Daily TV Mass Friday August 7, 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. The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father, the friendship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

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And with your spirit.

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Welcome to the celebration of the Daily TV Mass. I'm Father Michael Coots. The televising of this Mass is made possible by a contribution from three donors. The first are anonymous donors from London, Ontario, for their personal intentions in Thanksgiving for blessings received, for healing, for the souls in purgatory, and for world peace. The second is Gina Uvich from Mississauga, Ontario, in memory of the deceased members of the Alba and Ukitch families. The third is an anonymous donor from Toronto, Ontario, in loving memory of her dear mother, Marjorie. Our thanks to our donors for the gift of this Mass. As we prepare ourselves to celebrate this Eucharist, we ask God to forgive us our sins and give us the grace to turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel. Lord Jesus, you are the Prince of Peace. Lord, have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord Jesus, you are the salt of the earth. 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. Grant, O Lord our God, the constant gladness of being devoted to you for its full and lasting happiness to serve with constantity the author of all that is good. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.

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Amen.

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A reading from the book of the Prophet Nacham. Look, and the mountains are the feet of one who brings good tidings, who proclaims peace. Celebrate your festivals of O Judah. Fulfill your vows. For never again shall the wicked invade you. They are utterly cut off. For the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob as well as the majesty of Israel, though ravagers have ravaged them and ruined their branches. Ah, city of bloodshed, utterly deceitful, full of booty, no end to the plunder, the crack of whip and rumble of wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot, horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, piles of dead, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end. They stumble over the bodies. I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. Then all who see you will shrink from you and say, Nineveh is devastated. Who will bemoan her? Where shall I seek comforters for you? The word of the Lord.

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Indeed, the Lord will vindicate his people, have compassion on his.

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On page three, let us drop three and four. He threw up his hands in horror. He said, I can't do that. If I do that, I can't sell you the phone. When Jesus called his disciples, come follow me, he didn't have any document to be signed. He simply said, Come follow me. And when he said that to Peter and Andrew, James and John, they came and followed. They didn't ask him what was the purpose, how long, were their fringe benefits, were their vacation time, what were we supposed to do? They simply followed him. And that is exactly what Jesus said, come follow me. And his condition was simple: carry your cross daily. So people would come to him and say, Lord, I want to follow you. And he would say, Come follow me, carry your cross daily. But first let me go and say farewell. And Jesus says, a person who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom of God. And I thought, why would Jesus have any problem? In the Old Testament, when Elijah was going to heaven, Elisha said, I'm going to follow you. And Elijah said, Okay. And then Elisha said, Let me say goodbye to my family. He had 12 yoke of oxen. Can you imagine he slaughtered all that? What a load of bull that he had to sacrifice for a whole village. And they could have eaten for days together. How long it would have taken to follow Elijah. But Jesus said, a person who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is not worthy of the kingdom. He simply says, When you follow me, there is no time for second thoughts and second guessing. You either follow completely and fully trust me, or you're not worthy of the kingdom of God. Another one said, Let me go and bury my father. And Jesus simply said, Let the dead bury the dead. Now you would say, now, isn't that rather cruel? We pay good attention to our parents, our elders, and when they pass away, we want to give them great sympathy. We want to bury them with honor, with tradition. We have a wake ceremony, we have a mass offered. One of our sponsors today said, Pray for my beloved mother, Marjorie. And so you would say that is more that is really reasonable, and not only reasonable, but it is Catholic, it is Christian, it is human. Well, the point was in the time of Jesus, there were many poor people, and what they would do is they would hire themselves out as laborers to the landowner, let us say for four or five years. And if during that course of four or five years they suddenly died, like say after two years, then it was incumbent on the son in the family to go and hire himself to fill up the remaining three years or four years according to the contract made between the father and the landowner. And Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is right here. There is a sense of immediacy. There is no time for you to be fulfilling a tradition, a contract, and then and come and follow me. And that is what he did for Peter and Andrew, James and John. They left everything. They left their fishing boats, they left their net. They even left a net full of fish and just left and came and followed him. When he went to Matthew, he says, Come follow me. Matthew left his books, his money, and everything and came and followed Jesus. Not for once did they ask Jesus, what are we doing over here? Gradually, over the course of the three years, he would show them they were going to preach the kingdom of God. They were going to preach that salvation was for all people. And as we heard in that first reading from Nahum, happy the sound of the feet of the mountains of those who proclaim the good news. And that was the good news of the kingdom. Gradually they would also learn what they had to do, because he'd send them out in pairs and he'd say, take no purse, no extra tunic, no haversack, but trust in God and trust in the people to whom you bring the good news. Nowadays, if we are called to follow Jesus Christ, the first thing we want is a cell phone, a computer, a credit card. Then we can follow and do the kingdom of God and preach the kingdom of God. Now Jesus is not against all these devices. If they do help us, then go for it and proclaim the good news. But don't let the devices become your master, because there is only one master, and that is Christ the Lord. As Daniel Berrigan would say, if you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you should look good on wood, the wood of the cross. Now, Jesus wasn't a masochist. Jesus didn't say, look, I want you to carry the cross just in order to suffer pain. He says, no, cross will come immediately the moment you proclaim the kingdom of God. Because the kingdom of God is so different from the kingdom that you and I live in. Today, if we want to prosper, we use any means in order to go ahead. We will dupe the simple, the trusting, the naive, and those who do not know what is in that, as I said, the four-page document that they just have to sign. No. They use all these techniques. They will not hire the blame, the lime, the disabled. If a woman is pregnant, get rid of her because she will want maternity benefits afterwards. If a man is undergoing surgery, get rid of him because he will need convalescing time. This is what the world around us requires in order to prosper. Whereas Jesus says, no. When you invite people for your banquet, go into the highways and byways, include the lame, the blind, the deaf, exactly opposite to what the world is speaking about us. And therefore, that will be a cross. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you should look good onward. And therefore, Jesus would say, you have to pour out your life for the sake of others and for the sake of kingdom. When you do that, that is when you truly save life. And that is no, that is where you know that your treasure is truly is, and that is where your heart will be. God bless you all. Let us bring our prayers before the Lord. For all those in our daily TV Mass prayer intention book, we pray to the Lord.

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Lord, hear our prayer.

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We pray this month of Mary's Assumption, renew our hope one day of sharing eternal life with her and her son. We pray to the Lord. Lord, hear our prayer. For Pope Leo's intention for the month of August, let us pray that in large cities, often marked by anonymity and loneliness, we may find new ways to proclaim the gospel. May we discover creative paths to build a community. We pray to the Lord. Loving God, guide our steps through the summer sun, protect our paths till the day is done. Keep us safe as we wander and roam, and bring us peacefully back to our home. Amen. Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation, for through your goodness we have this bread we offer, 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. Maybe share in the divinity of Christ to humble Himself to share in our humanity. Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. For through your goodness we have this wine we offer. Fruit of the wine and work of human hands, it will become for us our spiritual drink.

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Blessed in 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.

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Thank you.

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Pray, my sisters, my brothers, that this our sacrifice be acceptable to God the Almighty Father.

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May the Lord accept us sacrifice eternal grace and glory of his name for our good and good all of his holy church.

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Grant, O Lord, that what we offer in the sight of your majesty may obtain for us the grace of being devoted to you and gain us the prize of everlasting happiness. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord.

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Amen.

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The Lord be with you.

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And with your spirit.

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Lift up your hearts.

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We lift them up to the Lord.

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Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right and just 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 extoll with all the angels, as in joyful celebration we acclaim.

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Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts, heaven and full of your glory.

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Make holy, therefore, these gifts by setting down your spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the body and blood of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. At the time he was betrayed and entered willingly into his passion, he took bread and giving 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, 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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The mystery of faith when we eat these bread and drink these. We proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.

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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, Lord, your church 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, remember Marjorie, 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 apostles, and with all the saints who have pleased you throughout the ages, we may merit to be co-heirs to eternal life and 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 and formed 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 distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. For 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 your church, and graciously grant a peace and unity in accordance with your will, who live and reign forever and ever.

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Amen.

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The peace of the Lord be with you always. Let us share with one another a sign of that peace and friendship.

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You take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us.

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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 you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, My soul shall be healed. May the body and blood of Christ bring us and all our dear ones unto life everlasting.

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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. We have partaken of the gifts of this sacred mystery, humbly imploring, O Lord, that what your Son commanded us to do in memory of him may bring us growth in charity through Christ our Lord. Amen. The Lord be with you. 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 to God.

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