The Empire oppressed and exploited the
people. Thus, it is understood that the
victory of Jesus over the Devil had an enormous importance for the life of the
communities of the years 70’s, the time when Matthew wrote his Gospel. The
communities lived oppressed and marginalized, because of the official ideology
of the Roman Empire and of the Pharisees, which was renewed. The same
significance and the same importance continue to be valid today.
•
Matthew 8: 28: The force of evil oppresses, ill-treats and alienates
people. This first verse describes the situation of the people before the
coming of Jesus. In describing the behavior of the two demoniacs, the
Evangelist associates the force of evil with the cemetery and with death. It is
a deadly power, without a goal, without direction, without control and a
destructive power, which causes everyone to fear. It deprives people of their conscience,
self-control, and autonomy.
•
Matthew 8: 29: Before the simple presence of Jesus the force of evil
breaks up and disintegrates. Here is described the first contact between Jesus
and the two possessed men. We see that
there is total disproportion. The power, that at first seemed to be so strong,
melts and disintegrates before Jesus.
They shouted, “What do you want with us, Son of God? Have you come to
torture us before the time?” They become aware that they are losing their
power.
•
Matthew 8: 30-32: The power of evil is impure and has no autonomy, nor
consistency. The Devil does not have
power over his movements. It only gets
the power to enter into the pigs with the permission of Jesus! Once they
entered into the pigs, the whole herd charged down the cliff into the sea and
perished in the water. In the opinion of the people, the pig was a symbol of
impurity, which prevented the human being from relating with God and from
feeling accepted by Him. The sea was the
symbol of the existing chaos before creation and which, according to the belief
of that time, continued to threaten life.
This episode of the pigs which threw themselves into the sea is strange
and difficult to understand. But the message is very clear: before Jesus, the
power of evil has no autonomy, no consistency.
Anyone who believes in Jesus has already conquered the power of evil and
should not fear!
•
Matthew 8: 33-34: The reaction of the people of that place. The
herdsmen of the pigs went to the city and told the story to the people, and
they all set out to meet Jesus. Mark says that they saw the “possessed” man
sitting down, dressed and in his right mind” (Mk 5: 15). But the pigs were
still gone! This is why they asked Jesus
to leave their neighborhood. For them, the pigs were more important than the
person who recovered his senses.
The expulsion of the demons. At the time of Jesus, the words Devil or
Satan were used to indicate the power of evil which drew persons away from the
right path. For example, when Peter tried to divert Jesus from His mission, he
was Satan for Jesus (Mk 8: 33). Other
times, those same words were used to indicate the political power of the Roman
Empire which oppressed and exploited people.
For example, in the Apocalypse, the Roman Empire is identified with
“Devil or Satan” (Rev 12: 9). While at
other times, people used the same words to designate evils and illnesses. They spoke of devil, dumb spirit, deaf
spirit, impure or unclean spirit, etc.
There was great fear! In the time of Matthew, in the second half of the
first century, the fear of demons increased.
Some religions from the East taught worship of spirits. They taught that some of our mistaken
gestures could irritate the spirits, and these, out of revenge, could prevent
us from having access to God and deprive us of divine benefits. For this reason, through rites and writings,
intense prayer and complicated ceremonies, people sought to appease these
spirits or demons in such a way that they would not cause harm to life. These religions, instead of liberating people,
nourished fear and anguish. Now, one of the objectives of the Good News of
Jesus was to help people to liberate themselves from this fear. The coming of the Kingdom of God meant the
coming of a stronger power. Jesus is
“the strongest man” who can conquer Satan, the power of evil, snatching away
from its hands a humanity imprisoned by fear (cf. Mk 3: 27). For this reason the Gospels insist on the
victory of Jesus over the power of evil, over the devil, over Satan, over sin
and over death. The Gospels encourage
communities to overcome this fear of the devil!
Today, who can say “I am completely free?” Nobody! Then, if I am not totally free, there is some
part of me which is possessed by other powers.
How can these forces be cast away?
The message of today’s Gospel continues to be valid for us.
Personal Questions
•
What oppresses and ill-treats people today? Why is it that so much is
said about casting out the Devil today?
Is it good to insist so much on the Devil?
•
How is the meaning of a statement different when we use the term
“evil” or “evil forces” versus “Evil One” or Satan or the Devil? How does
modern society try to downplay the existence of Satan? Is this important?
•
Who can say that he/she is completely free or liberated? Nobody! And
then, we are all somewhat possessed by other forces which occupy some space
within us. What can we do to expel this power from within us and from society?
•
What is freedom? What is free-will? What is choice? If I go along with
the crowd, am I free? Have I freely decided or have I acquiesced? Others,
including Satan, cannot force us, but we can “go along.” We may not say “yes,”
but did we really say “no” to evil today?
Concluding
Prayer
Yahweh is tenderness and pity, slow to anger, full of faithful
love.
Yahweh is generous to all; His tenderness embraces all His
creatures. (Ps 145: 8-9)
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