Daily TV Mass Friday July 17, 2026

Fr. Michael Coutts, S.J.

Transcript

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From the St. Ignatius Chapel at the Manresa Jesuit Spiritual Renewal Center in Pickering, Ontario. The National Catholic Broadcasting Council presents the Daily TV Mass.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father, the friendship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. And in with your spirit. Welcome to the celebration of the Daily TV Mass. I am Father Michael Coots. The televising of this Mass is made possible by a contribution from three donors. The first is Joseph Dep from Winnipeg, Manitoba, for the souls in purgatory and thanksgiving for blessings received and for the salvation of all family members. The second is Anne Escott and family from Langley, British Columbia, in memory of their grandmother and grandmother, Mary Elise Scott, LC Scott. The third are Brian and Carol Klein from Innesville, Alberta, in thanksgiving for blessings received, the daily TV Mass for the living and deceased members of the family, and for good health of all. Our thanks to the donors for the gift of this Mass. As we prepare ourselves to celebrate this Eucharist, we'll ask the God who loves and cares for us, just like He cared for the Israelites in their exodus experience, to grant us forgiveness of our sins. Lord Jesus, you are the Prince of Peace. Lord, have mercy.

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Lord have mercy.

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Lord Jesus, you are the light to all nations. Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord Jesus, you are the way, the truth, and the life. Lord, have mercy.

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Lord have mercy.

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May Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen. Let us pray. O God of might, giver of every good gift, put into the hearts of the love of your name, so that by deepening our sense of reverence, you may nurture in us what is good, and by your watchful care keep safe what you have nurtured. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and governs with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

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A reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah. In those days, Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah, son of Amos, came to him and said, Thus says the Lord, set your house in order, for you shall die. You shall not recover. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. Remember now, O Lord, I implore you how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight. And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah. I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria and defend this city. Now Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs and apply it to the boil so that he may recover. Hezekiah also had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord? Isaiah replied, This is the sign to you from the Lord that the Lord will do this thing that he has promised. See, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz, turn back ten steps. So the sun turned back on the dial, the ten steps by which it had declined. The word of the Lord.

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I know them and they follow me.

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And with your spirit.

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A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. On the Sabbath, Jesus went throughout through the grain fields. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, Look, your disciple what your disciples are doing is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. Jesus said to them, Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presents, which it was not lawful for him and his companions to eat. Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would have not come condemned the guiltless, for the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. The gospel of the Lord. King Hezekiah was a good king in the line of David. He was a person, a king who was faithful to the Lord, keeping the Torah and the commandments. He was also a person who tried to reform the people, to turn away from idols, to turn away from false sacrifices. And the last was that he was very trusting in the Lord. He trusted that the Lord would deliver him at all costs. And we will see later how he is delivered from King Sennacherib of Assyria. But now he is on his deathbed with a sword that is both painful and lethal. And he prays to the Lord, Deliver me, give me more years to live. And I thought to myself, why on earth would he want to live any longer? Did Hezekiah think that he was immortal, that he would live forever? My father died in the year 2001. He was 93 years old. And towards the end he had crippling arthritis. And he said to me, he says, Look, I have been so blessed by God. I've seen all my sons successful and settle in life. I've got 13 grandchildren who are so respectful and so well behaved. They're not on drugs, they're not, they're going out and helping people. I couldn't ask for anything more. Why is the Lord not delivering me from this crippling arthritis? I would love to die. It would be a sign of witness to God's grace in my life. Hezekiah was so far from the way my father thought. But the reason is because in the days of Hezekiah, 700 years before Christ, the idea of life after death was not there. What they did was they only lived for the present. They did not see that there was a God of mercy and compassion who would receive them into the heavenly kingdom. That idea did not come into being. It was only later on when Job would say, I know that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day I shall see him again. And even Job was a far cry from the reality. Paul would say, No eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has prepared for those who loved him. And so the idea of having a life after death was something that we look forward to in great love and compassion. The story is told of a doctor who worked in the palliative care, and one man came to him and said, Doctor, you've been working so often with those who are in the last stages of their life. What is heaven like? What happens after death? And the doctor says, I don't know. But he says, you're so close to death when you're dealing with patients. You should know. And he says, you know, can you hear a scratching at that door? He says, Yes, I can. He says, that's the scratching of my dog on the other side of the door. He hasn't come over here at all. But what he does know is that on this side of the door, there is somebody who loves him and somebody who cares for him and somebody who feeds him. And therefore he's so eager to come through the door to come and meet him. That is the only explanation that I can give you of what life is after death. But Hezekiah had no idea of it. And so he prayed, and so he was granted three things. First, he would be cured of his sore, second, he would get another 15 years of life, and third, he would be delivered from King Sennacharib. And how was this? This was this extraordinary miracle where the sundial, the ray of the sun on the sundial, would move backwards and show the time of another 15 years for his life. When I tried to explain a sundial to the young people today, they didn't know what the heck I was talking about, and finally they didn't care. All they wanted was digital. What will happen on my cell phone? I gave them a rotary phone and said, could you call somebody? They said, What do I do with this? So the idea of explaining a sundial is something extraordinary, something miraculous. But from there we come to something very mundane in the gospel today. Jesus is walking through the field, the disciples are hungry. They take some grain, they rub it in their hands, and they toss it in their mouth, just like we eat peanuts or almonds. And the Pharisees were immediately on their case. What are your disciples doing? They are not allowed to do this on a Sabbath day. They had 101 explanations about what there was allowed and what was not allowed. And we shouldn't laugh about it, even till today. So many Catholics will tell me, how many hours must I fast before receiving communion? In my day when I was young, we had to fast for midnight. We couldn't drink even a glass of water. Now they say, one hour, three hours, and they will call me at all times. So the idea of looking at details from tradition and small minutiae is something that bothers not only the scribes and the Pharisees in those days, but even all of us today. And so we should laugh at them and realize that it is a part of our way of living. Namely, we tend to be scrupulous. And Jesus comes and gives a beautiful explanation. And he teaches them two things. One is that for the Jews and for the Gentiles, the 101 little minutiae and traditions and explanations of the law do not bring their salvation. For the Gentiles, it was simply keeping the law's command, the Lord's commandment to love one another and to love their neighbor as themselves. For the Jews, they would keep the tradition of reciting the Shema and keeping the Torah and the commandments. But this did not bring them salvation in itself, because salvation is a pure gift from God. And the second lesson that Jesus taught them was that this knowledge of salvation was not meant for the learned and for those who were wise according to the standards of the world, but it was for those who had an open heart and an open mind, a childlike docility to accept what the Lord would teach them and to accept the fact that everything they got, the food that they ate, the house that they lived in, the clothes that they lived in with, the family with their problems and difficulties, were all a gift of God. On the way and on the path of salvation, all they had to do was keep their eyes on the way of the Lord. And that is why at the beginning of Mass I said, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And if we were to follow it, if Hezekiah were to follow it, we would be in good shape and in good hands. God bless you all. Would you join me now as we pray together? For all those in our daily TV Mass Prayer Intention Book, we pray to the Lord. Lord hear our prayer. For our three sponsors of this Mass today, may the Lord grant them peace of mind and health and body. We pray to the Lord. Lord hear our prayer. As a community, let us pray in thanksgiving for parents and grandparents and for elders like St. Joachim and Saint Anne, who nurture faith and family across generations with quiet strength. We pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer. For Pope Leo's intention for the month of July, let us pray that we may again learn how to discern, to know how to choose paths of life, and reject everything that leads away from Christ and the gospel. We pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer. Lord, grant food and shelter to those who are homeless today, and peace and charity to those who enjoy both food and shelter through Christ our Lord. Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation, for through your goodness we have this bread we offer you, fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life. Through the mystery of this wine and water, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity. Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation, for through your goodness we have this wine we offer you. Fruit of the wine and work of human hands, it will become for us our spiritual drink.

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Blessed be God forever.

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Lord God, be pleased to accept these gifts that we offer to you with humble and with contrite hearts. Thank you. Pray, my sisters, my brothers, that this our sacrifice be acceptable to God the Almighty Father. May the sacred offering, O Lord, confer on us always the blessing of salvation, that what it celebrates in mystery it may accomplish in power, through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen. The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Lift up your hearts. Lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is truly right and just our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere, to give you thanks. Lord, Holy Father, Almighty and Eternal God. For just as through your beloved Son you created the human race, so also through him with great goodness you formed it anew. And so it is right that all creatures serve you, all the redeemed praise you, and all your saints with one heart bless you. Therefore, we too extol you with all the angels, as in joyful celebration we acclaim.

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Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of heart, heaven and earth our full of your glory.

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You are indeed holy, O Lord, the fount of all holiness. Make holy, therefore, these gifts by sending down your spirit upon them like the dew fall, so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the time he was betrayed and entered willingly into his passion, he took bread and giving you thanks, broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you. In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice, and once more giving thanks, he gave the chalice to his disciples, saying, Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.

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When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death all Lord until

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Therefore, as we celebrate the memorial of his death and resurrection, we offer you, Lord, the bread of life and the chalice of salvation, giving thanks that you have held us worthy to be in your presence and minister to you. Humbly we pray that partaking of the body and blood of Christ, we may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit. Remember your church, O Lord, spread throughout the world and bring her to the fullness of charity, together with Leo, our Pope, Francis, our bishop, all the clergy, and this entire people of God. Remember also our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection, and all who have died in your mercy. Welcome them into the light of your face. Have mercy on us all, that with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with Blessed Joseph, her spouse, with the blessed with Saint Jean de Braboff, Isaac Jogues, and our Canadian martyrs, and all the saints who have pleased you throughout the ages, we may merit to be co-heirs to eternal life and may praise and glorify you through your Son, Jesus Christ. Through him, with him and in him. O God Almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours forever and ever.

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Amen.

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At the Savior's command informed by divine teaching, we now dare to say, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Deliver us, Lord, from every evil. Graciously grant peace in our day, that by the help of your mercy we may be always free from sin, safe from all distresses. We await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, peace I leave you, my peace I give you. Look not on our sins, but on the faith of this year, Church, and graciously grant a peace and unity in accordance with your will, who live and reign forever and ever. The peace of the Lord be with you always. And with your spirit. Let us share with one another a sign of this peace and friendship. Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb. Lord, I am not worthy that ye should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. May the body and blood of Christ bring us all to everlasting life.

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My Jesus, I believe that you are present in this holy sacrament of the altar. I love you above all things, and I passionately desire to receive you into my soul. Since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, come spiritually into my soul, so that I may unite myself wholly to you now and forever. Amen.

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Let us pray. Renewed by this bread from the heavenly table, we beseech you, Lord, that being the food of charity, it may confirm our hearts and stir us to serve you in our neighbor through Christ our Lord. Amen. The Lord be with you and with your spirit. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Go in the peace of Christ to love and serve the Lord and one another.

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Thanks, be you to God.

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Our thanks to our donors for the gift of this Mass.