June 21, 2020 - 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Jer 20:10-13; Rom 5:12-15; Mat 10:26-33)
“Terror on every side!” Jeremiah’s words when he was threatened by his own people for having prophesied to them about their infidelities and sins. After his bold confrontation Jeremiah turns privately to God and laments his miserable life. He feels painfully ineffective and wants to quit. Christ expressed the same inner turmoil as he approached and underwent his Passion and Death. Jeremiah brings his troubles to the Lord, he believes the Lord is listening and he chooses to spend the rest of his life announcing the Word of the Lord. The Psalm reminds us the Lord hears the poor, and his own who are in bonds he spurns not. St. Paul teaches the Church in Rome that Jesus, and the great gift he gives us, is best understood in the light of the loss of the gift of grace that we suffered in Adam. Adam, as the first man and father of all, passed the guilt original sin to us all, as a kind of genetic defect. Jesus, who also only had God as his Father, grants us a new sonship; not the natural and fallen sonship that we gain from Adam but a new share in a supernatural sonship, his own Sonship, which is untainted by any such defect. Matthew teaches us Jesus showing his authority and mission with the Twelve Disciples. His disciples should not expect their days to be filled always with safe comfortable routines and the constant welcome and admiration of others. Jesus wraps up his teaching on what to fear by having the disciples imagine that moment when each of them will stand on his or her own before the Father and hear him say either, "This one is my faithful disciple," or "This one is not mine." What Jesus will say about us depends on how faithful we are daily to the unique mission for which God formed us in the womb.