Gospel: July 17, 2025
July 17, 2025 (Thursday)
15th Week in Ordinary Time
Psalter: Week 3 / (Green)
Ps 105:1 & 5, 8-9, 24-25, 26-27
The Lord remembers his covenant forever.
1st Reading: Exodus 3:13-20
Moses answered God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them: ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ they will ask me: ‘What is his name?’ What shall I answer them?” God said to Moses, ‘“I AM WHO AM. This is what you will say to the sons of Israel: ‘I AM sent me to you.” God then said to Moses, “You will say to the Israelites: “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me.’ That will be my name forever, and by this name they shall call upon me for all generations to come.
Go! Call together the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob appeared to me and said: I have seen and taken account of how the Egyptians have treated you, and I mean to bring you out of all this oppression in Egypt and take you to the land of the Canaanites, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ The elders of Israel will listen to you and, with them, you shall go to the palace of the king of Egypt and say to him: ‘The God of the Hebrews, the Lord, has met with us.
Now let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ I well know that the king of the Egyptians will not allow you to go unless he is forced to do so. I will therefore stretch out my hand and strike Egypt in extraordinary ways, after which he will let you go.
Gospel: Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart; and you will find rest. For my yoke is easy; and my burden is light.”
Reflection:
“Come to me.”
God says to Moses, “I mean to bring you out of all this oppression.” Jesus says to his disciples, “Come to me … and I will give you rest.’ God speaks to us today of rest and consolation in times of trial. He led his people out of Egypt to freedom, and he invites us to come close to him so that he can shoulder our sorrows with us. But the lifting of the burden is not magic. God calls us to make an exodus with him out of sorrow or sin, a journey which could be long and difficult.
How do we cope if the journey is long? Saint Thérèse of Lisieux taught that we are only to think of the suffering of the present moment rather than think of all the suffering of the past and of the future, so that we are not defeated by discouragement. The Venerable Francis Xavier Van Thuan of Vietnam took this teaching to heart.
He said that living with God in the moment allowed him to endure the suffering of 13 years imprisonment for his faith because the suffering of the moment passes, and each moment becomes an invitation to holiness.
