Sunday Reflections, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, 11 October 2026

Pope Benedict elevating the Body of Christ

[Wikipedia; photo]

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)

Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Matthew 22:1-14 (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)

At that time: Jesus again spoke to the chief priests and the elders of the people, in parables, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, “Tell those who are invited, ‘See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.’ ” But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, “The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.” And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.

‘But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.’

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Panis angelicus

Words by St Thomas Aquinas, music by César Franck

Sung by Patricia Janečková (18 June 1998 - 1 October 2023) with The Janáček Chamber Orchestra

Latin of St Thomas Aquinas

Panis angelicus
fit panis hominum;
Dat panis cœlicus
figuris terminum:
O res mirabilis!
Manducat Dominum
pauper, servus et humilis.

English translation by John David Chambers

Thus Angels' Bread is made
the Bread of man today:
the Living Bread from heaven
with figures dost away:
O wondrous gift indeed!
the poor and lowly may
upon their Lord and Master feed.

The First Reading, the Responsorial Psalm and the Gospel can be understood in a  Eucharistic sense. The Prophet Isaiah's words can be seen as a description of the heavenly banquet to which we are all invited.

The words of St Thomas Aquinas set to music by César Franck remind us that in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ to nourish us on our journey through life, whether that journey be long or short. In Psalm 22 [23] we pray, you have prepared a banquet for me. In the Mass we are invited to participate in that banquet  where Manducat Dominum pauper et humilis - The poor and lowly may upon their Lord and Master feed.

The words of the hymn, figuris terminum, translated above as with figures dost away,  mean that what we receive in Holy Communion is not a symbol but the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And to receive such a precious Gift we need to prepare, with God's grace, to be as worthy as possible.

In the last part of the Gospel, the section that may be omitted, Jesus speaks very harshly about those who choose to turn up at the banquet unprepared by choice. St Paul deals with this in the context of celebrating the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30: Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgement on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

Jesus gave a precious gift to the Church, the sacrament of confession, to help us to be prepared to receive him in the Eucharist when we have turned our backs on him through mortal sin, which breaks our relationship with God and can have eternal consequences. Nobody is turned away from confession, unless priests don't make themselves available.

God extends his invitation to all of us. Like some in the gospel we may ignore it because we are 'busy' with other things; we may reject it violently as some did; we may accept it while showing contempt towards the One who extended the invitation. Or we may accept it by preparing with God's grace to be worthy of the occasion.

Salve Regina, (Hail, Holy Queen) Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris

During the recent visit of Pope Leo to France.

Traditional Latin Mass

Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 10-11-2026 if necessary).

Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21. Gospel: John 4:46-53.

Christ Healing the Sick

István Dorffmeister [Web Gallery of Art]

Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went his way (John 4:50; Gospel

     

 

 

Sunday Reflections, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, 4 October 2028

 

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants

Abel Grimmer [Web Gallery of Level]

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)

Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India).

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Matthew 21:33-43 (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)

Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people:

“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence round it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than at first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing,
    and it is marvellous in our eyes’?

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

The young Fr Edward Galvin in China

About 116 years ago the young Fr Edward Galvin of the Diocese of Cork, Ireland, was sent by his bishop to work for some years in the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, because he had no place to put him. This was common at the time and many young Irish diocesan priests spent their early years on loan to English-speaking dioceses in other countries. While in Brooklyn Father Galvin found himself answering God's call to go to China. This was to lead eventually to the formal founding of the Missionary Society of St Columban, to which I belong, in 1918 with Fr Galvin and Fr John Blowick, another young Irish diocesan priest, as the co-founders. Later Fr Galvin became Bishop of Hanyang, China, and was expelled by the Communist authorities.

When I was growing up in Ireland people who were critical of the Church, sometimes with good reason, often used the term 'priest-ridden' to describe the country. Today there are many parishes without priests. The parish in Dublin where I grew up then had five priests. Today there is only one, a priest from Romania who also serves as chaplain to the Romanian Catholics in the archdiocese. The average age of priests, according to reports, is now around 70. In twenty years or so it could well happen that priests will be a relative rarity in the country.

When I was young almost every Catholic in Ireland went to Sunday Mass and the seminaries were full. Today only a minority take part in Sunday Mass, and all but two of the seminaries have closed and only a handful of young men are preparing for ordination, though these numbers have been growing slowly in recent years.  More and more young people are choosing not to get married, to have fewer children and not to have them baptised.

In 1961, the year I entered the seminary, Ireland celebrated the 1,500th anniversary of the death of St Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland. Very few could have foreseen the falling away, not only from the Church, but from the Christian faith, within two generations.

St Paul tells us in the Second Reading today: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 

I sometimes get disheartened at the situation of the Church in my native land and in other Western countries. The First Reading and the Gospel remind us that many have rejected God's love, God's gift, especially the gift of faith. Through the Prophet Isaiah God poignantly asks, What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

St Andrew Kim Tae-gon

Myeongdong Cathedral, Seoul [Wikipedia]

But in the readings the Lord is really asking us to see what he has given us, to treasure it and to pass it on. In his homily at the beatification of 124 martyrs in Korea on 16 August 2014 Pope Francis said: The victory of the martyrs, their witness to the power of God’s love, continues to bear fruit today in Korea, in the Church which received growth from their sacrifice. Our celebration of Blessed Paul and Companions provides us with the opportunity to return to the first moments, the infancy as it were, of the Church in Korea. It invites you, the Catholics of Korea, to remember the great things which God has wrought in this land and to treasure the legacy of faith and charity entrusted to you by your forebears.

The following day in the opening sentence in his homily at the concluding Mass of Asian Youth Day Pope Francis said, The glory of the martyrs shines upon you! These words – a part of the theme of the Sixth Asian Youth Day – console and strengthen us all. Young people of Asia: you are the heirs of a great testimony, a precious witness to Christ. 

The Pope was reminding the young people, and all of us, of the legacy of the Christian faith that we have received.

Beatifications, Seoul, 16 August 2014 

[Wikipedia]

Pope Francis touched on this again on 21 September 2014 when he celebrated Mass in Mother Teresa Square, Tirana, very conscious of the persecution that had ended in 1991. He concluded his homily with these stirring words: To the Church which is alive in this land of Albania, I say 'thank you' for the example of fidelity to the Gospel. Do not forget the nest, your long history, or your trials. Do not forget the wounds, but also do not be vengeful. Go forward to work with hope for a great future. So many of the sons and daughters of Albania have suffered, even to the point of sacrificing their lives. May their witness sustain your steps today and tomorrow as you journey along the way of love, of freedom, of justice and, above all, of peace. So may it be.

(The words do not forget the nest refer to the Pope's mentioning earlier in the homily the eagle on Albania's flag and his saying, The eagle does not forget its nest, but flies into the heights.)

The Lord is calling each of us today to look back with gratitude for the gift of faith we have received individually and as community so that we can live that faith fully in the present as we move in hope and love into the future.

But the readings also remind us of the reality that the precious gift of the Christian faith has been lost, not only by individuals but in large areas of the world such as North Africa not that long after the time of such giants as St Augustine.

However, there are signs of a living Church, of a missionary Church, here in Ireland. After I came back to Ireland from the Philippines in 2017 I came to know a group of actively Catholic families with young children in one of the local parishes. From time to time on Sunday afternoons they held a family Holy Hour in one of the parish churches. The families have included parents from India, France, China, Australia and other places, including Ireland, of course. The children are mostly Irish-born. Sometimes the priest who led the Holy Hour was a Nigerian. And on one occasion when I was there, before the Holy Hour there was a period for the children to learn about our faith. The one leading the class was a husband/father from Kerala, India, where St Thomas the Apostle is believed to have brought the faith to the people. These are families focused on Jesus Christ. 

This family Holy Hour was revived for a while after Covid but some families then moved to other places. The spouses/parents in these families know that our Catholic Christian faith is the 'vineyard' that God has given us, and which He wants each generation to cultivate and to pass on to the next.

St Paul expresses this in the closing words of the Second Reading: What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Pope Benedict XVI in his Angelus talk on this Sunday in 2011 said, Firmly anchored in faith to the cornerstone which is Christ, let us abide in him, like the branch that can bear no fruit unless it remains attached to the vine. The Church, the People of the New Covenant, is built only in him, for him and with him.

Let us pray that the words of Pope Benedict will prevail in the lives of all of us: The Church, the People of the New Covenant, is built only in him, for him and with him.

Traditional Latin Mass

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 10-04-2026 if necessary).

Epistle: Ephesians 4:23-28. Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14.

St Paul at his Writing-desk

Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Level]

Put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24; Epistle).

Sunday Reflections, 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, 27 September 2026

Fr Anthony Collier

20 June 1913 - 27 June 1950

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)

Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Matthew 21:28-32 (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)

Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people:

“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’, but afterwards he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir’, but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterwards change your minds and believe him.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Monsignor Patrick Brennan

Prefect of Kwangju (now Archdiocese of Gwangju)

13 March 1901 – 24 September 1950

Columban Fr Ray Collier recalls that when he was eight or nine the parish priest of Clogherhead, County Louth, Ireland, came to the school in October 1950 and announced to the assembled pupils and teachers the death in Korea of Fr Anthony Collier. Earlier that year the young Ray had been serving his uncle’s Mass daily. Father Tony was a Columban priest who went to Korea in 1939 and spent the World War II years in Korea under house arrest by the Japanese who had occupied that country since 1910. Father Ray remembered his uncle as easy-going and who delighted in making films of his family, unknown to them, with his cine-camera, something rare at the time - and now a relic of the past! He recalled too that before he returned to Korea in the early summer of 1950 Father Tony told the family that North Korea would probably invade the South.

This they did on Sunday morning 25 June, beginning a war that ended on 27 July 1953 with the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement. 

After Sunday Mass on the morning of the invasion Fr Collier, who was parish priest of Suyangno, Chunchon city, met with Monsignor Thomas Quinlan, the Prelate of the Prefecture Apostolic of Chunchon and Fr Frank Canavan. Father Tony turned down the offer of an American officer to take the priests to safety saying, ‘I want to be with my parishioners’. Two days later North Korean soldiers arrested him and Gabriel Kim, a parish catechist. They tied them together, shot them and left, thinking both were dead. But Gabriel survived and reported Father Tony’s death to the Columbans. The Clogherhead priest was the first foreign civilian to die in the Korean War.

Six other Columbans were to die within months as a result of the Korean War. They were Monsignor Patrick Brennan, Frs James Maginn, Patrick Reilly, Thomas Cusack, John O’Brien and Francis Canavan. All seven are included in a list of 84 martyrs of the 20th century, Korean and foreign, proposed for beatification in a process initiated by the bishops of Korea in 2013.

You can find information about each of the seven here.

Columban Martyrs of Korea

[Source]

I see something of today's Gospel in the story of Fr Tony Collier. Like the two sons he made a decision. One of those, after telling his father that he would work in the vineyard, decided not to. The other, after telling his father that he wouldn't, decided that he would. The people listening to the story Jesus told understood very clearly which of them was doing their father's will.

Father Tony, who spent much of World War II as a prisoner of the Japanese in Korea, went back after a vacation in Ireland in 1950 knowing that war was probably imminent. 

His parish was near the border with North Korea. Despite the danger he was in and despite the fact that he was offered a way of escaping to safety he chose to stay with his people, well aware that his life was in danger.

The alternative Communion Antiphon sums up Father Tony Collier's life: By this we came to know the love of God: that Christ laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for one another (1 John 3:16).

The Lord’s Prayer in Korean

Sung by Rosa Jin Choi to a Korean folk melody

Traditional Latin Mass

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 09-27-2026 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 1:4-8. Gospel: Matthew 9:1-8.

Christ Healing the Paralytic

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini [Web Gallery of Art]

“Rise, take up your bed and go home.” And he rose and went home (Matthew 9:6-7; Gospel).