Today is Laetare Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Lent. On this day, Holy Mother Church invites us to relax our Lenten discipline. The traditional words of today’s entrance antiphon – what would traditionally be sung at the beginning of Mass instead of an opening hymn – sound out with the words of the prophet Isaiah: […]
Read more "That I may believe in 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"“It has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters, … that there are rivalries among you.” In today’s epistle, St. Paul issues a rebuke to the Christians at Corinth. He has heard that there are rivalries and divisions among the Christians. He is probably disappointed. It has not been very long at […]
Read more "Unity in the Family"One of the joys of the Christmas season we just finished is receiving mail. Most of the time, our mailboxes do not contain many things we would like to receive – just advertisements, bills, and credit card offers. But for about a month, we are transported to another era when our mailboxes are filled with […]
Read more "Glorious in God’s Sight"
Father Gregerson 