July 10, 2026
Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mt 10:16–23

Today is Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time. The passage taken from the Gospel of Saint Matthew continues to show us the instruction Jesus gave when He first sent out His twelve Apostles to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom, to heal every disease, and to drive out demons. Let us try to enter into reflection.

As I write today’s reflection on the Daily Word, many thoughts come to me. For the world we live in today is precisely a world of wolves. In this world of wolves, we cannot but face all kinds of challenges. For example: because our visions do not align, we are often rejected even by our own families, and sometimes even by the ecclesial community we belong to. At times, we may be handed over by our own brothers and sisters to secular courts, to be judged by the laws of this world that belongs to the wolves. The law of the world of wolves stands in complete opposition to the law of God’s world. For the law of the wolves’ world stresses rewarding good and punishing evil, strict and unbending enforcement; but the law of God’s world stresses love—because God is love, He is love alone—He loves the good and He loves the righteous. For “He makes His sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (cf. Mt 5:45). His love is without distinction for all.

Last year, in the reflection I wrote for the Memorial of Saint Benedict, Abbot, I mentioned this: when we stand before law-enforcement officers or those who do not know Christ, we may feel panic, because at that moment we do not know what to say or what to do. That is because we are still looking at things according to the logic of this passing world, and so we fall into that grotesque logic of self-justification. But Jesus tells us: “At that time it will be given to you… For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (cf. Mt 10:19–20). This is the challenge the world poses to us.

Regrettably, the Church today is more challenged than in the past. Groups that, for various reasons, choose to refuse communion with the Successor of Peter are gradually appearing. Consumerism, the throwaway culture, individualism—these ideas and mindsets, and the actions of those who live by them, cannot be reconciled at all with the teaching of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church which the Word of God Himself founded upon the Apostle Peter. For none of this comes from the Holy Spirit of God, but from corruptible human nature.

Today, Jesus asks us to “endure to the end” (cf. Mt 10:22)—that is, to hold fast to His teaching, to trust firmly in the Holy Spirit of God, and under the light and guidance of the Holy Spirit to discern the various voices we hear within the Church; to receive continually, from the hands of the pastors who are in communion with the Successor of Peter, the Body and Blood of Christ; and, by the Word of God that comes to our hearts, to resist bravely every temptation, and to live worthily the vocation God has given us.

O God, who in the abasement of your Son have raised up a fallen world, fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin you bestow eternal gladness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever

©Totus Tuus 2026
Cum Approbatione Ecclesiastica