“This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.” So often we can just gloss over our Lord’s words because we have become accustomed to hearing them. We lose sight of the incredibly surprising nature of our Lord’s promises. He tells us today that if we […]
Read more "So You May Eat It and not Die"“What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.” What does it mean that Christ’s teaching is new? Or more importantly, how is Christ’s teaching new for you? The world has frequently convinced us that Christianity, and especially Catholicism, is just the opposite of something new. […]
Read more "Rediscovering the Newness of the Gospel"“Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.” These enigmatic words of our Lord are a challenge for interpretation. Does our Lord really mean that we should not call anyone, “father,” “dad,” “daddy,” or so forth? No, this is not what He means. Rather, our Lord’s injunction to call […]
Read more "Calling God our Father"“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"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"Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we reach the zenith of our celebration of Christmas with the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. This feast was historically more important than the Nativity or Christmas (and in many cultures today is still celebrated with much festivity – it wasn’t until 1955 that Christmas ranked higher […]
Read more "Adoring like the Magi"The Sacred Liturgy sets before us a difficult theme today: the accomplishment of God’s will in the face of suffering and adversity. It is a particular feature of the ancient Roman liturgy that all of the texts of the Mass are chosen for each other and fit together. The entrance antiphon, or introit, which has […]
Read more "Forgiveness and the Problem of Evil"We have been reading at Sunday Mass for the past five weeks from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, our Lord’s famed Bread of Life discourse. It is perhaps the most important chapter in St. John’s account of our Lord’s public ministry, because in it He lays the groundwork for the Church’s faith in […]
Read more "Following Jesus by Receiving Him in Holy Communion"Probably none of us here know what it is like to feel starvation, to have gone days without food and to feel the life going out of us. It is likely, though, that each of us have had some taste of this at times in our lives by experiencing severe hunger because of an illness, […]
Read more "Going Without Meals: The necessity of frequent communion"
Father Gregerson 