Newsletter 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) 26th July, 2026

Newsletter 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) 26th July, 2026.pdf

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GOSPEL REFLECTION:

Today’s Second Reading: Romans: “All things work out for good for those who love the Lord” (Rom 8:28). It is a promise for those who love God. There are many examples of God turning evil to good in the lives of those who love Him. One example is Joseph, the favourite son of Jacob. (Genesis 50) Out of jealousy Joseph was put into a well left to die by his own brothers. Then they decided to sell him as a slave to traders going down to Egypt. In Egypt he was imprisoned for two years. We would imagine that Joseph would have built up a lot of anger for his brothers over those two years in the dungeon. Joseph, however, because he interpreted dreams that the King of Egypt had, the king made him second in command. During the famine in Canaan his brothers came down from Egypt for food and he forgave them, saying to his brothers: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good … so have no fear, I will provide for you.” (Gen 50:20). The greatest example of God turning evil to good is Calvary. The death of Christ by means of crucifixion became the means to our salvation. The greatest evil of all time was also the greatest good of all time. Particularly since the year 2000 we have seen an explosion of natural disasters and human violence, including the Corona Virus. How can we say that God uses all these things for a greater good? On 9/11, 2001, the Twin Towers were toppled by two planes full of people, killing almost 3,000 people. If anything caused people to question their faith in God, that did. However, in that tragedy God revealed that He was present by performing miracles. A devout protestant man had purchased a ticket on one of the planes that collided into the Towers. He did not board the plane because one of his children fell sick. He was very thankful to God. This man’s father volunteered to help rescue people buried in the ruins of the Towers when he was killed from falling debris. His son’s praise of God turned into anger of God. The son’s father was a non-believer and in the son’s protestant mind, his father had, therefore, gone to hell. Not long after the son heard of his father’s death a woman came to his home. She told the son that she had been buried in the rubble and it was his father who had rescued her and during the rescue she had persuaded him to give his life to Jesus. Another incident at 9/11 which should convince us that God was alive and active: As the firemen searched for dead bodies they dug underground to the basement of the building. They saw three almost perfectly formed crosses which had been formed randomly from falling steel beams. Each cross being about the exact size of the three crosses on Calvary. In the deepest and darkest part of the building, Christ was clearly present. Even in the darkest moments in our own life, God is present. Roy Shoeman was an atheist. In the US in the 1980’s he had a conversion to Catholicism. His conversion occurred in an unexpected way. It occurred while he was taking a walk near a beach. He wrote: “I suddenly felt myself in the immediate presence of God. I was aware of His exaltedness and of His infinite and personal love for me. I saw my life as I was looking back at it … and could see everything which I was happy about and everything which I wish I had done differently… (I saw that every action I had even done mattered, for good or evil.) I saw that everything which had ever happened in my life had been perfectly designed for my own good, from the infinitely wise and loving God, especially those things which, I thought had been the greatest catastrophes.” In other words, everything that happens in our life is perfectly designed by God for our greater good, to make us into true images of His Son. All of us have crosses, sometimes crosses can be extremely heavy. On top of that, the Bible tells us that “there will be great suffering such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, and never will be.” (Matthew 24:21) A person who loves the Lord, sees everything in their life as a positive, even their greatest cross or catastrophe, because our Crosses are a means to transform us and the world into true images of His Son. We have nothing to fear. In the midst of our Cross, we are always in the embrace of a God who is infinitely wise and infinitely loving.

by Fr Doug Harris