Every time Jesus tells a parable or performs a miracle or teaches us something, it is always a revelation. What is being revealed is God and the Kingdom of God. If we walk away in amazement, as many do in the gospels, we lose the revelation. But if we ponder the teaching, the parable, or the miracle, we not only learn the truth about God and God’s Kingdom, we also learn the truth about ourselves.
In today’s gospel story, we have ...
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The gospel today relates the parable of Jesus overcoming the death of a young girl. Her father implored Jesus to come and lay His hands on her so that she could live. When Jesus and the man came to the house, they were told the child had died. Jesus took her hand and she rose and began to walk. This was one of the many miracles performed by Jesus as He ministered to the people.
We have all heard about miracles. ...
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When the news broke a couple of weeks ago concerning the discovery of 215 bodies of children buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C., I, like the rest of you, was shocked, disappointed, angry, embarrassed, saddened (and the adjectives go on). While I am still processing the magnitude of this tragedy, I just feel I have to say something knowing full well that this something will always be inadequate. I want to try, nonetheless.
Blaise Pascal, the ...
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You don’t have to live long on this earth to have had an experience that has threatened your peace or well-being. Perhaps the image of a storm is the best metaphor to express what that was like. Job, in the first reading, is the one who epitomizes the expression, “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.” Everything was taken from Job (crops, livestock, family, and his health). It was like he was in a storm that would never ...
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A verse from a song that I learned in Religious Education many years ago has been echoing in my head ever since I read this week’s scripture passages.
I saw Christ in wind and thunder.
Joy is tried by storm.
Christ asleep within my boat,
whipped by wind yet still afloat.
Joy is tried by storm.
Whether we are talking about the personal storms that I see each day in the hospital, the current global storms such as the pandemic and climate change, or the ...
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Every time we gather for Eucharist, the first reading we listen to is from the Hebrew Scriptures (what we used to call the “Old Testament”). The older the writing is, the further removed it is from our own experience. So, we need to get into the context of these ancient texts if they are to have something to say to us in our present-day context. Whenever I try to do that, I’m always surprised that their context, way back then, ...
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A few weeks ago, I ran into a student I had taught in Middle School over 40 years ago. He related how he was so grateful for the conversations we had shared, and that he wanted me to know that he had “taken my advice,” and had gone into a field of study he has now come to love. I was ashamed to realize that I had only vague memories of the student and had no recollection of any words ...
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“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me!” These brave words, shouted at other children hurling insults, are simply not true. Words have power to hurt, as cyber bullying shows; and yet also have power to heal, as shouting back at bullies mitigates the pain. In the new catechism, St. Augustine is quoted as saying that the sacraments receive their power by combining words with material elements (1228). At the time of my First Holy ...
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Bridging us from the great 50-day season of Easter to Ordinary Time, are a couple of significant feast days in the Church’s liturgical calendar. One of these is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity or Trinity Sunday, which we celebrate today. In the eyes of the Church, “a solemnity is a feast day of the highest rank, celebrating a mystery of faith.” In other words, a solemnity is kind of a big deal.
The Trinity is kind of a big ...
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Seven years ago, just a few days before we celebrated what we are celebrating today—Pentecost—we were very much like the disciples in today’s gospel. They locked themselves in the Upper Room out of fear. Similarly, we locked ourselves in our houses for the same reason—fear. A young man had killed three Mounties and was still on the loose. Thank goodness events of that magnitude are rare. What was not so rare in Jesus’ time, and still in our time, is ...
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