“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"My family’s big sport was baseball. We spent so many hours playing, watching, or thinking about playing baseball. Dad was the coach for our coach’s pitch team. We would spend what seemed like endless hours throwing, catching, and fielding the balls the Dad would hit to us. But what we really wanted, what I think […]
Read more "Temptation and Baseball"Today we begin one of Holy Mother Church’s most ancient observances, the solemn fast of Lent. The ashes that we receive today are a relic of what in the early days of the Church was called the order of penitents. Before the sacrament of confession because widely available in the Middle Ages, it was only […]
Read more "The Order of Penitents"Judgment. Whenever we hear that word, we tend to cringe. Judgment. It seems to have a very negative connotation. Judgment, to many people, means a harsh decision, a punishment. We are probably reminded of the words of our Lord, “Judge not,lest you be judged.” Many of us have come to associate judging as a sin. […]
Read more "Don’t Judge Me!"“Share your bread with the hungry … shelter the oppressed and the homeless … clothe the naked … do not turn your back on your own … lavishly he gives to the poor.” If I were to ask how we could describe all of these injunctions in one word, I suspect that most of us […]
Read more "Sharing your bread is not charity"I returned yesterday evening from Washington, DC, where I participated along with several hundreds of thousands of people from our parish, our Diocese, and from the entire country in marching to demand legal protections for unborn children. Before moving abroad in 2011 I used to attend the March for Life annually, but it had been […]
Read more "Those Who Are Nothing"
