Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
He said to them in reply,
“An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, 
so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth
three days and three nights.
At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah;
and there is something greater than Jonah here.
At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and there is something greater than Solomon here.” (Matthew 12:38-42)

The story of Jonah, our reading today, often appears over the remains of someone deceased in the Christian catacombs of early Rome. The whole story is usually there, from Jonah getting thrown off the boat, to being swallowed up by the whale, to Jonah sitting in the shade of the vine. Why?

The early Christians recognized the wisdom in the stories of the Jewish scriptures much more than we do today, I think. They must have seen themselves and their loved ones who passed on as “the men of Nineveh”, people of the great city of Rome, who heard the preaching of Jesus and believed. 

He had the power to bring them life. They believed in the mystery of the One who was three days and three nights in the earth and rose again.

Jonah, the prophet, was their patron saint. 

Chapters 12-13 of Mathew’s gospel continue to describe the opposition Jesus faces from the from the scribes and Pharisees . (Monday) The towns and cities that once welcomed him begin also to wonder about him. His family from Nazareth come to speak to him, most likely to take him home. (Tuesday)

Jesus responds to the opposition with a series of parables, beginning with the parable of the sower. (Friday)

We’re continuing to read from the Prophet Micah this week. A contemporary of Isaiah, he is not a priest, but may be one of the immigrants from the Northern Kingdom who tried to resettle in Judea. Micah champions the cause of immigrants and promises that God will be merciful to the Jews of the north. (Monday-Tuesday)

On Thursday we begin reading from the Prophet Jeremiah. Born about 650 into a priestly family, Jeremiah preached  to the Kingdom of Judah during its final tumultuous days before the Babylonians captured Jerusalem in 598 BC and took away its leading citizens into exile in Babylon.

Jeremiah wasn’t accepted during his lifetime and\ suffered for his preaching. His influence grew only after his death as Jewish exiles reflected on his words and actions. He’s seen as a figure of Jesus who also suffered rejection.

We celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalen this week. (Wednesday) Her feast, as “an apostle to the apostles” was raised in importance by Pope Francis from a memorial to a feast. We celebrate the Apostle James, one of the “sons of Zebedee” on Saturday, 

We’re reading in our lectionary from the prophet Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah.Unlike Isaiah, , he was not from the priestly caste, but was an ordinary Jew. Micah lived in the southern kingdom of Judea in the 8th century when Assyrian armies destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and began deporting many of its people to Assyria. 

Archeologists and historians think a good number of people from the northern kingdom immigrated south to Judea at this time and eventually they contributed to its growth. But first, they needed land and houses to live in. Was Micah one of the immigrants? Micah warns Judea’s wealthy class against treating the new immigrants badly. 

Woe to those who plan iniquity…
They covet fields, and seize them;
houses, and they take them;
They cheat an owner of his house,
a man of his inheritance. (Micah 2, 1-6)

The same people whom God led out of Egypt and gave land to freely are gouging the poor immigrants:

O my people, what have I done to you,
or how have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
from the place of slavery I released you;

Prophets like Micah called for social justice. They raised up issues that don’t go out of date. We need prophetic voices to raise them up today in a society increasingly anti-immigrant. Housing, immigration, unfair real estate practices?

You have been told what’s good, what the LORD requires of you: Only do justice and love goodness and walk humbly with your God.  (Micah 8:8)

“But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah,least among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.”Micah 5: 1-2. Matthew’s Gospel (2: 5-6) reports that the chief priests and scribes cite this passage from Micah as a promise that a messiah in the line of David will be born in Bethlehem.

Micah 5:1-4 is also the first reading for the Feast of the Birth of Mary, September 8, and one of the readings for the common of feasts of Mary.

The 11th and 12th chapters of Matthew’s gospel which we’re reading this 15th week of the year describe a growing opposition to Jesus after he begins his ministry in Galilee. It’s a dark section of the gospel. 

The Pharisees now take “counsel against him to put him to death” and begin to oppose him. (Matthew 12.14) They’re not satisfied with his teachings and his miracles and demand a sign. They’re joined by the Herodians, agents of Herod Antipas, ruler in Galilee. The political establishment joins the opposition. 

Jesus is also opposed  by “this generation” of Israelites, the towns “where most of his mighty deeds had been done,” Corazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum. (Matthew 11,16-19) The towns that first welcomed him enthusiastically now dismiss him.

Finally,  another group, who may surprise us, appear to oppose him – his family from Nazareth.  (Matthew 12,47-50) All together, this opposition must have affected Jesus, as he faced  the fickleness of humanity and even those closest to him. 

But it also must have affected his disciples as well, who joined him expecting to see God’s kingdom come. I think they’re among those whom Jesus prays for in the gospel read today and tomorrow: 

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

His first disciples were not wise or learned, they were more like children excited by what they saw Jesus do and say. They were struck by the miracles he worked and the wisdom he taught in parables. Yet, they would have been affected by the growing rejection to him.   

Are we like them in a time like ours, when he in the church he founded meets so much rejection? The Lord prays for us too, little children not wise or clever.

You would expect a great theologian like St. Bonaventure (July 15) to tell you to hit the books if you would want to go to God. After all, his treatise we read on his feast is called “The Journey of the Mind to God.”

Instead he directs us to Christ and the Cross as our way to God.

” If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervour and glowing love.”

A shelf of scripture commentaries and theology books wont bring us wisdom of themselves, St. Bonaventure says in his Breviloquium, otherwise only scholars would enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s not to say study isn’t important and scholars and scientists are not necessary. Bonaventure was a great theologian, but he knew we must be humble before God and the divine plan that’s beyond our grasp.

“The stream of holy Scripture flows not from human research but from revelation by God. It springs from the Father of lights, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its name. From him, through his Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit flows into us; and through the Holy Spirit, giving, at will, different gifts to different people, comes the gift of faith, and through faith Jesus Christ has his dwelling in our hearts. This is the knowledge of Jesus Christ which is the ultimate basis of the solidity and wisdom of the whole of holy Scripture…

If we are to follow the direct path of Scripture and come straight to the final destination, then right from the beginning – when simple faith starts to draw us towards the light of the Father – our hearts should kneel down and ask the Father to give us, through his Son and the Holy Spirit, true knowledge of Jesus and of his love. Once we know him and love him like this, we shall be made firm in faith and deeply rooted in love, and we can know the breadth, length, depth and height of holy Scripture.”

In both readings today in our liturgy, from Isaiah and Matthew, kingdoms, cities, towns are brought down. Though powerful, permanent and blessed by God  they fall into the dust. Isaiah describes the fall of Jerusalem. Matthew’s Gospel describes the fall of towns along the Sea of Galilee, like Capernaum and Corazin, where Jesus taught and worked wonders, yet they abandon  him.

Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.  Galilee, where Jesus lived most of his life and years of ministry,  became the center of Pharasaic Judaism; exiles from Judea displaced  Jewish Christians from the towns and synagogues of Galilee. Jesus was considered an enemy there. The towns where he taught and worked wonders no longer welcomed him. .

We look for lasting cities, but our readings today remind us earthly cities are not lasting, They change and sometimes disappear. “He came to his own and his own received him not”, St. John says.  Paul writes extensively in the 9th Chapter of Romans about the mystery of rejection Jesus faced from his own people. Look to the mercy of God, he says. 

We wonder about his rejection in our own towns and places.  We wonder about the future of Christianity in our part of the world. Will it disappear?

The psalms in the liturgy offer God’s message to our readings, as Psalm 48  does today: 

“God upholds his city forever. Great is the LORD and wholly to be praised
in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, fairest of heights, is the joy of all the earth.
Mount Zion…is the city of the great King.
God is with her castles; renowned is he as a stronghold.”

The times we live in have their storms like those that destroyed the ships of Tarshish, but time is like a woman in labor. Sometime new is being born and we don’t see it yet.  

Sometime ago I stumbled on a map of New York rivers and lakes.  Rivers and lakes were the roads and highways used by the native peoples and early settlers centuries ago. Even today, the New York Thruway follows the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers from New York City to Buffalo.

Just north of Albany near the town of Fonda are the ruins of the17th century Mohawk village of Caughnawaga, excavated in the 1950s by a Franciscan priest,  Thomas Grassmann. In the excavated village are traces of 12 long houses surrounded by a fortified stockade which was built in 1666 after a French army from Quebec destroyed an earlier Mohawk village at Osserneron (today, Auriesville) a few miles south.

The French army was punishing the Mohawks for their part in the Iroquois-Huron wars, when they plundered and destroyed villages along the St. Lawrence River belonging to the Hurons and Algonquins, Indian allies of the French. The Mohawks, members of the Iroquois confederation, wanted to gain control of the fur trade from their northern neighbors.

In destroying Ossernenon, the French army was also probably avenging the deaths of Fr. Isaac Jogues, SJ, and Rene Goupil and Gabriel Lalande, three French missionaries  killed in that village some years before:  honored  today by the Church as martyrs.

In the war against their neighbors to the north, the Mohawks  took women and children captive.  At the time,  native tribes replenished  their own numbers–diminished by wars or disease– by kidnapping members from other tribes. One of the Christian Algonquin women captured in an earlier raid married a Mohawk brave from Ossernenon and they had a daughter,  Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), whom the Catholic Church  honors as a saint.

An epidemic of smallpox ravaged Ossernenon when Kateri was four years old, killing   many children and adults. The young girl almost died of the disease that left her disfigured. Her early Jesuit biographer says, “ She almost lost her eyesight, and her eyes hurt so much from this illness that she covered herself with a blanket when out in strong light.” (The Life of the Good Catherine Tekakwitha, Claude Chauchetiere, SJ , 1695)

Both parents died when Kateri was a little girl and she was taken in by relatives in the new Mohawk village of Caughnawaga (Fonda), where she lived most of her life. Her mother was a devout Christian and must have told her about Christianity, but Kateri’s new family and  tribe strongly opposed the religion.

The French military, as one condition for not returning to the Mohawk villages, demanded that Jesuit missionaries be allowed to visit them and minister to captive Christians or others interested in their faith. Jesuit missionaries visited Caughnawaga for three days in 1667 and received hospitality in the long house where Kateri lived with her uncle, a Mohawk leader opposed to Christians.

According to witnesses, Kateri  was a normal Indian girl and young woman.  “She brought wood and tended the fire when her aunt ordered her, and got water when those in the long house needed it. When she had nothing to do she amused herself making small jewels and dressing as other girls of her age. She placed shell bead necklaces around her neck, shell bead bracelets on her arms, rings on her fingers and ornaments in her ears.” (The Life of the Good Catherine Tekakwitha, Claude Chauchetiere, SJ , 1695)

Though sickly, she was not lazy or proud. She never talked about others. Timid, she avoided dances and games. She didn’t like seeing captives harmed or people tortured, witnesses said.

In the spring of 1675  Jesuit Father Jacques de Lamberville visited Caughnawaga . Kateri was alone in her long house because a foot injury prevented her from working in the fields and the priest entered her lodge. She spoke to him of her desire to receive baptism and on Easter, 1676, the young Indian girl was baptized and took the name Kateri, after St. Catherine of Siena, the mystic and a favorite patron of Christian Indian women. She was 20 years old.

Her uncle and relatives in the long house opposed her conversion to Christianity and pressured her to marry and follow their ways, though against  her beliefs. The early Jesuits considered it a miracle for a Christian to resist family and tribal pressure such as Kateri experienced in Caughnawaga. Yet, her early biographer says “She practiced her faith without losing her original fervor and her extraordinary virtue was seen by all. The Christians saw her obeying their rules exactly, going to prayers every day in the morning and evening and Mass on Sunday. At the same time she avoided the dreams feasts and the dances,” practices endangering her belief.  (The Life of the Good Catherine Tekakwitha, Claude Chauchetiere, SJ , 1695)

Father de Lamberville finally recommended that Kateri escape to the newly-established  Indian Christian village in Kahnawake near Montreal, where she could live her faith more easily. In 1676, aided by other Christian Indians, she made the dangerous journey northward.  There she lived a fervent life of prayer and faith;  she died and was buried on April 17th, 1680.

She was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21, 2012, Her feast day is July 14.