Blog

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 life. 

Isn’t ...

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 in ...

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 our ...

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 over ...

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 the ...