Daily Gospel Reflection – Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 24, 2023
Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mt 12:38-42
Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
"Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you."
He said to them in reply,
"An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights,
so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth
three days and three nights.
At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah;
and there is something greater than Jonah here.
At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and there is something greater than Solomon here."
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord tells his opponents, who asked for a sign, that no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah—that is, the Resurrection. According to the early Church Fathers, Christ’s coming precipitated a warfare with the powers that hold the world in their sway.
In bringing God’s ordo to the world, Jesus had to move into the arena of disorder, but this invasion was not met with passivity or acquiescence. Rather, the principalities of the world—Herod, Pilate, the scribes and Pharisees, the demons—waged a ferocious struggle against him, and it was only through the drama of the cross and Resurrection that Jesus managed to defeat them.
He took all of their violence and, through courageous forgiveness, robbed it of its authority, for violence feeds on itself, surviving only through reproduction. When it is met with compassion and forgiveness, it dissipates, its power source gone. In the language of the Fathers, Jesus thereby tied up the devil, frustrating him into submission, leading our captivity to hatred captive. So, as the hymn text has it, “The strife is o’er, the battle done .”
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