Twentieth Sunday 8 16 2026 Deacon Louis Zemlick FAITH come all to Jesus

Isaiah 56:1, 6-7 No CCC listing just common sense "Do what is Right and Just.

Psalm 67:2-3,5,6,8 no CCC more sense read it. Praise God not yourself.

Romans 11:13-15, 29-32 CCC674 Christ is coming and is here. Come to the Holy Catholic Church and Adore Jesus. CCC839 ALL are welcome, but get ready to Change to Mature to learn how to Love yourself and others. CCC1870 Mercy.

Gospel Matthew 15:21-28 CCC439 Christ,CCC448 Lord JESUS IS GOD,CCC2610 Prayer Have the Faith of The Canaanite Woman She is Us...She is you and me. Pray Like the Roman centurion also just a regular person who God helped.

DeaconLouisZemlick.com

Love You all MaMa Mary Pray for us

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everyone. This is Deacon Louis Emlick here in the Diocese of Kalamazoo. We're glad you're with us here today for this 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Some great readings for us today, and uh just um some things to think about, you know, in our world, in our lives, just to reflect upon, to think about this. You know, so often we're afraid to say that we're not feeling well or we're sick or that um or that we're a sinner, you know. No one wants to say they're a sinner. No one wants to say they're sorry. And we have to look at these things in our lives and really ask ourselves, why? Why do I have a hard time saying I'm sorry? You know, and if it's old stuff from the past, you know, I get it, you know. Uh, you know, sometimes we do the opposite of we are raised a certain way. But to understand our parents and our grandparents, um, what they maybe what they went through, right? What they went through. And but you know, if you're the type of person who doesn't take any of that stuff into account, see, and this is what we're supposed to do as Christians, especially as Catholics, we're supposed to forgive. We're supposed to let go and let God, we're supposed to do this. It's a sign of maturity, and it's really a huge sign of immaturity when we refuse to grow past our parents. Understand what that means? Grow past your parents. Sometimes we just want to be just as good as them and then and no and no better, right? I don't want to improve on the situation, you know, or I just want to dwell in the past. And I tell you, my brothers and sisters, you are wasting your life. You are wasting your life. You are a prisoner, you are a slave to the past, a slave to the past. And so as we read these readings today, as we try to enter into the spiritual life of forgiveness and love and kindness, we will receive peace. We will receive healing, see. But what happens otherwise is we try to we should kind of turn into the person we hate, right? We turn into our, you know, our brother or sister or aunt or uncle or mother or father, or or you know, we get so involved in politics that we hate the other group, we hate the other person or people, or the ideology, whatever your ideology is, whether it be religious or non-religious. Being non-religious can be an ideology in itself, maybe even more lethal than the other, than any other, right? So there has to be reflection. We have to take the mature thing and reflect. And hopefully in these readings today, you'll be able to reflect on these things and start with the Word of God. You know, many of you, I'm not going to go to church. I'm not going to go back to the church, the Catholic church, because I had bad experiences in the past. Well, this is today you're grown up. So maybe we give it another try. See? Maybe we give it another try. Maybe, maybe the church that we were going to was not very healthy. See, that happens too. Maybe the pastor or the deacon or the sisters were not very good. Maybe they weren't very good. And I apologize for that. I'm sorry. But uh it happens in every organization, every institution. You have good people and you have bad people, and you have medium people, you have mediocre people, right? You have people who don't know what they're doing, people who are ignorant, people who are foolish. And um, so let's think about that. So let's give us something to think about before we start our readings. So here we go with our readings today. This is the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time. You can find us uh deaconlouisemble.com and any of your favorite podcast platforms. We do a podcast every week. We do the uh readings, the Sunday readings of Holy Mass. Then we preach on them, tell you about the catechism. Catechism teachings are also in there, too. It's CCC 674. That's uh our first uh catechism reasons. He will come again in glory. So we have to remember that. God is coming back, God is coming back, and the joke, and the joke is, and man is he mad, or the joke is and man is he happy, or I don't know. We'll see what happens. I think it'll be a combination of the two. First reading is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 56, verse one, and then verse six and seven. Thus says the Lord, observe what is right, do what is just, for my salvation is about to come, my justice about to be revealed. The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ministering to him, loving the name of the Lord, and becoming his servants, all who keep the Sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant. Then I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Our psalm bringing is Psalm sixty seven verses two through eight. Looks like two through three. They skip four, five, six, and eight. O God, let all the nations praise you. May God have pity on us and bless us. May He let His face shine upon us. So may your ways be known upon earth, among all nations your salvation. O God, let all the nations praise you. May the nations be glad and exalt because you rule the peoples in equity, the nations on the earth you guide. O God, let all the nations praise you. May be the peoples praise you, O God, may all the peoples praise you. May God bless us, and may all the ends of the earth fear him. O God, let all the nations praise you. Our second readings from the book of Romans chapter eleven, verses thirteen through fifteen, and then verse twenty nine through thirty two. Brothers and sisters, I am speaking to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glory in my ministry in order to make my race jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable, just as you once disobeyed God, but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now disobeyed in order that, by virtue of the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy, for God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all. The word of the Lord, thanks be to God. And our gospel reading today is from the Gospel of Matthew chapter fifteen, verse twenty one through twenty eight, a reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord. At that time Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre of Sidon, and behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, Have pity on me, Lord, son of David, my daughter is tormented by a demon. But Jesus said, But Jesus did not say a word in answer to her. Jesus' disciples came and asked him, Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us. He said in reply, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But the woman came and did Jesus homage, saying, Lord help me. He said in reply, It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs. She said, Please, Lord, even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters. Then Jesus said to her in reply, O woman, great is your faith. Let it be done to you as you wish. And the woman's daughter was healed from that hour. The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. May the words of this gospel wipe away our sins. Welcome, my brothers and sisters. My name is Deacon Louis Zimlich here in the Diocese of Kalmazou, Michigan. We're glad you're with us here today for this 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, also known as August 16th. Yesterday was August 15th, was the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a bunch of great feast days from last uh week as well. And to remember all of these beautiful feast days, including the queenship of the Blessed Mother on the 22nd of this month. All of these feasts, my brothers and sisters, are meant to point towards the divinity of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is the Son of God, the only Son of God, and the only Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the only child of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Right? So some churches will focus on uh the lack of holiness or things not being holy, but the original church, the true church, the holy Catholic Church, Mary is holy. Jesus is holy. Okay, the saints are holy. And and and really it's it's a matter of holiness, my brothers and sisters. And we've been battling with this for the last, I think, for maybe 4,000 years. You know, uh the devil hates holiness. And the devil gets in our minds and says, Oh, I got a really good idea for you. You should do this, you should start your own church because you're all that in a bag of chips, and people really like you. And you can have your own church and your own ministry, and you can baptize people any way you want and not have any records of it, and not have any records of this or that or the other thing. And it's okay, it's no big deal because we're just all living for the now. It's garbage, my brothers and sisters. There needs to be records kept. There needs to be history. There needs to be uh, you know, when your ancestors want to look back on on how you lived your life, you know, where you got buried, you know, what what religion you followed, you're gonna want that stuff set in place. You're just you're just gonna want that stuff set in place. And so that's why I'm a big promoter of the Holy Catholic Church, right? I mean, you know, we have our drawbacks, we have our duds, me included, we have our sinners, me included, we have those who make mistakes, me included. And uh, but this is this is our life. This is our life, my brothers and sisters. But some great words and great words from the Canaanite woman who who really, and of our gospel today, who really presses upon Jesus. Listen, even the dogs, even the dogs get scraps from the tables, right? And so, you know, as as in uh as as uh uh uh uh Saint uh Thomas Akempis, I don't know if he's a Saint Thomas Akempis, the Imitation of Christ book, he talks about us just being worms. And I think he talks about us being dogs too, because you know, look at us. Look at us fighting and just terrible. And you know, I thought to myself, I said, you know, and and I'm putting it out there right now, I invite everyone out there, no matter what religion you are, atheist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, uh whatever religion, atheist, whatever, agnostic, whatever you are, you're more than welcome to join the Holy Catholic Church. Our Jewish brothers and sisters, come and join. Our Muslim brothers, come and join the Holy Catholic Church. Because the fact of the matter is, my brothers and sisters, many of those churches out there would not invite you, would not invite you because of your past, because they have hatred towards you. It's very sick. And I think what a wonderful thing that would be for our Jewish brothers and sisters, our Muslim brothers and sisters. You know, the Pope come out and say, Listen, come, come into the church. You are all welcome, you are all loved. And this is what this Canaanite woman is showing us. Showing us. This is what the gospel is saying to us, saying to us, let it be done. Then Jesus said to her in reply, O woman, great is your faith, let it be done to you as you wish. And the woman's daughter was feel f was healed from that hour. We are all called to that, to enter into that moment. That moment, my brothers and sisters, with God. This is the God of love, not the God of death. And you see the appalling things with you know uh authorizing uh abortion up until uh nine months. And I'll tell you where it's heading, my brothers and sisters, because in Europe they're thinking about even making it so that the parents have the choice of whether or not to keep the child or to let the child live for a whole year after the time of birth to see if there's anything wrong with the child, to see if the child is not exactly what they wanted, so that they have the right to kill the child. This is sick. This is where we're heading. This is where we're heading with this. And some people would say, Oh, deacon, I don't know why you're so upset about that. It's unbelievable. But I'll tell you, there's another case too. We're in a surrogacy where the surrogate, the the mother who's the surrogate woman, that they discovered that the child has a birth defect, right? Has a problem with their heart. Well, judges ruled that that child should be born and should get be given the health care it needs, even though the parents who paid for the surrogacy want the child to be aborted, wanted the child to be destroyed. Because it's not what they want. See? It's a slippery slope. It is a dangerous thing, it is a very sick thing that we have entered into, my brothers and sisters. And this is who we are as human beings. Very selfish, very selfish. Drink water. Sorry about that. Okay, I'm probably gonna cough again. There it is. Okay, all right, so catechism of the Catholic Church on our reading from Romans. There's no teaching on Isaiah, no teaching on the psalm reading. The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ministering to him, loving the name of the Lord. A few more coughs, and I'll have the that last drop of water out of my throat. Observe what is right, do what is just. I mean, it's just kind of just the words are there, right? I mean, the words are there for us to just to understand, to understand. It's just really, it's just common sense, right? We would think of this as just just common sense. Why we cannot um I know why we can't do it because the world, we're attracted by the world. The world. The world says, you know, do whatever you want to do. Don't think about it, just do it. No. We need to think about things. Think about the um think about the repercussions of our actions. This is maturity, my brothers and sisters. You know, I mentioned this earlier at the beginning of the program, but this is maturity. And we have to stand back, sit back, and and ask ourselves, am I a mature person? I don't care if you're 15 or if you're 50. Have to ask yourself, am I a mature person? And the and the other thing to think about too is this with our marriages, the person who we're married to, because we truly are we become one flesh, my brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to do theology of the body. I don't have my list with me. But uh, because I'm doing the program remotely. So it's really um the theology of the body to think about that this week. Think about that. The theology of my body and my connectedness to my spouse, being connected to my spouse, me and my spouse being one person. You understand that? So we're all very focused on man, we're very, very focused on the man, very focused on the woman, but think about the two become one. This is God's plan. The two become one. You leave your mother and your father, you grow up, and you become one. You see this many times with older people, you see it with other couples too, younger couples, how they seem to just be getting along just marvelously, right? The two become one flesh. That's God's plan, my brothers and sisters, and it's a beautiful plan. So let me continue on here. We've got our uh the uh catechism teachings. It's got about six minutes left, or excuse me, eleven minutes left. 647, six, excuse me, six seventy-four of the catechism. This is from Romans 11, uh line number 571. I'll read this. Saint Paul echoes him. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, that will their acceptance mean but life for the dead. The full inclusion, here we go, the full inclusion of the Jews in the mess in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of the full number of the Gentiles. You understand that? The full number of the Gentiles, you know, all everybody else, every other religion, every other non-religion will enable the people of God to achieve the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, in which God may be all and in all. Romans 11, Luke 21, Ephesians 4, Ephesians 4, and 1 Corinthians 15. The names and the images of the church, the symbols of the church. Now listen to this. This is really good. That's why the church is the church. The church is the Catholic church. You know, many people get up in their Bible churches or their suffering churches, you know, hello church, hello, church. It's like, what is that? What are you talking about? Is that the church? The church is all of the baptized. And when you're saying that to those all the people out there, how many of them are baptized? The church is a cultivated field. Listen to this 755 of the catechism. The church is the cultivated field, the tillage of God. On that land, the ancient olive tree grows, whose holy roots were the prophets, and in which the reconciliation. Of the Jews and the Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about again. The land, like a choice vineyard, was being planted by the heavenly cultivator. Yet the true vine is Christ, who gives life and fruitfulness to the branches. It is to us who through the church remain in Christ, without whom we can do nothing.

unknown 22:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

The church is Catholic. The church and non Christians, those who have not yet received the gospel, are related to the people of God in various ways. The relationship of the church with the Jewish people, this is eight thirty nine of the catechism. When she delves into her own mystery, the church, the people of God in the new covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish people. The first to hear the word of God, the Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God's revelation in the old covenant. To the Jews belongs the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving, the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belongs the patriarchs, and of their race according to the flesh is the Christ. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. So beautiful. In brief, eighteen seventy, God has consigned all men and women to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all. Very interesting. You know, in some ways that's what that's what saves us, right? That's what saves us, saves us from ourselves. Okay, in Christ, this is the gospel, the gospel uh in Christ 439 of the catechism. Many of the Jews, even the Gentiles, who shared their hope in recognizing in Jesus the fundamental attributes of the messianic son of David, the promise by God to Israel. Jesus accepted his rightful title of Messiah, though with some reserve, because it was understood by some of his contemporaries to, in too human a sense, and essentially political. But no, here we go. It's probably one of my most favorite catechism listings, is 448. The Lord. Jesus is God, my brothers and sisters. Very often in the gospel, people address Jesus as Lord. This title testifies to the respect and the trust of those who approach him for help, including the Canaanite woman, right? She's not even Jewish. And yet she calls him Lord. She recognizes him, she knows that at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, Lord expresses the recognition of the divine mystery of Jesus. Divine, my brothers and sisters. Same thing with the all of the Marian doctrines to support the divinity of Jesus Christ. In the encounter, and it's very interesting that it is the mother, it is the mother, it is the line, it is the bloodline that shows this. That shows that this is God's plan of the Messiah. 448 of the catechism. In the encounter with the risen Jesus, the title becomes Adoration. Do you have adoration at your church? Holy Eucharistic adoration. If it's a Catholic church, yes. If it's an Orthodox church, yes. Adoration of Jesus Christ, worship, true worship. And to say these words, my Lord and my God. Whenever he did the elevation, he would say that the words of St. Thomas, my Lord and my God. In a very soft whisper. Beautiful. And thus it takes on the connotation of love and affection that remains proper to the Christian tradition. It is the Lord. See? It is the Lord. And then finally, this, my brothers and sisters, prayer, right? It's just fitting that we end with prayer in just the last couple minutes here. 2610 of the catechism. Pray, pray, pray, my brothers and sisters. God loves you. I'm just telling you this right now. God loves you, and He is crazy about you, and He wants you to be just like this Canaanite woman. Wants you to be just like her. To not have this great faith. And that's what she had. She had this great faith. Just as Jesus prays to the Father and gives thanks before receiving his gifts, so he teaches us filial boldness. Whatever you ask in prayer, believe and you receive it, and you will. Such is the power of prayer and the faith that does not doubt. All things are possible to him who believes. Jesus is saddened by the lack of faith of his own neighbors and the little faith of his own disciples, as he is struck with admiration of the great faith of the Roman centurion and the Canaanite woman. My brothers and sisters, let us be like a Roman centurion and the Canaanite woman to have great faith, even if we have not yet been baptized, even if we have not yet come in to the Holy Catholic Church. But let us be like her in adoration, humbly, getting on our knees, talking to God. Whether you're baptized or not, you know, that will come, that will come. But today, get on your knees and ask God, God, come to me. Help me change my mind. Help me to be like this Canaanite woman. Help me to speak to you, Lord. Help me to speak to you in a way of respect and love and to cherish you and to adore you and adoration with true worship. True worship, my brothers and sisters in the Holy Catholic Church. May Almighty God bless you. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you all. We love you. Pray, pray, pray, and forgive. Forgive your enemies.