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. The ...
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I mentioned last weekend how you could not become a member of the Early Church unless you had some knowledge of the story of the Woman at the Well (two Sundays ago), the story of the Man Born Blind (last Sunday), and the story of the Raising of Lazarus (today’s story). Catechists, those who were a little bit more adept, led those who were inept into these stories, led them out of these stories, and help them to apply these ...
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Back in 2017, I was responsible for the reflection for this same Sunday – the Lazarus story. I wrote, “I am the resurrection and the light, and whoever believes in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” These are the words that can sustain us at a time when we are vulnerable to feelings of shock, numbness, sadness, loneliness, helplessness, anger – all part of the grieving process for those ...
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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 life.
Isn’t ...
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Jesus’ disciples asked, “who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?’ I hear some variation on this question almost every week in the hospital. “What did I do to deserve this?’ ‘Why are we being punished?” “What should I have done differently?” When bad things happen, most of us look for something that will make life seem fair and, perhaps even more important, predictable. We want to be able to see what is coming so that ...
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When Jesus replied to a religious student asking, “Who is my neighbor?” the story of the Good Samaritan was given to all of us. In today’s gospel from John, another story about a Samaritan is told. What do these stories tell us about our faith and how does our faith guide us?
A letter from Archbishop Valery Vienneau back in December of 2014 states, “the dwindling number of practicing Catholics forces us to reconsider our priorities as Christian communities whose primary ...
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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 ...
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For the weeks leading up to Lent, those of us at St. Elizabeth of the Trinity have been listening to Fr. Phil remind us what Jesus was trying to tell us through his Sermon on the Mount: that we are to be light, salt and blessing to the world; in fact, that we are light, salt and blessing. Then as we entered Lent we heard that our temptation is not to believe or live that. This Sunday, the story of ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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