15 July 2025 (Tuesday)
Saint Bonaventure, Bishop, Doctor on Tuesday of week 15 in Ordinary Time.
Saint Bonaventure, Bishop, Religious, Doctor Obligatory Memorial.
Readings from the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church:
First Reading: Exodus 2: 1-15a
Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 69: 3, 14, 30-31, 33-34
Alleluia: Psalms 95: 8
Gospel: Matthew 11: 20-24
First Reading : Exodus 2:1‐15
There was a man of the tribe of Levi who had taken a woman of Levi as his wife. She conceived and gave birth to a son and, seeing what a fine child he was, she kept him hidden for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him; coating it with bitumen and pitch, she put the child inside and laid it among the reeds at the river’s edge. His sister stood some distance away to see what would happen to him. Now Pharaoh’s daughter went down to bathe in the river, and the girls attending her were walking along by the riverside. Among the reeds she noticed the basket, and she sent her maid to fetch it. She opened it and looked, and saw a baby boy, crying; and she was sorry for him. ‘This is a child of one of the Hebrews,’ she said. Then the child’s sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and find you a nurse among the Hebrew women to suckle the child for you?’ ‘Yes, go,’ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her; and the girl went off to find the baby’s own mother. To her the daughter of Pharaoh said, ‘Take this child away and suckle it for me. I will see you are paid.’ So the woman took the child and suckled it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter who treated him like a son; she named him Moses because, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’ Moses, a man by now, set out at this time to visit his countrymen, and he saw what a hard life they were having; and he saw an Egyptian strike a Hebrew, one of his countrymen. Looking round he could see no one in sight, so he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. On the following day he came back, and there were two Hebrews, fighting. He said to the man who was in the wrong, ‘What do you mean by hitting your fellow countryman?’ ‘And who appointed you,’ the man retorted, ‘to be prince over us, and judge? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Moses was frightened. ‘Clearly that business has come to light,’ he thought. When Pharaoh heard of the matter he would have killed Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and made for the land of Midian.
Responsive Psalm : Psalm 68(69):3,14,30‐31,33‐34
Seek the Lord, you who are poor, and your hearts will revive.
I have sunk into the mud of the deep and there is no foothold. I have entered the waters of the deep and the waves overwhelm me.
Seek the Lord, you who are poor, and your hearts will revive.
This is my prayer to you, my prayer for your favour. In your great love, answer me, O God, with your help that never fails.
Seek the Lord, you who are poor, and your hearts will revive.
As for me in my poverty and pain let your help, O God, lift me up. I will praise God’s name with a song; I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
Seek the Lord, you who are poor, and your hearts will revive.
The poor when they see it will be glad and God‐seeking hearts will revive; for the Lord listens to the needy and does not spurn his servants in their chains.
Seek the Lord, you who are poor, and your hearts will revive.
Alleluia: Psalms 95: 8
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
8 Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
(1. Come, let us cry out with joy to Yahweh, acclaim the rock of our salvation.
2. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving, acclaim him with music.
3. For Yahweh is a great God, a king greater than all the gods.
4. In his power are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are his;
5. the sea belongs to him, for he made it, and the dry land, moulded by his hands.
6. Come, let us bow low and do reverence; kneel before Yahweh who made us!
7. For he is our God, and we the people of his sheepfold, the flock of his hand. If only you would listen to him today!
8. Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as at the time of Massah in the desert,
9. when your ancestors challenged me, put me to the test, and saw what I could do!
10. For forty years that generation sickened me, and I said, 'Always fickle hearts; they cannot grasp my ways.'
11. Then in my anger I swore they would never enter my place of rest).
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel : Matthew 11:20‐24
Jesus began to reproach the towns in which most of his miracles had been worked, because they refused to repent. ‘Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. And still, I tell you that it will not go as hard on Judgement day with Tyre and Sidon as with you. And as for you, Capernaum, did you want to be exalted as high as heaven? You shall be thrown down to hell. For if the miracles done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have been standing yet. And still, I tell you that it will not go as hard with the land of Sodom on Judgement day as with you.’
For our reflection today:
Faith in God asks us to renew every day the choice of good over evil, the choice of the truth rather than lies, the choice of love for our neighbour over selfishness. Those who convert to this choice, after having experienced sin, will find the first places in the Kingdom of heaven, where there is greater joy for a single sinner who repents than for ninety-nine righteous people (cf. Lk 15:7). But conversion, changing the heart, is a process, a process that purifies us from moral encrustations. And at times it is a painful process, because there is no path of holiness without some sacrifice and without a spiritual battle. Battling for good; battling so as not to fall into temptation; doing for our part what we can, to arrive at living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes. (Pope Francis, Angelus, 27 September 2020)
Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,
Most High Servant,
Jesus, Mary, Joseph Ministry of Love (Blessed and Saints and the Nine Choirs of Angels)
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