A Vincentian reading of the Sunday readings

In the sacred banquet for all, Jesus offers his flesh as juicy, rich food.  He also offers his blood as pure, aged wine.  Isaiah dreams of the banquet that God sets up for all peoples.  It is a banquet of juicy, rich food and of pure, choice wines. This banquet, of...

Jesus embodies thinking about and doing what is just, true, good, pure.  To be truly his means to be just, true, good, pure like him.  The Lord looks for what is just, what is right, in the house of Israel, in the Jews.  Yet what he finds in his chosen people is what...

Jesus makes known what it means to love God and the neighbor not in word and speech, but in deed and truth. Vincent de Paul is ordained priest, which suggests, of course, that he says “yes” to God.  In other words, he means to love God and neighbor, and to serve them....

Jesus makes known how good God is in a free and unfathomable way.  It is hard for us to grasp what he lets us know.  For it is beyond what we usually see and hear in the world.  We hear that God’s ways and thoughts are beyond our human ways and thoughts.  That is why...

Jesus is God’s compassion made flesh.  Hence, we Christians are to be compassionate and to forgive those who sin against us. Peter is already generous as he suggests that we have to forgive up to seven times a brother who sins.  But Jesus goes further than such...

Jesus laid down his life for us, and he thus made known to us love.  We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  In that way, we pay the debt that we owe him.  We owe Jesus a huge debt.  For he loved us to the end, to the point of giving up his...

Jesus, the Word made flesh, makes known God’s thoughts and will.  He shows us what it means to think as God and to be true to God’s thinking.  Peter confesses, yes, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.  For the Father has granted him to think as God....

Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Yes, we know him so by grace, by the Father’ revelation. And we, who are flesh and blood, must announce him so with our lives.
By grace, by the Father’s good will, simple folks get to know things of God. The wise, in contrast, do not get to know these things.

There is no answer from Jesus to the Canaanite woman who cries out to him for help. Besides, he uses the word ‘dog,’ a word Jews use to refer to those who are not Jews. So, Jesus does not seem to tear down yet the wall that separates the Jews from the Canaanites.