Sunday Reflections, 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, 23 August 2026

St Peter

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

'You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it' (Matthew 16:18; Gospel). 

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 16:13-20 (English Standard Version Anglicised)

At that time: When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Benedict XVI in 2010

[Wikipedia; photo]

This week I'm using what I've used before, with some slight editing. Again I fall back on Pope Benedict XVI. This is the Angelus talk on today's gospel that he gave on 24 August 2008 in Castel Gandolfo. I have highlighted parts of it, something I found difficult to do as it is so deep and rich - and yet so clear and simple.

Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday's liturgy addresses to us Christians but also at the same time to every man and every woman the double question that one day Jesus put to his disciples. He first asked them: ‘Who do men say that the Son of man is?’ They answered him saying that some of the people said John the Baptist restored to life, others Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. The Lord then directly questioned the Twelve: ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter spoke enthusiastically and authoritatively on behalf of them all: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’. This solemn profession of faith the Church continues to repeat since then. Today too, we long to proclaim with an innermost conviction: ‘Yes, Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God!’ Let us do so in the awareness that Christ is the true ‘treasure’ for whom it is worth sacrificing everything; he is the friend who never abandons us for he knows the most intimate expectations of our hearts. Jesus is the ‘Son of the living God’, the promised Messiah who came down to earth to offer humanity salvation and to satisfy the thirst for life and love that dwells in every human being. What an advantage humanity would have in welcoming this proclamation which brings with it joy and peace!

‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Jesus answers Peter's inspired profession of faith: ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven’. This is the first time that Jesus speaks of the Church, whose mission is the actuation of God's great design to gather the whole of humanity into a single family in Christ. Peter's mission, and that of his Successors, is precisely to serve this unity of the one Church of God formed of Jews and pagans of all peoples; his indispensable ministry is to ensure that she is never identified with a single nation, with a single culture, but is the Church of all peoples - to make present among men and women, scarred by innumerable divisions and conflicts, God's peace and the renewing power of his love. This, then, is the special mission of the Pope, Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter: to serve the inner unity that comes from God's peace, the unity of those who have become brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.

In the face of the enormous responsibility of this task, I am increasingly aware of the commitment and importance of the service to the Church and the world that the Lord has entrusted to me. I therefore ask you, dear brothers and sisters, to support me with your prayers so that, faithful to Christ, we may proclaim and bear witness together to his presence in our time. May Mary, whom we invoke with trust as Mother of the Church and Star of Evangelization, obtain this grace for us.

Young Jew as Christ

Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]

Pope Benedict's short reflection touches on so many fundamental things. Our faith as Christians is in the Person of Jesus Christ, God who became Man. Jesus calls us into a personal relationship with him, not in an exclusive 'You and I only' sense but in an intimate 'You, I and all of us' sense as members of the Church with a common mission given by Jesus to the Church.

As members of the Church we share in the mission given us by Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict says, I therefore ask you, dear brothers and sisters, to support me with your prayers so that, faithful to Christ, we may proclaim and bear witness together to his presence in our time. 

Our common mission is to proclaim and bear witness together to his presence in our time. That means that Jesus calls each of us to realise that every person we meet is meant to meet Jesus in us - in every aspect of our lives, private and public. 

Yet so many politicians, for example, who announce to the world that they are faithful Catholics promote the evils of abortion and the genital mutilation of confused minors who think they want to be the opposite sex. Many voters who see themselves as faithful Catholics support them in this. This, in effect, is saying that Jesus Christ our Saviour promotes the killing of unborn children and the physical/sexual abuse of minors. 

Pope Benedict by addressing us as Dear brothers and sisters, reminds us of our deepest identity: we are sons and daughters of God the Father through our baptism. We are brothers and sisters of Jesus through our baptism. As such, we are brothers and sisters of one another through baptism.

Our baptism, through which we have received our Christian faith, is pure gift from God. Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. We are called by baptism to proclaim the presence of Jesus in the world so that others may come to know Him. Pope Benedict doesn't mention baptism specifically but everything he says makes sense only in the context of our having been baptised.

Jesus through his Church does not identify himself with any particular nation or with any particular ethnic group. Yet he speaks to each nation, to each group, to each individual within their own culture. Some years ago in the Philippines when celebrating Sunday Mass in a home for girls most of whom had been abused before going there, I showed during my homily a very poor black-and-white reproduction of Rembrandt's painting above. One girl, aged about 14, asked me if she could have the picture. (I later had a proper copy made and framed for her). I asked her what had attracted her in the painting. He is so human, she said. This painting done in Amsterdam nearly 400 years before spoke to her heart. Rembrandt, through his painting in which he had a Jewish refugee from Spain as a model, was able to proclaim and bear witness to the presence of Jesus in our time to a young girl in the Philippines in the 21st century who had suffered greatly.

These are some random thoughts. Pope Benedict's Angelus message has so much in it and can be a source of prayer and contemplation in trying to answer the question Jesus puts before us today: But who do you say that I am?

Collect from the Mass for the Pope

O God, who in your providential design 

willed that your Church be built 

upon blessed Peter, whom you set over the other Apostles, look with favour, we pray, on Francis our Pope 

and grant that he, whom you have made Peter's successor, may be for your people a visible source and foundation 

of unity in faith and of communion.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Tu es Petrus

Setting by Palestrina

Sung by Yonsei University Concert Choir, South Korea

conducted by Hae Ock Eunice Kim Bang        

Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversum eam. Et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum.

You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16:18-19; today's gospel). 

Traditional Latin Mass

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 08-23-2026 if necessary).

Epistle: Galatians 3:16-22. Gospel: Luke 17:11-19.

Codex Aureus of Echternach

German Miniaturist [Web Gallery of Art]

The lowest panel depicts the Gospel, the healing of the ten lepers.

 

     

Sunday Reflections, 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, 16 August 2026

The Canaanite Woman

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry 

[Wikipedia]

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

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

In England & Wales and in Scotland the Solemnity of the Assumption is celebrated this Sunday. The link above is to the readings for the Assumption.

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA) 

Gospel Matthew 15:21-28 (Jerusalem Bible)

Jesus left Gennesaret and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Then out came a Canaanite woman from that district and started shouting, ‘Sir, Son of David, take pity on me. My daughter is tormented by a devil.’ But he answered her not a word. And his disciples went and pleaded with him. ‘Give her what she wants,’ they said ‘because she is shouting after us.’ He said in reply, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.’ But the woman had come up and was kneeling at his feet. ‘Lord,’ she said ‘help me.’ He replied, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.’ She retorted, ‘Ah yes, sir; but even house-dogs can eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted.’ And from that moment her daughter was well again.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Vegetable Seller

Joachim Beuckelaer [Web Gallery of Art]

My late mother, whose name was Mary, loved to bargain when buying clothes and when buying fruit and vegetables. She usually bought the latter at the store of a woman named Chrissie Caffrey, whose sister Maggie had a similar store across the road in Stoneybatter, then just a short street but now the name of the district in Dublin where I grew up. There were usually a few cats around Chrissie's store but the vegetables and fruit on sale were fresh. Sometimes as a child, listening to my mother, I would think that she was insulting Chrissie the way she spoke to her. But they both would end up happy, my mother having got a bargain - or thinking that she had - and Chrissie having got a sale.

What my mother and Chrissie did a couple of times a week was a form of banter with a serious purpose. My mother wasn't insulting Chrissie; she was simply looking for a good price. Chrissie didn't take any offence at my mother's words, gave as good as she got - and sold her produce.

One commentary I read on this gospel suggests that Jesus and the Canaanite woman were engaged in something similar to Chrissie and my mother, a form of banter, but with a serious purpose. The words of Jesus comparing the Canaanites, non-Jews, to dogs were insulting at their face value. But the woman didn't take offence, She wanted her daughter healed and that's all that mattered to her. She probably hadn't been among those who heard Jesus' Sermon on the Mount when he said, among many other things, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you (Mt 7:7). But clearly she had heard something about Jesus, of his love for the poor, for the sick, for the tormented. Because she persisted, giving as good as she got: Ah yes, sir; but even house-dogs can eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table. She then heard the astounding words of Jesus, Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted.

It wasn't the first time Jesus responded to a non-Jew and remarked on that person's faith. Before we receive Holy Communion we pray the words of the Roman centurion who had come to Jesus with a similar plea to that of the Canaanite woman, not on behalf of his daughter but of his servant: 'Lord, I am not worthy . . .'

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened (Mt 7:8).

Christ and the Canaanite Woman

Juan de Flandes [Web Gallery of Art]

There is something very down-to-earth about the meeting of Jesus and the Canaanite woman. The Assumption (celebrated on the 15th in most countries) too is a down-to-earth celebration. Pope Benedict reminds us: The Solemnity of the Assumption, so dear to popular tradition, serves as a useful occasion for all believers to meditate on the true sense and value of human existence in view of eternity.

Dear brothers and sisters, Heaven is our final dwelling place; from there, Mary encourages us by her example to welcome God's will, so as not to allow ourselves to be seduced by the deceptive attraction to what is transitory and fleeting, and not to give in to the temptations of selfishness and evil which extinguish the joy of life in the heart.

In the Nicene Creed, which we pray at Mass on Sundays and Solemnities, we say, and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The equivalent in the Apostles' Creed is, I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. 

Part of the humanity of Jesus, God who became Man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and of Mary herself is their Jewishness. They remain Jewish for all eternity.

Theme from Schindler's List

Composed by John Williams

Simone Lamsma (violin) - Davida Scheffers (cor anglais)

   

     Traditional Latin Mass

Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 08-16-2026 if necessary).

Epistle: 2 Corinthians 3:4-9. Gospel: Luke 10:23-37.

The Good Samaritan

Théodule-Augustin Ribot [Web Gallery of Art]

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine (Luke 10:33-34; Gospel)).

Sunday Reflections, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, 9 August 2026

 

St Peter Walking on the Water

Alessandro Allori [Web Gallery of Art]

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 14:22-33 (English Standard Version)

After the crowd had eaten and were satisfied: Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, ‘It is a ghost!’ and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’ And Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’ And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Fr Willie Doyle SJ

3 March 1873 - 16 August 2017 [Source]

I first learned about Father Willie during my kindergarten in Stanhope Street, Dublin (1947-51). Sr Margaret Stanislaus, a member of the Irish Sisters of Charity, now known as the Religious Sisters of Charity, was the principal of the boys' kindergarten. She prepared our class for our First Holy Communion on 20 May 1950 and was for ever talking about two holy priests. One was Fr Damian of Molokai, a Belgian, who chose to liver with lepers on that Hawaiian island and who died among them in 1889 aged 49, a leper himself. Pope Benedict XVI canonised him in 2009.

St Damien of Molokai, 1889

3 January 1840 – 15 April 1889 [Wikipedia]

The other priest Sister Stanislaus spoke about very often was Fr Willie Doyle SJ, killed in Belgium on 16 August 1917 while trying to save two wounded soldiers who happened to be Protestants from what is now Northern Ireland in the Third Battle of Ypres/Ieper, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele. His story became very widely known through the biography written by Alfred O’Rahilly and published in 1922.

Bishop Thomas Deenihan of Meath lauuched the process for the canonisation of Fr Willie Doyle on 22 November 2022

. Father Willie did his Jesuit novitiate in Tullabeg, which is in the Diocese of Meath. There is a wealth of information about him and of his writings on Father Willie Doyle Association.

The following is Father Willie's reflection on this Sunday's Gospel.

About the fourth watch of the night he cometh to them

Christ did not show himself until the fourth watch of the night. How often is this same history repeated in our own case! There is no encouragement, no comfort. We are wearied waiting. There is no sign of approaching help. Why not give up! Surely we never bargained for this. We never believed things would come to such a pass! Oh, the anguish of these moments, when in the midst of struggle, depression and loneliness Christ withholds his sensible presence. 

Christ delays to come. But he is watching all the time; he would only test us. Let him not be disappointed. This is a moment of tremendous grace. If we are stout of heart and bear our trial manfully, we will emerge from the crucible with well-nigh herculean strength. These are moments that disentangle us from many of the trappings that weaken and weigh us down. After they have passed, invariably we find our vision clearer and our appreciation of the value of things truer.

Walking upon the sea

Thus does he come to us also walking upon the sea with these words upon his lips. 'Have a good heart, fear not. It is I.' And we whisper to ourselves, 'It is the Lord.' Yes, then we understand. Then everything goes easy and we wonder that we should ever have doubted. Then we are ashamed of our wavering. What a beautiful tribute to Christ our trust would have been. So we determine next time we will understand. We decide that when next the tide of our life runs high, when our heart-boat is lashed by a rugged sea, we will understand that Christ is near, watching us and we fight fearlessly and cheerfully. Thus, little by little, troubles and crosses will serve to clamp the trust in Christ that will steady our hearts and like St Peter will will cry out: 'Lord if it be thou, bid me come to thee across the waters.' O the joy of our hearts as the master says 'Come.' And we go. We really walk upon the sea. We do wonders until some tremendous sorrow-wave dashes up between us and Christ, and for a moment we lose heart and cry out 'Lord save me'.

Immediately he spoke with them

Immediately - that word is full of love - stretching forth his hand he takes hold of me. And when He has come into my heart-boat the wind ceased. But it is only after Christ has been given full control of our heart-boat that the winds cease. This is the struggle of our life - to let Christ rule.

So long as he must come over the waters to us there will be many a lonely struggle. But when through great generosity on our part we have emptied our lives of everything likely to raise a tempest in the heart, then Christ will sit at the helm and the waves may toss, the winds may roll and blow about the boat. We are calm. We have no cause to fear. Christ sits at the helm and rules.

The Man at the Helm

Théo van Rysselberghe  [Web Gallery of Art]

The reflection above was taken from pages 182-184 of To Raise the Fallen, compiled and edited by Patrick Kenny and published by Veritas. He also maintains Father Willie Doyle Association the official site for the canonisation cause of the Servant of God Fr Willie Doyle SJ and which has a wealth of information on Fr Doyle and many extracts from his writings, a new post each day.

Father Willie's body was never found (39 seconds)

The 'Pioneer pin' mentioned in the video is the emblem worn by members of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart.

Traditional Latin Mass

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 08-09-2026 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:1-10. Gospel: Mark 7:31-37.

The Conversion on the Way to Damascus

Caravaggio [Web Gallery of Art]

Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God (1 Cor 15:8-9; Epistle).