Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – 17th August 2025
Today is a day of great joy for our community: it is the feast day of our parish, the day when we remember the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the day we honour our Mother in Heaven and remember that we are never alone on our journey of faith.
Today’s Gospel shows us that Jesus came to bring fire to the earth – the fire of God’s love, which brings light and warmth to our hearts, but also purifies all that is not good. The reading from Jeremiah shows us a prophet who suffers for speaking the truth, and the Letter to the Hebrews invites us to run with perseverance along the path of faith.
The prophet Jeremiah was thrown into a muddy cistern because he told people what they didn’t want to hear. Sometimes being faithful means going against the current. We too might be criticised or laughed at for going to church, for rejecting lies, or for refusing to compromise.
Mary did the same: she stayed faithful to God even when she was misunderstood and when she suffered greatly, especially at the cross of her Son.