Sunday the 21st of June 2026 - The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 20:10-13/ Ps 69(68)/ Romans 5:12-15/ Matthew 10:26-33

We are here today, I would suggest, because our faith means something to us. It is important that we follow Jesus and the guidance he gave us. This can come at a cost sometimes. We might want to be somewhere else, doing something different. We can find ourselves in awkward situations because of what we believe and how we know we should live. We might be out with friends, on a break at work, when the talk turns to a moral issue of the day. The opinion of the room seems to be at one. We know what we believe, what the Church teaches, it is the exact opposite of everything being said. We have a choice, stay silent, blend in, keep our heads down. Or, we can speak out knowing that eyes will roll, there might be a stoney silence, we may even lose friends completely. It is easier to keep our own counsel, keep our faith private, but we will walk away from that time and place feeling we have betrayed someone we love. We can feel utterly alone in what we believe. We may have experienced what it can be like speaking up for the truth at work, in the family, among friend only to be met with sarcasm, silence, or even hostility. This is what Jeremiah felt as he preached to his own people and was rejected and persecuted for it. He kept going because he found something stronger than his fear.

Jeremiah was trying to do his best to save his people who did not want to hear his message. He was a prophet who loved his people, who wanted to call them back to God, but he was faced with betrayal, mockery, and threats to his life. Even his closest companions plotted against him. Not giving up Jeremiah cried out with confidence to the Lord. This is the message to us today. The prophet does not pretend the pain is not real. He does not wear a mask of false cheerfulness. He feels the wound deeply, and yet he stands tall, because he knows the One who stands beside him. We are the prophets of this age. Through Baptism we have been anointed priest, prophet, and king. That prophetic call is not reserved for the clergy or saints. It is our vocation, and like Jeremiah, we live in a world that often does not want to hear the message we have been given to proclaim.

We live in a culture that, in many places, has lost its sense of the sacredness of human life. A culture that calls the unborn child a mere choice. A culture that increasingly looks upon the sick and the elderly as burdens to be relieved rather than people to be loved. A culture that has forgotten the language of sin, of grace, of eternity. When we, as Catholics, dare to speak the truth, when we dare to call good what God calls good and to mourn what God mourns, we discover quickly that we too will hear the whispers of denouncement. This rejection is also reflected in the Psalm, bearing insult, shame, becoming an outcast and a stranger even to family. These words could be spoken today by the young Catholic at school or university, by parents trying to bring up children in the faith against the tide of the world, by the doctor who refuses to participate in what is wrong, by the politician who will not bend to ideologies that contradict the Gospel.

The psalm gives us the solution. Turn to prayer, the secret of every prophet, martyr, and saint. We do not have to bear things alone, they lifted all to God and God lifted them. Saint Paul takes us even deeper today. He reminds us why the world is the way it is. The wound of Adam runs through every human heart. Pride, the desire to be our own gods, to decide for ourselves what is good and evil, this is the ancient poison that still flows through our culture. The truth is that we cannot heal ourselves. No human effort can undo the damage that sin has done. That is why we needed a Saviour who was both fully God and fully human. Jesus, the New Adam, entered into our humanity, took on everything that is ours except sin, and offered to the Father the perfect obedience that Adam refused. Through one man's disobedience, death entered. Through one Man's obedience, life pours out in abundance.

This is how we can stand tall, why we need not fear. The victory has already been won. Whatever the world does to us, whatever it says about us, whatever it costs us to follow Christ, the outcome is already secured by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We do not stand alone, The Holy Spirit testifies first, and we testify with Him, in Him, through Him. The same Spirit who gave courage to the apostles in the upper room, the same Spirit who strengthened the martyrs down the ages is given to us.

Our witness must never be harsh, never a weapon. We must speak the truth with love and compassion. The world will know us as disciples of Jesus not because we shout the loudest, but because we love the deepest. We must look upon our neighbours, even those who oppose us, who mock us, with the same gaze with which God looks upon them, as beloved sons and daughters, as people created in His image, as souls for whom Jesus shed His Blood. This is the courage we are called to. Not the courage of anger, but the courage of charity. Not the confidence of self-righteousness, but the confidence of mercy.

We find the courage to witness in the Mass, in Holy Communion. Jesus who told us not to be afraid, the same Jesus who is the New Adam, gives Himself to us in the Eucharist. He does not ask us to be prophets through our own strength. He feeds us with His own Body and Blood so that we might go out as living tabernacles, carrying Him into a world that desperately needs Him, even if it denies it.

Let us start by finding a situation in our lives where we have been silent out of fear. A conversation, a relationship, a corner of our lives where the Gospel needs to be spoken. Then, strengthened by the Eucharist, let us speak with courage, with love, with the confidence of Jeremiah who knew that the Lord stood beside him.  Today gives us an ideal starting point, set aside by the Church as the Day for Life. A day dedicated to raising awareness about the meaning, value, and dignity of human life at every stage and condition, from conception to natural death. The focus this year is the wonder of the child in the womb, centering on the full humanity of the unborn child. Let us speak without fear into a culture that increasingly devalues life in differing circumstances confident that the Lord is with us, victory is His. In the end, with God's grace, we will win through.

God Bless Brendan