I’m beginning to appreciate the importance of the gospel stories we’ve had over the last three Sundays. Like I mentioned last weekend, in the Early Church, a person could not be baptized unless they were familiar with the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well (two Sundays ago), the story of the Man Born Blind (last Sunday), and today’s story of the Raising of Lazarus from the Dead. With each story we get a little bit closer to the ...
Continue Reading →
There is a drive in all three readings to leave the past in the past and to forge a new future. The reason this drive is in the readings is because it’s the fundamental drive in God, and since Jesus came to do God’s will, it’s the fundamental drive in Jesus as well—to make all things new. We cannot make all things new without God nor without letting go of the past. Holding onto past sins or living in a ...
Continue Reading →
Ordinary Miracles
A scant four weeks ago the Church returned to Ordinary Time, by far its longest liturgical season, making up two thirds of the Church year. Ordinary Time … one would think nothing significant happens when we are in the midst of the ordinary. We think of ordinary as drab, boring, mundane. Yet most of us live in primarily ordinary, humdrum ways. And too often, we waste those days anticipating our next big adventure. Have we missed something, I wonder?
After ...
Continue Reading →
When we experience the best things in life, we don’t have words to describe those things. We stand there with our mouths open, and we are at a loss for words; it’s just that good. Equally true, when we experience the worst things in life, we go numb. We lose words. All we can do is weep. Tears replace words.
When it comes to our faith, especially in our feeble attempts to describe what God is like, we just know our ...
Continue Reading →
In the opening line of this gospel story we just heard, we are told that some Greeks have come to Jerusalem obviously to a Jewish festival. These Greek-speaking people are non-Jews, or what we call “Gentiles.” They have heard something intriguing about this Jesus, and whatever has stirred within them, they cannot let it go unaddressed. They want to make an appointment and so they say to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The reason the Greeks go to ...
Continue Reading →
A few years ago, someone close to me learned through DNA testing that one of the parents who raised her was not a biological parent. This sent waves of shock through her family, in part because half her DNA was from an entirely different race of people with a different language and culture. “Your ancestry DNA certainly sounds more interesting than mine,” was my response, which I now know was cavalier, given the personal and emotional upheavel she was experiencing. ...
Continue Reading →
The Breaths of Life
Patience is not one of my virtues. Lack of it is probably one of my more glaring faults. While I have spent much time in my life praying for patience, persuaded to continue to do so by a priest friend when I was about to give up (or run the risk, he felt, of losing my trust in God’s willingness to respond to our prayers 😊) that particular prayer has not, as yet, been answered.
The first reading ...
Continue Reading →