(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Mass-Blog-for-the-12th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2026.mp3)
Bullying has become an art on social media. It takes many forms, from the disguised insults of “frenemies” to the open mockery of cyber harassers. But this is an ancient art form, as we see in this Sunday’s readings. The prophet Jeremiah suffered so much from persecution and rejection in his 40-year ministry that the mockery continued even after his death when readers of his words called him “the weeping prophet.” Try hearing Jeremiah’s voice this Sunday as we read his words:
“I hear the whisperings of many: ‘Terror on every side! Denounce! Let us denounce him!’ All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine. ‘Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail, and take our vengeance on him.’” (Jeremiah 20:10-13)
Like all victims of bullying, Jeremiah longed for revenge, as a few lines later he prays,
“O LORD of hosts, you who test the just, who probe mind and heart, let me witness the vengeance you take on them.”
The God we worship knows every form of our mockery, as He has been its target since Satan turned Adam and Eve against Him in the Garden of Eden. How can the created mock the Creator?
We do so with the false gods we choose to displace Him. There are many, all of whom cater to our base desires rather than giving us the love we need to resemble the God who made us in His image. We mock God when we try to imitate God’s power rather than His mercy. We then quickly turn that unholy spirit of bullying against the other souls God puts in our lives to make us holy. Instead of trying to make others better, we try to make them worse—which only worsens us by further distancing us from the one and only true God.
Bullies and their victims hunger for revenge, but as Moses quotes God in Deuteronomy 32:35, “Vengeance is mine!” This is not a vengeance God needs to take on us, but a self-fulfilling prophecy of our own making, as Moses later quotes God as asking, “Where are their gods,the rock in whom they took refuge, who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their libations? Let them rise up now and help you! Let them be your protection!”
By denying the existence of the one real God, we turn our backs on God’s love and protection.
Jesus speaks to us like a consoling mother and a virile brother in Sunday’s gospel reading (Matthew 10:26-33) as he reunites us with reality, comforting us bullied souls with these reassuring words:
“Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”
Those who deny such comfort to others deny it to themselves. They repeat the original sin of Adam by embracing the false gods Satan used to bully him away from the One he was created to resemble. Such bullying only makes us resemble the bully. So God made Himself to look like us so we could reverse course and look more like Him in the form of Jesus the Christ.
Paul’s reminder to the Romans is a reminder to us that not only can’t God be bullied, neither does he need vengeance. Christ’s success is God’s most powerful revenge:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head,” Paul says in Romans 12:20-21. “Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.”
That good flows abundantly from Christ’s cross and into our hearts. And as Paul also tells the Romans in this Sunday’s second reading,
“The gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.” (Romans 5:12-15)
The abundance of God’s eternal Kingdom has no room for our temporary world’s bullies.
–Tom Andel