“Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert … He … let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers.” In these lines from the first reading, Moses is reminding the Israelite people of […]
Read more "Being Spiritually Full"Over the past few weeks we have celebrated a lot of important feasts in the Church’s calendar that commemorate some of the most important events in Jesus’s life: His Resurrection at Easter, the Ascension of the Lord into Heaven, and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. All of these mysteries that we have […]
Read more "The Family as the Image of the Trinity"Audio from last Sunday’s sermon, given at the Diocesan Ignited youth retreat: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-RU6C0rf1rPNTBxOGk4N0FjaGs
Read more "The Voice of the Good Shepherd"When the Hebrew people were preparing to leave Egypt, the Lord instructed them to slaughter the best lamb from their flocks and to paint their doorways with its blood, so that the angel of death would pass over their houses as he went through the cities of the Egyptians, striking the first born son of […]
Read more "Ransomed by the Blood of Christ"“He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said.” When pilgrims to the Holy Land approach the most holy of all sites in the world – the Lord’s tomb, the place of His Resurrection – they are greeted ironically by these words spoken today by the angel: “Non est hic – […]
Read more "Finding the Resurrected Christ"“When [Christ] was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” When we look at Christ crucified, my brothers and sisters, perfection is not usually what comes to mind. Tragedy, sorrow, suffering, guilt – these are the thoughts and emotions that normally occur to believers when we see Christ […]
Read more "Perfection in Suffering"“Eli, eli, lema sabachthani.” These are, perhaps, the most haunting words in the entire Sacred Scriptures. Jesus Christ, God made man, hangs upon the Cross and cries out from amidst His torture, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These words have vexed theologians and believers for centuries. Why does the Son of […]
Read more "To Reign Victorious"Around the familiar story of the raising of Lazarus is an often-overlooked frame of our Lord’s travels around the countryside of Palestine and the building tension surrounding Him. The selections from the Gospel of St. John these past few weeks have all had a brooding undercurrent, a darkening cloud settling around the public ministry of […]
Read more "“Let us also go to die with Him.”"There is a strong focus in the readings today on the living water that Christ wants to give us. It is greater than the water Moses obtains for the Israelites in the desert because this water is Christ Himself. The second part of the Gospel seems, though, to veer off onto another topic when our […]
Read more "Worshiping in Spirit and in Truth"What does our Lord’s Transfiguration have to do with Lent? It seems, at first, to be a strange story to choose, and yet, for centuries, the Church has read this Gospel on the second Sunday of Lent. Why? We can understand the events of the life of our Lord better if we understand them in […]
Read more "Our Heavenly Goal"
