St. Mary-Torun

"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."
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We think of those disciples on the shore, and we seek in prayer to experience these moments through their eyes. But, have you considered those who came before? The centuries of prophets and people who ached and longed for the God-Man?
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All of us hearing this Gospel today are, in some sense, standing on that same shore.

Before a single word is spoken, the vestment color is telling you something about the day.
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-- A QUICK GUIDE: Why does the priest wear different colors throughout the year? --
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Green: Ordinary Time. Growth, hope, the ordinary rhythm of discipleship
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Purple/Violet: Advent and Lent. Penance, preparation, waiting.
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White/Gold: Christmas, Easter, feasts of Mary and most saints who weren't martyred. Joy and glory.
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Red: Pentecost, feasts of martyrs, Palm Sunday, Good Friday. The Holy Spirit's fire, or blood shed for the faith.
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Rose: Used exactly twice a year: Gaudete Sunday (Advent) and Laetare Sunday (Lent). A brief note of joy in a penitential season.

Before being a saint, Augustine Zhao Rong was a soldier escorting Bishop Dufresse to Beijing to be martyred. Along the way, he was so struck by the bishop's peace in the face of death that he asked for baptism himself.
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He became the first native-born Chinese priest in history, and decades later, the first one martyred.
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The story is familiar. Paul and Silas, beaten and chained in a Philippi jail, didn't escape when the earthquake threw the doors open. A terrified jailer, watching, asked, "What must I do to be saved?"

Among the Twelve named in today's Gospel: fishermen, a tax collector, and several men about whom Scripture tells us almost nothing beyond their names.
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No obvious credentials that would have made any first-century observer expect these specific men to reshape the ancient world. The choosing came first. The qualification came later, through formation, through failure, through grace.

"Flesh presses, faith touches." ~St. Augustine
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A woman suffering a discharge of blood for twelve years was, under the purity laws, ceremonially unclean... required to keep her distance from the community, barred from the Temple, a risk to anyone she came into contact with. Today's Gospel tells us she came up behind Jesus in the crowd and touched the fringe of his cloak anyway, convinced that contact alone would heal her.
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A hundred people could bump into Jesus that day and feel nothing happen. One woman reached out believing, and she was healed.

Most Americans know the Liberty Bell is famous for being broken. Fewer know it bears a Bible verse: Leviticus 25:10 —
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"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
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A bell commissioned for a Pennsylvania State House ended up quoting Scripture about freedom a quarter-century before anyone signed a Declaration.
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This Independence Day weekend, we give thanks for a nation built on the conviction that freedom, including the freedom to worship.