Not that there isn’t enough food for thought in these readings because there really is—I nonetheless would like to start by first going back to something we heard in last Sunday’s second reading. Let me refresh your memory from a week ago. In the Letter to the Hebrews it said, “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries to the one who was able to save him from death…” However, when I listen to the Passion reading of …
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In the opening line of this gospel story we just heard, we are told that some Greeks have come to Jerusalem obviously to a Jewish festival. These Greek-speaking people are non-Jews, or what we call “Gentiles.” They have heard something intriguing about this Jesus, and whatever has stirred within them, they cannot let it go unaddressed. They want to make an appointment and so they say to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The reason the Greeks go …
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Testing or Trusting?
As a kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the two things’ boys talked about most on the school yard were “Friday Night at the Fights” (boxing from Madison Square Garden in N.Y.C.) and stuntman Evel Knievel. We didn’t have pay-per-view, the wide range of live stream venues, or the internet to entertain us. Evel Knievel was a motorcycle daredevil who performed death-defying jumps over buses, cars, and even canyons to the …
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This story of Jesus upsetting the tables of the moneychangers and speaking about destroying and rebuilding the Temple is not only very visual but also is found in all four gospels. John, the gospel writer we heard from today, places the story at the beginning of Jesus ministry while Matthew, Mark, and Luke place it near the end. By placing it near the end of Jesus’ ministry, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are suggesting that this talk and action of …
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A few years ago, I had the privilege of being on Mount Tabor, the mountain of Jesus’ transfiguration. While it was “good to be there,” I have to admit, it was a little anticlimactic. It would have been wonderful if, on that day, the words of today’s gospel would have come true where it says, “they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.” I didn’t get to that personal moment with Jesus alone, not even in my …
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On Ash Wednesday we celebrated, as we do each year, a rite called the “Imposition of Ashes.” It sounds like throwback language the Church used long ago, yet there is something to this word. An imposition is something imposed on us that seems unfair or something that makes an unwelcomed demand on us. The boss asks you to do more at work without necessarily increasing your salary is an imposition. It’s an unwelcomed demand and doesn’t seem fair. Impositions …
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Almost all the Scripture readings we hear at liturgy, we hear only once every three years. One of the exceptions to this pattern is the Ash Wednesday readings; we get them every year. From it, we hear that Jesus is all for prayer, fasting, and almsgiving and thinks we should be, too. However, he warns against parading these classic Lenten disciplines before others. Perhaps he saw too much of this in the Pharisees of his time and how far …
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In both the first reading and the gospel, we have references to leprosy. That first reading, from the book of Leviticus, speaks about the consequences of being diagnosed with leprosy. The consequence is that lepers had to wear torn clothes, had to let their hair become disheveled, had to live outside the camp, and had to announce in a loud voice when approaching others, “Unclean, unclean!” Those where some of the consequences of living with leprosy, but the deep …
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As always, a little bit of context might help us enter into these Scripture readings. In the Mediterranean world, the world where Jesus walked the earth, the world where all our books of the Bible emerged from—in that world every gift carried the expectation of a gift in return. However, don’t think of it as a tit-for-tat world where you only return a favor to those who have shown you favor, or where you only love those who have …
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A common thread from the three Scripture readings we just heard from, is that they are all “call stories”; someone is being called by God. And, like all Scripture stories, they are not just stories about people during Biblical times, but they are speaking to us here and now. In the first story, God calls Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and preach repentance to them. In the second reading, Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians …
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