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Church year, the liturgical year, begins pretty much the way it ends–with readings that are not easy to interpret or apply to our lives. They are quite philosophical and full of end-time imagery that leaves you thinking, “What could this possibly mean for us in this place and in this time?” Or you might say in mid-life, “Where is this whole thing going?” Or again, for those of you well past mid-life, “Is the whole world going to hell in ...

You may have grown up thinking of the Season of Advent as that four-week sprint just before Christmas.  Or, maybe you thought of it as the appetizer whose sole purpose was to get you to the main course—Christmas!  When you’re a kid waiting for presents (present company included), four weeks of Advent can seem like an eternity.  To say that the Season of Advent is four weeks long is liturgically correct albeit a bit short-sighted.  The Reign of God broke ...

We don’t use it in everyday language, but you may have heard the word “apocalypse”. Apocalypse is a Greek word meaning “revelation”— something is being revealed. So, the Book of Revelation, that second reading we heard from, is considered apocalyptic writing. The first reading, from the Book of Daniel, is also considered apocalyptic writing. Apocalyptic writing has to do with the end time (and here we are at the end of the liturgical year) and what will be revealed in ...

Naïve story #1: As a young child, and listening to music coming from a transistor radio, I thought there was a shrunken jazz band actually inside the radio. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works, even though I still have no idea how transmitters or receivers work. Naïve story #2: As a young child, when the collection basket was being passed around during Mass, I thought all of the money collected—100% of it–was going to help the poor. A ...

Only certain songs pass the test of time and are still sung or played on the radio decades after they first came out. One such song is Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” which made its debut in 1974.  If you’re not familiar with it, the song is centered on a little boy who absolutely adores his father. The child wants nothing more than his father’s attention, but his father is too busy with work and commitments. The father keeps promising ...

This gospel passage was one of the most important scripture stories told to those seeking baptism in the Church in the first few centuries.  It has lots to teach us as well.  Remember, only adults were baptized during the first 350 years of the Church’s existence. Back then, what they called the Catechumenate–and what we call the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults–catechists told those seeking baptism the story of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar.  You could not become a Christian, unless a catechist ...