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Apparently, in the Early Church, you could not be welcomed into the Church, through baptism, unless you were guided into the spiritual insights of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (last Sunday’s gospel), the story of the man born blind (today’s gospel), and the story of the raising of Lazarus (next Sunday’s gospel).  Sponsors or mentors guided you into these stories, guided you out of these stories, and helped you to apply these stories to your own …

For all their goodness, intelligence, and enthusiasm, many in the younger generation lack patience. For the most part, they see little or no value in “delayed gratification.” In time they will learn, what we all had to learn, that some things really are worth waiting for. Learning this lesson will be particularly painful and frustrating for the generation who grew up in a world of fast food, high-speed internet, and smart phones. With the invention of the credit card …

We spent the last four weeks on the mountain listening to Jesus deliver what we traditionally call the “Sermon on the Mount.” If you recall, it all began with Jesus ascending the mountain not to look down on us, but to get us to look up. He ascended the mountain to tell us the truth about who we are from God’s perspective. We are blessedness, salt and light, and we are challenged to let the blessedness, salt and light work in …

One of the most powerful rituals I ever experienced was not one of the Church’s sacraments nor did it happen in a church building. It was a ritual I experienced on a Men’s Rite of Passage Retreat. One entire day of the retreat was dedicated to the topic of grief and how we experience it or, to our own detriment, avoid it. The ritual involved lots and lots of ashes. We laid in them, we knelt in them, we poured them …

I remember, when my mother was still alive, she wouldn’t let us get away with anything. She was as they say, “honest as the day is long.” One time, when I was 17 years old, she was a passenger with me as I stopped to gas up the car. That was when you could drive all week on $20 dollars-worth of gas and still have money to spare. I did my best, on that particular fill up, to stop …

We continue, for the third week, to be on Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. We started off by saying the Beatitude are ways of seeing. Jesus wants us to see and love in ourselves what God sees and loves in us. What God sees and loves in us is blessedness, salt, and light.  In the Beatitudes, Jesus says “blessed are you” eight times, and then he gives us two more truths about ourselves: “You are …

From time to time, a man, a woman, and occasionally a child, will emerge in the Church to remind us that prophets still walk among us.  Prophets, whether within the Church or beyond its boundaries, are often ahead of their time, misunderstood, and suffer ridicule and indifference.  More often than not, they are appreciated only after they are long dead.  Prophets point us to a larger reality where we can situate our lives and our decisions, both good and …

We heard in the opening line of last week’s gospel passage: When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain. He spoke to us from the mountain in what we traditionally call the Sermon on the Mount. This sermon begins with the Beatitudes where Jesus told us, no less than eight times, “Blessed are you.” We said that the first four beatitudes tell us that we have transcendence power. In other words, there is a power within us …

There was a well-known German philosopher, Max Scheler, who said that Zacchaeus came to see and love in himself what Jesus saw and loved in him. And that Peter, gradually and progressively, came to see and love in himself what Jesus saw and loved in him. It’s not a bad way of summarizing a lot of gospel spirituality. In the Beatitudes that we just heard, all that blessedness stuff, Jesus is telling us what he sees in us, and …

Once in the first reading, from Isaiah, and twice in the gospel we just heard, “the land” or “the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali” mentioned. On first hearing, I just want to skim over these words, these ancient Biblical places, and get on with the rest of the Scripture story. Historically Zebulun and Naphtali mean nothing to me, but metaphorically and symbolically they may have something to say to us. Geography and spirituality are more linked than we realize.