Amare et servire: "Why do you speak to them in parables?"

Amare et servire: "Why do you speak to them in parables?": Mt  13:10-17. T he disciples approached Jesus and said, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" He said to them in reply, &...

Amare et servire: "Why do you speak to them in parables?"

Amare et servire: "Why do you speak to them in parables?": Mt  13:10-17. T he disciples approached Jesus and said, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" He said to them in reply, &...

"Why do you speak to them in parables?"

Mt 13:10-17.

The disciples approached Jesus and said, "Why do you speak to them in parables?"

He said to them in reply, "Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.

To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

This is why I speak to them in parables, because 'they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.'"

Isaiah's prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: 'You shall indeed hear but not understand you shall indeed look but never see.

Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.'

But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.

Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it".

Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB 


Commentary of the day : 

Saint Justin (c.100-160), philosopher, martyr 
First Apology, 1.30-31 

"Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see"

To the Emperor Hadrian, Augustus Caesar, and to Verissimus, his son, the philosopher, and to Licius, the philosopher, and to the Senate and all the Roman people, on behalf of people of every race who are hated and persecuted unjustly: I, who am one of them, Justin of Neapolis [Nablus] in Syria of Palestine, address this discourse...

The objection is put forward that the one whom we call Christ is no more than a man, born of man, that the miracles we ascribe to him are caused by magic art, and that he has successfully passed himself off as Son of God. Our demonstration will not rest on rumors but on prophecies made before the event in which we cannot but believe: for we have seen, and continue to see, the realization of what had been predicted ...

Among the Jews there were prophets of God through whom the prophetic Spirit announced beforehand future events. Their prophecies were diligently kept in the form in which they had been uttered by successive kings of Judah, in books written in Hebrew by the very hand of those prophets...

Now, in the books of the prophets, we read that Jesus, our Christ, must come, that he will be born of a virgin, will reach manhood, will heal every sickness and infirmity, will raise the dead, that, misunderstood and persecuted, he will be crucified, will die, will rise again and ascend to heaven, that he is and will be recognised as Son of God, that he will send out certain men to proclaim these things in all the world and that it will be the pagans, above all, who will believe in him. These prophecies were made five thousand, three thousand, two thousand, a thousand, eight hundred years before his coming since the prophets followed one after the other from generation to generation. 

Commentary of the day : 

Saint Anthony of Padua (c.1195-1231), Franciscan, Doctor of the Church 

Sermons for Sundays and feasts 


"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son"

The Father has sent us his Son who is the “good and perfect gift” (Jas 1:17). He is the better gift that nothing can surpass, the perfect gift to which nothing can be added. Christ is the better gift because he whom the Father thus bestows on us is his Son, sovereign and eternal like himself. Christ is the perfect gift because, as the apostle Paul says, he “gives us everything else along with him” (Rm 8:32)… He has given us the one who is “the head of the Church” (Eph 5:23). He could not have given us more. Christ is the perfect gift because, in giving him to us, the Father has brought all things to their perfection through him.

“The Son of Man,” says Saint Matthew, “has come to save that which was lost” (18:11). This is why the Church cries out: “Sing to the Lord a new song” (Ps 97[98]:1) as though to say: O people of faith, you whom the Son of Man has saved and renewed, sing a new song, for you must “discard what is old now that new crops have been given you” (Lv 26:10). Sing, because the Father “has worked wonders” when he sent us his Son, his perfect gift in its entirety. “In the sight of the nations he revealed his justice” (Ps 97[98]:2) when he gave us his perfect gift, his only Son, who justifies the nations and brings all things to perfection.