20. Then he began to upbraid the cities where most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:
21. Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
22. But I say to you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
23. And you, Capernaum, which are exalted to heaven, shall be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in you, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
24. But I say to you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of Judgment, than for you.
GLOSS: Thus far He had brought His accusation against the Jews in common; now against certain towns by name in which He had specially preached, and yet they would not be converted; whence it is said, Then began he to upbraid the cities in which most of his mighty works were done, because they had not repented.
JEROME; His upbraiding of the towns of Corozaim, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, is set forth in this chapter, because He therefore upbraided them, because after He had such mighty works and wonders in them they had not done penitence. Whence He adds, Woe for you, Corozaim! Woe for you, Bethsaida!
CHRYS; That you should not say that they were by nature evil, He names Bethsaida, a town from which the Apostles had come; namely, Philip, and two pair of the chief of the Apostles, Peter and Andrew, James and John.
JEROME; In this word. Woe, these towns of Galilee are mourned for by the Savior, that after so many signs and mighty works, they had not done penitence.
RABAN; Corozaim, which is interpreted 'my mystery', and Bethsaida, 'the house of fruits', or, 'the house of hunters,' are towns of Galilee situated on the shore of the sea of Galilee. The Lord therefore mourns for towns which once had the mystery of God, and which ought to have brought forth the fruit of virtues, and into which spiritual hunters had been sent.
JEROME; And to these are preferred Tyre and Sidon, cities given up to idolatry and vices; For if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have long ago done penitence in sackcloth and ashes.
GREG; In sackcloth is the roughness which denotes the pricking of the conscience for sin, ashes denote the dust of the dead; and both are wont to be employed in penitence, that the pricking of the sackcloth may remind us of our sins, and the dust of the ash may cause us to reflect what we have become by judgment.
RABAN; Tyre and Sidon are cities of Phoenicia. Tyre is interpreted 'narrowness', and Sidon 'hunting'; and denote the Gentiles whom the Devil as a hunter drives into the straits of sin but Jesus the Savior sets them free by the Gospel.
JEROME; We ask where it is written that the Lord did wonders in Corozaim and Bethsaida? We read above, And he went about the towns and villages, healing all sicknesses, &c. among the rest, therefore, we may suppose that He wrought signs in Corozaim and Bethsaida.
AUG; It is not then true that His Gospel was not preached in those times and places, in which He knew before that all would be such, as were many in His actual presence, who would not even believe on Him when He raised men from the dead. For the Lord Himself bears witness that they of Tyre and Sidon would have done penitence in great humility, had the wonders of the Divine power been done in them. Moreover, if the dead are judged according to those deeds which they would have done had they lived, then because these would have believed had the Gospel been preached to them with so great miracles, surely they should not be punished at all, and yet in the day of judgment they shall be punished; for it follows, But I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of Judgment, than for you. Those then shall be punished with more, these with less severity.
JEROME; This is because Tyre and Sidon had trodden under foot the law of nature only, but these towns after they had transgressed the natural and the written Law, also made light of those wonders which had been wrought among them.
RABAN; We at this day see the words of the Savior fulfilled; Corozaim and Bethsaida would not believe when the Lord came to them in person; but Tyre and Sidon have afterwards believed on the preaching of the Apostles.
REMIG; Capernaum was the metropolis of Galilee, and a noted town of that province, and therefore the Lord mentions it particularly, saying, And you, Capernaum, shall you indeed be exalted to heaven? You shall go down even to hell.
JEROME; In other copies we find, And you, Capernaum, that are exalted to heaven, shall be brought down to hell; and it may be understood in two different ways. Either, you shall go down to hell because you have proudly resisted my preaching; or, you that has been exalted to heaven by entertaining me, and having my mighty wonders done in you, shall be visited with the heavier punishment, because you would not believe even these.
REMIG; And they have made the sins not of Sodom only and Gomorrah, but of Tyre and Sidon light in comparison, and therefore it follows, For if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Sodom, it would perhaps have remained to this day.
CHRYS; This makes the accusation heavier, for it is a proof of extreme wickedness, that they are worse, not only than any then living, but than the wickedest of all past time.
JEROME; In Capernaum, which is interpreted the most fair town, Jerusalem is condemned, to which it is said by Ezekiel, Sodom is justified by you.
REMIG; The Lord, who knows all things, here uses a word expressing uncertainty - perhaps, to show that freedom of choice is left to men. But I say to you, it shall be easier for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. And be it known, that in speaking of the city or country, the Lord does not chide with the buildings and walls, but with the men that inhabit there, by the figure metonymy, putting the thing containing for the thing contained. The words, It shall be easier in the day of judgment, clearly prove that there are diverse punishments in hell, as there are diverse mansions in the kingdom of heaven.
JEROME; The careful reader will hesitate here; If Tyre and Sidon could have done penitence at the preaching of the Savior, and His miracles, they are not in fault that they believed not; the sin is his who would not preach to bring them to penitence. To this there is a ready answer, that we know not God's judgments, and are ignorant of the sacraments of His peculiar dispensations. It was determined by the Lord not to pass the borders of Judea, that He might not give the Pharisees and Priests a just occasion of persecuting Him, as also He gave commandment to the Apostles, Go not into the way of the Gentiles. Corozaim and Bethsaida are condemned because they would not believe, though Christ Himself was among them - Tyre and Sidon are justified, because they believed His Apostles. You should not inquire into times when you see the salvation of those that believe.
REMIG; We may also answer in another way. There were many in Corozaim and Bethsaida who would believe, and many in Tyre and Sidon who would not believe, and therefore were not worthy of the Gospel. The Lord therefore preached to the dwellers in Corozaim and Bethsaida, that they who were to believe, might be able; and preached not in Tyre and Sidon, lest perhaps they who were not to believe, being made worse by contempt of the Gospel, should be punished more heavily.
AUG; A certain Catholic disputant of some note expounded this place of the Gospel in the following way; That the Lord knew that they of Tyre and Sidon would fall from the faith after they had believed the miracles done among them; and that therefore in mercy He did not His miracles there, because they would have incurred the heavier penalty had they lapsed from the faith after having held it, than if they had never held it at all. Or otherwise; The Lord surely knew His mercies with which He deigns to deliver us. And this is the predestination of the saints, namely, the foreknowledge and making ready the mercies of God, by which they are most certainly saved, whosoever are saved. The rest are left to the just judgment of God in the general body of the condemned, where they of Tyre and Sidon are left, who might have believed had they seen Christ's many miracles; but since it was not given them that they should believe therefore that through which they might have believed was also withheld. From which it appears, that there are certain who have in their dispositions by nature a divine gift of understanding by which they would be moved to faith, if they should either hear words or see signs adapted to their minds. But if they be not by the high sentence of God set apart from the mass of perdition through the predestination of grace, then neither words nor works are set before them by God, which yet, could they have seen or heard them, would have stirred them to believe. In this general mass of perdition are the Jews also left, who could not believe so great and manifest wonders wrought before their eyes. And the cause wherefore they could not believe, the Gospel has not hidden, speaking thus; though he did so great miracles before them, yet could they not believe, as Esaias said, I have blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart. Not in this way then were the eyes of they of Tyre and Sidon blinded, or their heart hardened, for they would have believed had they seen such wonders as these saw. But it profited those not that they could have believed, for that they were not predestined; neither would it have been any hindrance to these that they had not power to believe, had they been so predestined that God should have enlightened their blindness, and taken away the heart of stone from within them.
ID; Luke also gives this as spoken in continuation of some other of the Lord's discourses; from which it appears that he has rather followed the actual order of events; Matthew to have followed his recollection. Or the words of Matthew, Then he began to upbraid the towns, must be taken, as some think, as expressing some particular time by the word then, but not referring generally to that time in which the many other things here told were done and said. Whoever, therefore, thinks thus must suppose that this was spoken twice. And when we find in the same Evangelist some things spoken by the Lord at two different times - like that in Luke concerning the not taking a scrip for their journey, - what wonder is it if any thing else, which was twice spoken, is found once severally in two several Gospels in the actual connection in which it was spoken, which connection is different because they are two different occasions on which it is related to have been spoken?
Catena Aurea Matthew 11
Catholic Culture
Ordinary Time: July 12th
Saturday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time
MASS READINGS
July 12, 2016 (Readings on USCCB website)
COLLECT PRAYER
O God, who in the abasement of your Son have raised up a fallen world, fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin you bestow eternal gladness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
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Old Calendar: St. John Gualbert, abbot; Sts. Nabor and Felix, martyrs; St. Veronica of the Veil (Hist)
According to the 1962 Missal of St. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. John Gualbert, a native of Florence, Italy. One Good Friday, accompanied by armed servants, he met his brother's murderer, unarmed and alone; he was about to slay him when the murderer fell at his feet begging forgiveness for the love of Christ crucified. John was touched by grace, recalling our Lord's command to love one's enemies and embraced him as a brother.
Soon afterwards he became a monk, and founded the new order of Vallombrosa under the Rule of St. Benedict. At this period simony and clerical immorality were rife in Italy. By his firmness and preaching St. John Gualbert successfully opposed these grave disorders. He died in 1073, having paved the way for the Gregorian reform.
This is also the feast of Sts. Nabor and Felix, Roman martyrs whose bodies were taken from Rome to Milan. St. Ambrose preached their panegyric (a formal public speech delivered in high praise of a person, and generally high studied or undiscriminating eulogy) at the solemn translation of their relics.
Historically it is the feast of St. Veronica of the Veil, the woman of Jerusalem who wiped the face of Christ while He was on the way to Calvary.
St. John Gualbert
Our saint was born of a noble Florentine family about the year 995. His father was arranging for him to become a soldier when Hugo, the only other child, was murdered by a relative. It was Good Friday, and Gualbert, accompanied by an armed escort, met the murderer in a narrow pass. There was no way to avoid one another. They met, and the murderer, with arms crossed on his breast, threw himself at Gualbert's feet. Moved by his plea for mercy and the remembrance of Christ's dying act of forgiveness, he spared the murderer's life and lifted him up as a brother.
Gualbert continued his journey. Arriving at the Church of St. Minias, he prayed before a picture of the Crucified which appeared to move its head toward him. Thereupon he determined to dedicate his life to God in spite of his father's opposition. He cut off his hair, took the habit of a monk, and in a short time attained such perfection that his life and work were a model for others. He became the founder of the Vallombrosian monks, a branch of the Benedictine family.
Excerpted from The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch
Patron: forest workers; foresters; park services; parks.
Symbols: Tau staff; crucifix; church in his hand; devil under his feet.
Things to Do:
- The life of St. John Gualbert offers a vivid and unusual example of heroic love of enemy. Let us seriously examine our conscience on this point. Let us recall that the Church places the kiss of peace before holy Communion; it is her way of teaching us that the Prince of Peace cannot come to our heart unless we are at peace with our fellowmen. Love of enemy is our Offertory gift; it is also the divine Gift received in return.
- Visit this website for more details about St. John Gualbert.
Sts. Nabor and Felix
The holy martyrs, Nabor and Felix, suffered in the persecution of Maximian. "They were Christian soldiers in the army of Emperor Maximian Hercules. Because of their Christian faith they were tried in Milan and beheaded in Lodi, Italy, (303 or 304). Their bodies were interred in Milan" (Martyrology). When Emperor Frederic Barbarossa captured Milan in the twelfth century, he gave the sacred relics to Reinald, archbishop of Cologne. Soon after, Reinald transferred the bodies of the holy martyrs to his episcopal see, where they are still venerated in one of the cathedral's magnificent chapels.
Excerpted from The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch
Symbols: Armour; in secular or classical costumes.
St. Veronica
According to Tradition, when St. Veronica saw Jesus fall beneath the weight of the cross He carried to his pending crucifixion, she was so moved with pity she pushed through the crowd past the Roman Soldiers to reach Jesus. She used her veil to wipe the blood and sweat from His face. The soldiers forced her away from Jesus even as He peered at her with gratitude. She bundled her veil and did not look at it again until she returned home. When she finally unfolded the veil--history does not clarify exactly what kind of material the veil was made from--it was imprinted with an image of Christ's face.
Some stories have alluded to St. Veronica being present at the beheading of St. John the Baptist. Others claim Veronica (Bernice) was a woman whom Jesus cured from a blood issue before His arrest in Jerusalem.
There is no reference to the biography of St. Veronica in the canonical Gospels. Her act of kindness and charity is represented in the Sixth of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.
St. Veronica is believed to be buried in the tomb in Soulac or in the church of St. Seurin at Bordeaux, France. Her veil (the Veronica) is kept at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican at Rome.
Things to Do:
- Visit this website for more about St. Veronica.
