Fr Joe has written this short reflection on today\u2019s Gospel passage. <\/p>\n
Our Gospel today from St Matthew begins with the healing or deliverance\/exorcism of a man who has been struck dumb by a demon(s). He as St Matthew tells us \u201ca dumb demoniac\u201d, is brought by others to Jesus. There are two different reactions. The crowd are in awe and wonder, they are amazed and consider this healing as unprecedented. On the other hand, the Pharisees see Jesus in league with satan, \u201cit is through the prince of devils that he casts out devils\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pharisees close their hearts to the miracles and teachings of Jesus. They are entrenched in their hostility and opposition to Jesus and harden their hearts to the light he wishes to share with humankind.<\/p>\n
Those who suffer, those who are on the periphery of society, those who are in need of any form of healing, are brought now into the centre of the Kingdom of God that has arrived in the person of Jesus. Jesus is deeply moved by their harassments and dejections. He is the Good Shepherd who will lead and not ignore them. He invites us to labour with him as priests and people.<\/p>\n
St Pope Paul VI said that \u201cthe responsibility of spreading the Gospel that saves, belongs to us all, who have received it\u201d. \u00a0We all have an obligation through our Baptismal calling to share the \u201cGood News\u201d and we do not stop that until the day we die.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fr Joe has written this short reflection on today\u2019s Gospel passage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-ryan-black","has-more-link","post-3106","format-standard","category-parish-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p85OtW-O6","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3107,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106\/revisions\/3107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}