Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

What is Daily Mass Readings with Homily and Saint of the Day?

Hear the Mass readings of the day, followed by a homily grounded in the writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and master theologians. Every episode concludes with a brief reflection on the heroic virtue of the Saint of the Day and a practical spiritual resolution to carry into your daily life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today is August the twelfth. The prophet Ezekiel stands before the departing glory of the temple, and Christ stands before the wounded unity of His Church, binding on earth what heaven itself will ratify. From the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. The Lord cried loud for me to hear: Come, you scourges of the city! With that I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate which faces the north, each with a destroying weapon in his hand. In their midst was a man dressed in linen, with a writer's case at his waist. They entered and stood beside the bronze altar. Then he called to the man dressed in linen with the writer's case at his waist, saying to him: Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and mark a Thau on the foreheads of those who moan and groan over all the abominations that are practiced within it. To the others I heard the Lord say: Pass through the city after him and strike! Do not look on them with pity nor show any mercy! Old men, youths and maidens, women and children—wipe them out! But do not touch any marked with the Thau; begin at my sanctuary. So they began with the men, the elders, who were in front of the temple. Defile the temple, he said to them, and fill the courts with the slain; then go out and strike in the city. Then the glory of the Lord left the threshold of the temple and rested upon the cherubim. These lifted their wings, and I saw them rise from the earth, the wheels rising along with them. They stood at the entrance of the eastern gate of the Lord's house, and the glory of the God of Israel was up above them. Then the cherubim lifted their wings, and the wheels went along with them, while up above them was the glory of the God of Israel. The Responsorial Psalm. The glory of the Lord is higher than the skies. Praise, you servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord both now and forever. The glory of the Lord is higher than the skies. From the rising to the setting of the sun is the name of the Lord to be praised. High above all nations is the Lord; above the heavens is his glory. The glory of the Lord is higher than the skies. Who is like the Lord, our God, who is enthroned on high, and looks upon the heavens and the earth below? The glory of the Lord is higher than the skies. Alleluia, alleluia. God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Alleluia, alleluia. A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples: If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church. If he refuses to listen even to the Church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Ezekiel does not see arbitrary violence. He sees a liturgy of judgment, beginning, as the text insists, at my sanctuary. Cornelius a Lapide observes that the six executioners proceed from the north, the direction from which Israel's enemies had always come, and that this detail signals the Lord Himself turning the very instrument of Israel's dread into the instrument of His own justice. Judgment does not begin with the pagan nations outside the walls. It begins with the elders standing before the temple, the very men entrusted with guarding what has been profaned. Before the six come the seventh man, robed in linen, bearing not a sword but a writer's case. St. Jerome notes that the linen vestment marks this figure as priestly, and that the mark he traces—the Hebrew Thau—was, in the ancient script, formed as a cross. The sign of judgment averted is the sign of the cross itself, drawn not by human hand but by the hand of one clothed for sacrifice. Those who moan and groan over the abominations of the city are sealed before the slaughter begins; their grief is itself the mark that saves them. Sorrow for sin, borne in the body, becomes the very form of the cross traced upon the flesh. This is why the glory of the Lord withdraws only after the sealing is complete. St. Gregory the Great teaches that the departure of the glory from the threshold, resting first upon the cherubim before ascending to the eastern gate, discloses the patience of a God who does not abandon His people so much as He prepares, even in leaving, the path of His eventual return. The eastern gate through which the glory departs is the same gate through which, later in this same prophecy, the glory will return. Judgment and mercy are not opposed movements in Ezekiel; they are a single act, read differently depending on whether one stands sealed or unsealed. Matthew's gospel does not abandon this altar. It relocates it. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. St. Augustine reads this sequence—private correction, then two or three witnesses, then the Church—as the Lord's own liturgy of restoration, a Thau still being traced, now not on foreheads by a priest with an inkhorn but in the conscience of one Christian toward another. The wound of sin is never merely private, because the body it wounds is never merely private; and so the remedy widens outward from the single believer to the gathered Church only when charity, not humiliation, requires it. Then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Cornelius a Lapide is emphatic that this is not a sentence of abandonment but a description of a wound now visible, requiring the same patient love the Lord Himself showed to Matthew the tax collector before this very gospel bore his name. The one cast outside the ordinary bonds of the Church is not cast beyond her charity; he is cast into the place where charity must now labor hardest, as a missionary labors among those who do not yet know Christ. And then the promise: whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. This is not a delegation given lightly. It is the same authority Ezekiel witnessed at the bronze altar, where the sealing of the righteous and the striking of the guilty proceeded from the sanctuary outward. The Church does not invent her judgments; she ratifies, in the trembling exercise of fraternal correction, what heaven has already determined in justice and in mercy. Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. This is the eastern gate returned. The glory that withdrew from the temple in Ezekiel's vision does not remain absent. It comes to rest wherever the Church, however small her gathering, exercises the same terrible and tender office—marking the mourner, correcting the brother, and waiting, in patient hope, for the guilty to become the sealed. Examine, before this day ends, whether there is a brother from whom estrangement has become comfortable, and go to him alone, before witnesses become necessary. The Thau is still being traced. Let it be traced in an act of charity extended today, not deferred to a season more convenient. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen. EPISODE_TITLE: The Mark of the Cross Traced IMAGE_PROMPT: A priest in white linen tracing a glowing cross-shaped mark on a mourner's forehead beside an ancient bronze altar, beneath the departing radiant glory of God.