Our Lent and Easter liturgies give us access to many sensitive conversations between Jesus and his disciples. Any one of these can stand alone as the basis of a key lesson. This Sunday’s readings are interconnected. Both the first and…
Poor Thomas. Thanks to this Sunday’s gospel reading (Jn 20:19-31) he became the poster boy for flagging faith. To this day “Doubting Thomas” is the generic label for anyone demonstrating a negative attitude toward someone else’s good news. For someone…
Judas wasn’t the only disciple of Christ to kill himself after his master’s death sentence, but he was the only one who didn’t live to testify about it. As Easter Sunday’s readings open, a newly minted version of Peter takes…
For beings with free will, we of the human race are pretty predictable. This is especially evident in the readings for this Palm Sunday. They indicate that not only did Jesus know what was about to happen to him at…
Faithful people are in a constant state of rebirth. That’s one of the themes from this Sunday’s mass readings. Every human being experiences birthing once. For many of us that process concluded with a smack or some other stimulus to…
On this fourth Sunday of Lent we celebrate reconciliation. This word has a couple different meanings, but in today’s readings those differences are reconciled. The first meaning is “to restore friendly relations; to coexist in harmony; to make peace.” The…
Mankind’s most serious sin is taking the Lord’s name in vain; not so much the GD and JC stuff, but the big I AM. We don’t often appreciate the importance of what saying I AM means. Moses did. Our first…
On this the second week of Lent, we receive an important reminder to help us stay focused on why this is such an important time in the Church year. Yes, we fast, but this is for renovation, not deprivation. The…
It’s not often that we benefit from the devil’s actions, but this Sunday’s gospel reading shows him doing us a great favor. Indirectly, by trying to goad Jesus into several acts of selfish pride, we actually learn important lessons in prayer. Jesus’…
After months of exposure to the self-serving hot air rising from some of the people fighting for the U.S. presidency, this Sunday’s mass readings are refreshingly Marxist. Groucho, not Karl. Groucho Marx once resigned his membership from an exclusive Hollywood…