Homily for Tuesday, Week 15 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
Week 15 of Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Katherine Tekakwitha

July 14, 2026
Matt 11: 20-24
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.       

Jesus preaches at the Sea of Galilee
(Gerbrand van den Eeckhout)

“Woe to you, Chorazin!  Woe to you, Bethsaida!” (Matt 11: 21).

In spite of all his teachings and miraculous healings, the majority of Jewish people didn’t follow Jesus, not even in those towns along the Sea of Galilee where he spent so much of his time, including Capernaum, where he made his home during his public ministry.

If we hear what the Lord says today, it sounds like those towns and their inhabitants were willfully unrepentant.  Seeing and hearing Jesus in action wasn’t enuf to save them from their sins; only repentance and turning to him for deliverance from sin can do that.  “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Resp. Psalm).

It’s an old story in Israel.  Jeremiah warned the citizens of Jerusalem not to place their confidence in the temple, where God dwelt among them.  They needed to reform their ways and their deeds, deal justly with their neighbors, cease oppressing the resident aliens, widows, and orphans, stop shedding innocent blood (Jer 7:4-6).

Sculpture of St. Katherine Tekakwitha
on the central door of St. Patrick's Cathedral, NYC

For Katherine Tekakwitha, it wasn’t enuf that heroic Jesuits had preached Jesus in Ossernenon and saints had been martyred there.  She had to reject the superstitions and wanton life of her town and flee to a foreign land where she could practice her faith and live for Jesus.

We sons of holy founders can’t rely on our noble heritage.  You must listen to Edmund and imitate his closeness to the Lord, as I must do with Don Bosco.  At her young life’s end, Katherine’s visage was wondrously transformed, the scars of smallpox giving way to a luminous beauty, symbolic of her transition to the glory of her Lord.  At life’s end, we hope to hear from Jesus not, “Woe to you!” but “Come, blessed by my Father, and take possession of the inheritance he’s prepared for you” (cf. Matt 25:34).