St. Anthony of Padua, priest  & doctor 

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

1 Kings 19:19-21

So Elijah left. He found Elisha, son of Shaphat,

who was plowing a field of twelve acres and was at the end of the twelfth acre. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak over him. Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah and said, “Let me say goodbye to my father and mother; then I will follow you.” Elijah said to him, “Return if you want, don’t worry about what I did.”

However, Elisha turned back, took the yoke of oxen and slew them. He roasted their meat on the pieces of the yoke and gave it to his people who ate of it. After this, he followed Elijah and began ministering to him.

 

Ps 16:1b-2a & 5, 7-8, 9-10

You are my inheritance, O Lord.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊

Matthew 5:33-37

You have also heard that people were told in the past: Do not break your oath; an oath sworn to the Lord must be kept.   But I tell you this: do not take oaths. Do not swear by the heavens, for they are God’s throne,   nor by the earth, because it is his footstool, nor by Jerusalem because it is the city of the great king.  

 Do not even swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black.   Say yes when you mean yes and say no when you mean no. Anything else you say comes from the evil one.

 

Gospel Reflection：

“Say ‘yes when you mean ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when you mean ‘no’.” there’s something so amazingly refreshing in the admonition Jesus gives to us in the Gospel.

But it’s a freshness that’s due more to the fact that we often do the exact opposite, complicating our words, expressing our thoughts with so much affectation, and articulating our statements with so many qualifications that those with whom we converse find it difficult to truly understand what we mean. “else is from the evil one”, Jesus says.

There is an utter simplicity to truth that an unadorned statement is able to convey. The evil one, on the other hand, uses every form of subtle prevarication and equivocation in order to hide his true intention.