today. We don’t worship Mary as if she were some kind of
divinity, as some critics of Catholicism claim we do. Rather, we look to her
spiritually as a beacon of hope, a model of virtue, and a caring mother—we look
to her now, in our lives, as God’s children, just the way Jesus looked at her
when he was a child in Nazareth. At least, we are invited and called to do
so.
Saturday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time 2026
Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was
said to your ancestors, Do not take a false oath, but make good to the
Lord all that you vow. But I say to you, do not swear at all… Let your
‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the Evil
One.” Matthew
5:33–34, 37
When someone’s honesty is questioned, it is not uncommon to
respond emphatically by saying, “I swear to God!” This instinct to invoke God’s
name is an attempt to lend credibility to one’s words. Such a practice finds
its roots in several Old Testament teachings, where the people of Israel were
instructed not to profane God’s name by swearing falsely (cf. Exodus 20:7; Leviticus 19:12).
The Old Testament teaching on oaths was not only a
prohibition against profaning God’s name but also a way of promoting trust and
honesty among the Israelites: “When a man makes a vow to the LORD or binds
himself under oath to a pledge, he shall not violate his word, but must fulfill
exactly the promise he has uttered” (Numbers 30:3).
Over time, however, the practice of swearing oaths began to
shift. Instead of invoking God’s name directly, people began to swear by
created things, such as Heaven, Earth, Jerusalem, or even their own bodies or
families. Jesus directly addresses these practices in today’s Gospel. This
shift often served as a way to avoid fully binding oneself to the truth and to
avoid directly profaning God’s name. By swearing upon lesser created things,
oaths became tools of deception and manipulation, distorting their original
purpose of truth-telling and reverence for God.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus responds to this misuse of oaths
by elevating the moral principle behind them—Truthfulness—to a higher standard.
He applies this teaching universally to all people and circumstances, calling
His disciples to live with such profound integrity that their simple word is
sufficient. Truthfulness must flow from a heart that is honest and upright,
where a “Yes” means “Yes” and a “No” means “No,” without the need for sworn
assurances. In doing so, Jesus invites His followers to a radical interior
transformation. Their speech should be a natural expression of their union with
God, who is, Himself, the fullness of Truth.
This teaching aligns seamlessly with the other moral
commandments Jesus offers in His Sermon on the Mount. One by one, He addresses
elements of the Old Testament Law and reveals His mission to fulfill them.
Rather than focusing solely on external observance, Jesus deepens the moral
requirements of the Law, shifting the emphasis to the interior disposition of
the heart. This teaching transcends the Pharisaical approach to the Law, which
often reduced righteousness to external conformity. By grace, God now writes
these laws on the hearts of His disciples, transforming their moral lives from
one of outward compliance to one of sincere interior and exterior holiness.
In the case of oaths, Jesus shows that true discipleship
requires not just avoiding falsehood, but cultivating a radical honesty that
mirrors the purity of God Who is Truth. This level of integrity is not achieved
by human effort alone but through the transformative work of grace, which
reshapes our hearts and enables us to live as credible witnesses to the Gospel
in both word and deed.
Reflect today on whether or not your ‘Yes’ means ‘Yes,’ and
your ‘No’ means ‘No.’ Are you a person of radical honesty and integrity? Do you
know the Truth, believe it, and profess it wholeheartedly? While external oaths
still hold an important place in sacred moments—such as marriage vows and other
Sacraments—they are not meant for casual use in daily life. Instead, strive to
be a person of integrity in all your words and actions, ensuring that honesty
flows naturally from your heart. By doing so, you allow God’s New Covenant to
be written on your heart, transforming your life and enabling you to live as a
true disciple of Christ in every circumstance.
Lord of
Truth, dwell within my heart and make it pure and holy. Fill me with Your
presence so that my words and deeds may always reflect Your light and truth.
Help me to be a beacon of honesty and integrity, bringing glory to Your name in
all that I say and do. Conform my will to Yours, and guide me to live in accord
with Your divine plan. Jesus, I trust in You
Opening Prayer: Lord God, help
me hear your voice amid the noise of the world. I want to respond generously to
your call. I need to discern wisely what I need to leave behind to follow your
Son. Grant me a wise and discerning heart so that I can live in your love and
bring others to enjoy life with you.
Encountering the Word of God
1. New Covenant Truthfulness: In the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus is giving the new Torah (teaching) of the Messiah, and comes to
his fourth teaching. In the old Torah of Moses, the people were commanded not
to make false oaths or to invoke God’s name in vain when making an oath or vow.
“Oaths invoked God’s name as the guarantor of a person’s word. This is why it
was so important not to break an oath. To break an oath amounted to taking the
Lord’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7)” (Mitch and Sri, The Gospel of
Matthew, 99). Jesus doesn’t want his followers to distinguish between when
they are obliged to speak truthfully and when they aren’t. Thus, “If God’s
people were truthful in every statement, legal provision for oath swearing
would be superfluous” (Mitch and Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, 99).
Jesus wants his disciples to be truthful always.
2. Correcting the Pharisees and Their
Tradition: In Jesus’ day, the Pharisaic tradition had corrupted the commandments
prohibiting false oaths with their subtle distinctions. It seems that Jews
avoided using God’s name in oaths and swore instead by something associated
with God. And so the Pharisees started to distinguish which oath formulas were
binding and which were not. Jesus will pronounce a woe of warning on the
Pharisees for this practice (Matthew 23:16-22). Some Jews were swearing not by
God’s name, but by heaven, or by earth, or by Jerusalem, or by one’s head.
“Jesus, however, shows how this practice still puts one in the position of
facing divine judgment, for even these substitutes are intimately linked with
God: heaven is God’s throne; the earth is his footstool; Jerusalem is the city
of the great King; and even the hair on one’s own head was made by God. Jesus
instructs his disciples not to engage in such devious oath swearing but to be
straightforward in their speech” (Mitch and Sri, The Gospel of Matthew,
99).
3. Oaths and Vows are Permitted: It is important to
realize that Jesus is using the technique of hyperbole when he says, “Do not
swear to all.” Jesus is not overturning or abolishing the original commandments
about oaths. Jesus “is not opposed to oath or vow taking, and he would certainly
affirm the importance of following through with integrity on what one vows to
do, in accordance with several Old Testament texts. Instead, using hyperbolic,
poetic speech, Jesus is speaking to the heart issue of trying to get out of
fulfilling one’s vows by semantic and technical arguments about the supposed
differences between the objects upon which one based their vow.”
(Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, 193).
What Jesus is saying is that if you are going to do this – having ways like the
scribes and Pharisees to get out of truthful speech and the fulfillment of vows
– then you shouldn’t make oaths or vows at all. As a wise teacher, Jesus
simplifies things: Don’t make your vow complicated, just say “Yes” or “No” and
then do what you’ve said. “Anything else is evil, coming from the evil one, not
God” (Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing,
194).
Saturday
of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Luke
2:41-51
Each
year Jesus’s parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he
was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had
completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in
Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the
caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and
acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the
teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him
were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him,
they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this
to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he
said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in
my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went
down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother
kept all these things in her heart.
Saturday
of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Luke
2:41-51
Opening
Prayer: I believe in you, Lord because you are truth itself. I hope in
you because you are infinite mercy and are faithful to your promises. I love
you because you are infinitely lovable. I need your grace, and as I come into
your presence I thank you ahead of time for whatever grace you wish to give me
today. Help me to recognize it, receive it, and respond generously to it.
Encountering
Christ:
1.
Responding with Faith: Yesterday we celebrated
Jesus’s Sacred Heart, the eloquent and powerful revelation of just how
thoroughly and passionately God loves us. Today we celebrate Mary’s Immaculate
Heart, the inspiring model of how we as human beings can respond to God’s love.
Mary’s experiences with Christ were not always easy to endure or understand.
Losing him in the Temple, as today’s Gospel passage shows, filled her with
“great anxiety.” Her experience on Calvary, watching her son be rejected and
crucified, filled her with great sorrow—usually symbolized in images of the
Immaculate Heart by a sword piercing Mary’s heart. God’s ways are not our ways,
and even for the Blessed Virgin Mary, who had been preserved by God’s grace
from the effects of original sin, being faithful to God’s will in her life was
hard. It was risky. It was at times confusing. But through it all, she
continued to anchor her life firmly and definitively on the rock foundation of
her faith. This is why St. Elizabeth was able to say to Mary, “Blessed are you
who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Luke
1:45). How do I respond to the challenging, confusing, painful circumstances of
my life? How healthy is my faith?
2.
Learning to Be Contemplative: Artistic renditions of
Mary’s Immaculate Heart usually show her heart encircled by blooming roses. A
flower in bloom is open to receiving the light and warmth of the sun and the
moisture of life-giving rain. This is why such flowers traditionally symbolize
openness to God’s grace. And that was one of Mary’s special characteristics.
She was “full of grace” and continued to be open to God’s action in her life.
This comes across beautifully in the last line of today’s Gospel passage: “…and
his mother kept all things in her heart.” The Greek word for “kept” is
“diaterei.” It has connotations of taking care of something attentively,
preserving and storing it up as valuable, even treasuring it. Mary’s heart was
a place where she did all those things. It was a place of encountering God and
contemplating God’s words and actions with that kind of attention and
affection. Her heart was like the rich soil Jesus described in his parable of
the sower—soil ready to welcome and nourish the seeds God wants to plant there.
Here too Mary teaches us about following God; she shares her motherly wisdom.
We all must learn to be contemplative, to keep our hearts and minds open to
God’s action, and give ourselves time to absorb and be enriched by all that he
gives us. In a fast-paced, frenetic, noisy world like today’s, this is harder
than ever. But if we want our Christian lives to grow and flourish, we have to
face that challenge. How do I carve out time and space for quiet contemplation
of God’s goodness and action in my life? How can I become more contemplative
even in the midst of my activity?
3. A Presence We Need: Mary not only instructs us by modeling how to live the Christian life. She also accompanies and intercedes for us. She is meant to be a presence in our life. She is, as the Catechism puts it, “a mother to us in the order of grace” (CCC 968). Throughout the history of the Church Mary has made her presence felt in myriad ways: her many apparitions through the centuries; her feast days in the liturgy; inspiring Marian images; devotional practices like the rosary. In images of the Immaculate Heart this loving, grace-filled presence is symbolized by the living flames burning from her heart. In our increasingly post-Christian culture, motherhood and the life-giving genius of authentic femininity is becoming as sidelined as fatherhood and authentic masculinity. God gave us Mary’s presence because he knew we would need it, and we need it more than ever today. We don’t worship Mary as if she were some kind of divinity, as some critics of Catholicism claim we do. Rather, we look to her spiritually as a beacon of hope, a model of virtue, and a caring mother—we look to her now, in our lives as God’s children, just the way Jesus looked at her when he was a child in Nazareth. At least, we are invited and called to do so.
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