Reflection on the Gospel – Friday, July 4, 2025

Not long ago—though I can’t remember exactly where—I heard a phrase that struck me as very true: “Jesus spoke with an interesting sense of humor.” It came from someone who had just discovered Christianity and was expressing his fascination with Jesus. He was trying to say in Spanish what he was thinking in his own language—probably English.

In today’s Gospel, I think we find something of that “interesting sense of humor.” As in other moments told by the evangelists, Jesus addresses a certain kind of person: the Pharisee. How can we not recall the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, commented on so many times?

The Pharisees of that time and place—and of every time—are often sincerely religious people, who truly believe and try to live by good moral principles. The problem is that they tend to fall (or live fully) into the pride of self-righteousness and look down on those they consider beneath them or “sinners.”

And then, there are those who are simply hypocrites. In the Gospels, it seems that Jesus uses humor and irony with the first kind—and reserves harsh words for the second: “brood of vipers,” “whitewashed tombs…”

In today’s passage, Jesus speaks with gentle irony. He allows Himself to be surrounded by those who need healing. And He tells those who disapprove of Him that God wants mercy, not sacrifice.

What would He say to each of us reading this—and to the one writing it?
In the prayer Invocations to Our Lord Jesus Christ, we ask for His mercy by naming His many titles—Son of the living God, Eternal Wisdom, the Way, the Truth, and the Life…—and adding: “Have mercy on me.” One of those titles is Physician of soul and body.

We all have wounds that need healing—wounds, habits, deep-rooted faults. Let us ask Jesus Christ to heal us. And let us turn to the intercession of Holy Mary, Health of the Sick.