Daily TV Mass Friday August 14, 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. 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 the estate of Josephine Mary Campaniela of Burlington, Ontario. This Mass is being offered for the repose of the souls of Josephine and her husband, James Joseph Campaniela, and for the living and deceased family members. Our thanks go out to the donors for the gift of this Mass. Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Maximilian Kolby, who was born on the 8th of January in 1894 in Poland. He was martyred during just before the second during the Second World War on the 14th of August 1944 in Auschwitz. We ask this great saint to intercede for us before the throne of God. May Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life. Let us pray. O God, who filled the priest and martyr, Saint Maximilian Colby, with a burning love for the Immaculate Virgin Mary and with zeal for souls and the love of neighbor, graciously grant through his intercession that striving for your glory by eagerly serving others, we may be conformed even until death to your Son. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord.

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A reading from the book of the prophet Ezekiel. Thus says the Lord God, I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath, breaking the covenant. Yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when I take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and give them to you as daughters, but not on account of my covenant with you. I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, in order that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done, says the Lord God. The word of the Lord.

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So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. They said to him, Then why did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her? Jesus said to them, It is because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, for from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity and marries another, commits adultery. His disciples said, If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But Jesus said to them, Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it was given. For there are eunuchs who have been made so from birth, there are eunuchs who have been made so by eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of God. Let everyone accept this who can. The gospel of the Lord.

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Praise you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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Both Ezekiel and Jesus speak about commitment. Ezekiel was reminding the people of Israel, God has taken you out of the Exodus, uh, taken you out through the Exodus experience from Egypt. God has been faithful to you by leading you by a cloud of fire during the day, uh night, and a cloud of cloud during during the day, a pillar of cloud during the day. He has fed you with uh water from the rock, he has fed you with manna, he has helped you to defeat your enemies. God has been faithful to you, but you, people of Israel, hasn't haven't been faithful. But God will not renege on his faithful, and Ezekiel ends with a sense of hope. God will take you back. God will take you back and make you God's own people, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a nation set apart. When we come to the gospel, it's a story of another relationship, of another commitment, of another commitment between a covenant covenant between man and woman. And you notice the phrase that Jesus uses from the beginning. And that is the real origin of literally anything you and I do. We have to see what was it from the beginning. From the beginning, the covenant between man and wife was one of joy, of happiness, of pleasure. From the beginning, it was one of commitment, a lifelong commitment to fidelity. From the beginning, it was a commitment to be open to family, to be open to children, to open to the basic unit of our society around us. So what went wrong? What went wrong was precisely the fact that we are human, we are fragile, we are weak, we cannot carry on with the stamina that we began with. And so as a result, our mind wanders, our eye wanders, and as a result, we stray. And that is the reason why we have these commandments. We rehab a reality that says one in every three marriages break up. What they don't say is two out of every three marriages actually succeed. And that is the reason why societies have succeeded, societies have grown, societies have built. So, what is the cause of it all? The cause is basically our human nature. We are lazy, we fail to communicate, we bottle things within ourselves, more men than women. They bottle things. Women like to open it up and realize what the issue is and deal with it. But men won't do that. You require commitment from the part of both people. Communications break down, laziness breaks down, I mean, uh uh crops up, and we are not willing to make an effort. If we are not willing to make an effort, that commitment cannot stand. And so we have the scribes and the Pharisees coming to Jesus and saying, if Moses allowed this, why are what are the what is your take on it? We cannot in 2026 try to understand the conditions, the traditions, and the customs that were time in the times of Moses. It was a very misogynistic society. A man only committed adultery if he broke up a family. Like in the case of David sleeping with Bathsheba and killing Uriah the Hittite, that was adultery. But otherwise it was not considered to be adultery. Whereas for a woman, no matter what she did, if the man committed adultery with her, she was the one responsible. And that is why they had to make this law from Moses to say we have to protect the society, which is the basic integral part of our society today. You will find that when families are the basic unit that are successful, that are wholesome, that are firm, the society flows beautifully. There is peace, there is harmony, there's lack of chaos. We often condemn the United States. Look at the amount of violence and look at the amount of problems that are there. What we have to realize is there are 300 million people there, whereas here in Canada we are only 40 million. And comparably, we might be worse off than them when we do not take care of our own families. And so Jesus will tell us that from the beginning, that is where we have to go to. It is from the beginning that we had decided, or God had decided, that this husband and this wife were there for love, for joy, for pleasure, for happiness. And if we keep that in mind, then everything will fall into place. If we keep in mind that from the beginning, this commitment is not for 10 years or 20 years or 15 years, it is for life. The story of marriage has to be a love story, not a life sentence. And that's where the problem lies, is we begin to look at it and judge it from the standards we get from television, from TV, from soap operas, where divorce and infidelity are a part of the program. And if you don't have that, it does not make it interesting. We let it fall. And so as a result, we accept the standards of society, we accept the standards of our family, not from what God ordered it for, but from the society, from uh from the media that we watch, from the TV that we watch, from the news that we hear. What we have to realize is that there is a relationship between husband and wife that has begun from time, from the time of Adam and Eve, where God has put them together. And from there, God has been an integral part of that life and that relationship. God has been a part of that relationship, a relationship with all the others that you and I have, the relationships that we have in our faith community around us. And because of that, God has given us the gift, the gift of the Spirit and the sacrament of marriage. The gift of the spirit which gives us wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. The point is we have all these gifts to use them to bind us together in marriage, but what do we do? We squander them. And that is why we have this beautiful character of Maximilian Colby as an inspiration for us. He was committed to his vocation as a conventional Franciscan. At the age of 21, he had a doctorate in philosophy. At the age of 28, he had a doctorate in theology. And in spite of all this intelligence, all he used it was to proclaim the good news, not only here, but in India and in Japan. And finally, he offered his life in place of another inmate in the Auschwitz prison, and he died there on the 14th of August. He is celebrated today as a martyr, not just as a confessor. God bless you all. Join me now as we make our prayers together. For all those in our daily TV Mass Prayer Intention book, we pray to the Lord. For Josephine and James Campanela for their repose, we pray to the Lord.

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Lord, hear our prayer.

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During this month of August, we pray that the Assumption of Mary may enkindle us the fire that we too will one day sit together with her and Jesus at the table of the Lord. For this we pray to the Lord.

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Lord, hear our prayer.

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Loving and gracious God, receive the prayers that we make aloud and in the depths of our hearts 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.

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Blessed we are forever.

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And water that may be 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 vine and work of human hands, it will become for us our spiritual drink. 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. We present our humble oblations to you, O Lord, praying that we may learn from the example of Saint Maximilian Colbe to offer our very lives to you through Christ our Lord.

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Amen.

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The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Lift up your hearts. 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 the blood of your blessed martyr, Maximilian Colby, poured out like Christ to glorify your name, shows forth your marvelous works, by which in our weakness you perfect your power, and on the feeble bestow strength to bear you witness through Christ our Lord. And so with the powers of angels of heaven we worship you constantly on earth and before your majesty without end we acclaim. 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, gave it 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. The mystery of faith.

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Bride and drink this calm. We proclaim your death all 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. 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. Remember Josephine and James Campanela, 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's spouse, with Saint Maximilian Colby, with all the apostles and saints, you 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. Amen. At the Savior's command and formed my 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, the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

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For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever.

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Lord Jesus Christ, who 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. Graciously grant a peace and unity in accordance with your will, who live and reign forever and ever. Peace of the Lord be with you always. And with your spirit. Share with one another a sign of this peace and friendship.

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You take away the sins of the world. You take away the sins of the world. You take away the sins of the world. Grant peace.

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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 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 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. O Lord, grant that, renewed by the body and blood of your Son, we may be inflamed with the same fire of charity that Saint Maximilian Colbe received from this holy banquet. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. 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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Praise be to God.

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