What Does Sabbath Mean to You?
Recently I was in an R.C.I.A. meeting and as a group we were looking at today’s First reading. As our leader read the text for us, we were asked to listen intently and then share a word or phrase that we heard that really jumped out at us. The line that kept replaying in my mind was, “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” As we shared our responses …
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Wow, the people who were in the assembly that day must have had some interesting conversations when they left the synagogue and headed for home. This was not your typical sabbath gathering with just the usual prayers and hymns and message from the rabbi. As I read and thought about today’s gospel, there were a few questions that came to mind and if you will indulge me, I would like to share these questions with you.
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Mary, A Model of Faith
Talk about a jampacked weekend. Sunday we are celebrating Epiphany, and then right back to church on Monday to celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. I would like to use this reflection to focus on Mary, and what a model of faith she is for all of us. The Solemnity of Mary, from the church in Canada’s pointof view, carries a great deal of importance as it …
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Fear or Love – What is our Starting Point?
As I sit to write this reflection I am just back in the office after one week’s holidays. While it is always nice to have some time to relax and re-energize, the one thing a week’s holiday makes crystal clear to me is that I am nowhere near ready for retirement. While my birth certificate is telling me that I am coming to a time in my …
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“I thank you Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”
Two weeks ago, I was involved in Vacation Bible School and this line from our gospel today really came to life. At Vacation Bible School we have children from many different parishes in our diocese and at times from beyond and other faith traditions as well. We also have a wonderfully international …
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“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
It has been mentioned to me by wife on more than one occasion that she may need to point out a task that needs to be done more than once to get any results. Guilty as charged in some instances. If I am being honest, the tasks I don’t tackle right away are the ones I either don’t want to do, or …
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How quickly life can change. That is never more apparent than in the two readings we hear this morning from Matthew’s Gospel. In the first, Jesus is the toast of the town as he enters Jerusalem. Crowds are gathering to offer praise, going so far as to spread their cloaks on the road. By the time we get to the second Gospel, crowds have again gathered (probably a lot of the same people), but for an entirely different purpose. …
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Many years ago, I read a quote that said (and I paraphrase), “Give people a reputation they will want to live up to.” Since then, I have tried to make this a motto for my life and to live it as best I could. To say that I was 100% successful in doing this would be to give myself a reputation I have not lived up to. In one of our R.C.I.A. sessions last year, we were talking about …
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Last Sunday we were introduced to John the Baptist through Matthew’s gospel and his description of how John was baptizing any-and-all comers in the river Jordan. In reading Matthew’s description of John, his clothing, his dietary choices and his no nonsense, in-your-face method of bringing people to God, I can see why so many people went to see what all the fuss was about. I think for many who went to see him, they were already entrenched in their own religion; …
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I have been blessed to be on the team that writes these scripture reflections for over ten years, so it stands to reason that every now and then I would be writing about the same group of readings as I had in the past. This is one of those weeks, and I have to say that it is so true that you can read the same passage of scripture countless times and it can impact you in very different ways …
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