Gospel Reflection for The 16th day of July in the year of Our Lord, 2025

Matthew 11:25-27

25 At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to the little ones.

26 Yea, Father; for so hath it seemed good in thy sight. 27 All things are delivered to me by my Father. And no one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him.

We may wonder why Jesus did not reveal Himself to all the world as the living God, but only to a comparatively small number of Jews in the Middle East. The answer is that the Hebrews were the chosen people, the only race on earth that had a covenant with God. The Messiah was promised to come to them and through their race. Even so, our Lord spoke to them in parables and went to such lengths to disguise His glory as to even be born as a helpless infant and to willingly die an agonizing death at the very hands of those who should have worshiped Him. All of this is very difficult to understand for “the wise and the prudent”... and even for a simple man such as myself.

The entire Old Testament is a microcosm of humanity. Through the Jewish race we see human nature. No matter how many times they tried to follow God's word and will, they failed. No matter how hard they tried to be good, they committed evil. No matter how horribly they acted and how many times they rejected God's guidance and love, like the Prodigal son, when they repented God was willing to forgive countless times. The New Testament explains that because they had killed the prophets, and because of the hardness of their hearts and being a “stiff necked people,” the promised Messiah spoke to them in parables so that a willful act of faith was necessary for anyone to believe that He was truly God incarnate. Simple, uneducated fishermen recognized Him as God. The educated religious and political leaders did not.

Jesus could have explained everything and struck everyone with awe at His majesty and glory. He chose not to. Because of unfaithfulness and an unwillingness to believe in Him, what the older brother had been given would be taken away and the inheritance given to the younger brother, the Christian. He founded a Church to teach in His stead and to take this message both to any Jew who would hear it and to the entire world of gentiles. He did not give us a book for the educated to read and believe. He gave us a church so that all could hear and being converted in their hearts, come to believe. The Catholic Church gave us the Bible, and while it is important to read, we must remember that universal literacy is a very new phenomenon. For nearly 2,000 years the Gospels have been read aloud to mostly illiterate people by Catholic priests and deacons. The world was not converted through reading the words written on pages but through the role of the priest who explained those words and taught the people to believe.

Without the One, Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church, there would be no Bible and there would be no Christianity. That is why it is said that salvation can only be found within the Catholic Church. Even the most anti-Catholic Protestant, who is so filled with hate and bigotry that he spits on the floor at the very mention of Catholicism, if he is to be saved, may only do so through the Christianity he has inherited that comes from the Catholic Church. The closer one is in communion with the Catholic Church, the more likely one is to be saved.

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Judson Carroll is the author of several books, including his newest, A Daily Catholic Devotional, Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings July-December, 2025 It is Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5BHFZ7X

and

Confirmation, an Autobiography of Faith. It is also Available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNK

His podcast is The Uncensored Catholic https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-uncensored-catholic