Feast of the Presentation of the Lord
Have you ever tried to place yourself in someone else shoes? Depending on the situation, it can be difficult. However, the act of trying to see a situation from another person’s point of view can help us gain a perspective or understanding which seems beyond our usual grasp. Sometimes, what I glean teaches me a truth that I would rather not face. It gives a glimpse into a world that I did not even know existed. This tool helps when reflecting upon a scripture whose depth seems beyond the reach of my imagination.
Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
I have been thinking lately about what it means to believe in Jesus and to affirm that I am a Christian, so as I reflected on today’s readings I was reminded of the fact that it is not enough to have the kind of faith that simply acknowledges that God is there or that Jesus is Lord. We are also called to act in response to the recognition of these articles of faith; however, it is so easy not to do so. Our failure to act in response to them can demonstrate a lack of belief that it is really worth taking them seriously.
Memorial of Saint John Bosco, priest
It can be easy to become discouraged when we look around our world today. People, even children, are dying from war, poverty, and starvation. Our environment is abused and taken for granted. And to many that we pass on the streets or in the stores, life is an apparently meaningless series of events that simply precede death. But, as our readings remind us, such a bleak picture is not the Christian view. Rather, we are meant to embody faith, hope and love, despite the challenges and difficulties and even failures we witness each day.
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
How many of us think of ourselves as “serious Christians?” If you are one of the people who put your hand up, here is a second question: What is the standard against which you evaluate your being a “serious Christian?” Are there criteria by which you judge yourself? For example, for some it is never missing mass on Sunday. For others, it is being pro-life, or reading the Bible each day, or saying morning or evening prayer. For yet other people it is about being good to other people and being in church regularly. But today is about you. Do you think of yourself as a serious follower of Jesus?
Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
“Who has faith?” is perhaps the driving question of Mark’s gospel. In today’s reading, the disciples prove themselves deficient. At first read, their fear of the oncoming storm seems quite reasonable – they’re afraid because their little boat is already filling up with water! (Mk 4: 37). Yet, Mark concludes the Parable of the Mustard Seed, which immediately precedes this story, by telling us that Jesus explained everything to his disciples in private without the use of parables (Mk 4:34). With this set up we expect the disciples to understand the scope of Jesus’ power, but they don’t. Even after the miracle, the disciples question who He is (Mk 4:41).
Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, priest and doctor of the Church
People recognized St. Thomas as an extraordinary mind in his own day, but I am not sure anyone would have predicted that he would become THE theologian for the 20th and 21st centuries too. He lived and died in the 13th century and he wrote about questions of God that occurred to people then. His method was usually to start small: with a seemingly insignificant or obvious question like, "Is it necessary, after all, to think about 'sacred doctrine'?" Most people would readily answer "yes" or "no" without hesitation - but Thomas takes his time thinking through all the implications, problems and benefits of thinking about God and God's doctrines.
Thursday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
(Sorry that this reflection was posted by mistake last Monday)
“Is a lamp to be placed in a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand?” asks Jesus in today’s gospel passage from Mark (Mk. 4:21). The answer to this is quite obvious; a light is not made to be hidden or secret. One way of interpreting this passage is in relation to our lives as Christians. We are not called to live our Christianity in secret, consigning it to the private areas of our lives. Rather, we are called to witness to God’s love in each action of our lives, bearing testimony to the multitude of blessings God has given us.
Memorial of Saint Timothy and Saint Titus, bishops
Have you ever tried to plant a seed or a seedling? Which one of us just throws a seed on the ground and hopes for the best? Not many and perhaps not any. Instead most of us work the soil first. We prepare it by adding fresh dirt or even manure, and then we plant the seed. All of this work is then followed by the wait. Occasionally we water or pull a weed, however if we have done our preparation well, we wait. And waiting can be difficult especially if we have invested ourselves into the seed’s growth.
Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, the apostle
Conversion means "to turn about" and that's what Paul's conversion in Damascus (Acts 22:3-16; Acts 9:1-22) reminds me of - he did a very quick turnabout from being a hater of Christians to being their apostle! If anyone was astonished by Paul's turning, it must have been the original apostles who knew Paul to be a persecutor and no friend. The shorter second version says exactly that the people were "confounded" by Paul. Paul himself was confounded, too, the scriptures make clear.
Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, bishop and doctor of the Church
“Is a lamp to be placed in a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand?” asks Jesus in today’s gospel passage from Mark (Mk. 4:21). The answer to this is quite obvious; a light is not made to be hidden or secret. One way of interpreting this passage is in relation to our lives as Christians. We are not called to live our Christianity in secret, consigning it to the private areas of our lives. Rather, we are called to witness to God’s love in each action of our lives, bearing testimony to the multitude of blessings God has given us.
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
The theme that binds today’s first reading and the gospel together is the names of two rather insignificant towns – Zebulun and Naphtali. The first reading from the book of Isaiah reads:
“First the Lord degraded the land of Zebulun
and the land of Naphtali;
but in the end he has glorified the seaward road,
the land west of the Jordan,
the district of the Gentiles. (Is 8:23)
Then in the gospel reading, Matthew says that Jesus begin his ministry in the “region of Zebulun and Naphtali (Mt 4:13).
Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel strikes firmly and in brief. We are left with the words of Jesus’ relatives, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).
If we explore the passage immediately preceding it, we are presented with an interesting contrast. Right before today’s gospel passage, as we heard in yesterday’s gospel, Jesus ascends to the top of a mountain and appoints his twelve apostles so that “they might be with him and he might send them forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons” (Mark 3:14). Often in the Scriptures, really important events occur on the top of mountains: the Sermon on the Mount, which mirrors Moses’ reception of the Ten Commandments on Sinai, Moses and the Burning Bush, the Transfiguration. We know, then, that Jesus’ naming those who would be his closest companions and stand at the beginning of the Church is really important.
Memorial of Saint Agnes, virgin and martyr
The lives of the saints are always meant to remind us of Jesus Christ first and foremost. Today's saint, Agnes, reminds me of Christ not only because she was a martyr, someone who died for Jesus. She also reminds me of Christ because her name, Agnes, is related to the Latin word for "lamb." In the mass, part of the prayer we say is the Agnus Dei or "Lamb of God," which refers to Jesus, as the Lamb of God, the sacrifice God himself makes by sending his only son to the world.
Thursday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s gospel reading from Mark presents a sort of dramatic, if realistic, picture of the attention that Jesus drew as he went about his daily business of preaching, healing, and serving with love the people he had come to save. As we meditate on this passage, we might ask ourselves a simple question, namely, “Have I been seeking Jesus with the spirit and fervor of these people?” It is easy, at times, to lose sight of Jesus, and to think that he’s just kind of there with us in the background. But while God certainly never abandons us, we cannot use this as an excuse NOT to seek him. For just as God continues to pursue us in thousands of hidden ways, we are called to pursue Jesus, to live with him as brother, our friend, our high priest, and our savior.
Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
Blessings often come upon us in an unpredictable fashion. Sometimes blessings are almost unperceivable in nature such as the air we breathe or the clean water we have to drink. Sometimes blessings come through something we do such as staying at adoration for one more hour to say a rosary we hadn’t counted upon, only to be enlightened by a deep spiritual insight. Sometimes blessings come through something we don’t do; such as leaving later to go to work, only to realize that your normal commute might have placed you at the scene of an accident in which you may have been included. Blessings are all around us if we are attentive.
Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
I love the next-to-last line in today's gospel (Mark 2:23-28): "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." It proclaims so much about who we are and what God wants for us. In Genesis, God has a day of rest on the seventh day and in Jewish Law, all people were required to observe the sabbath. Here, Jesus is proclaiming that the sabbath was not made FOR God but God considers us so important and worthy of love, that we are the ones who are gifted with the sabbath.
Memorial of Saint Anthony, abbott
It’s always nice to receive a positive compliment about your work, your appearance, your family, or whatever makes you proud. And we all probably have a tendency to think of these compliments as something we earned by something we did. In other words, we tend to think that we deserve the compliments, and we may even be offended when we do something remarkable and nobody seems to notice.
Second Sunday in Ordinary
I would like to reflect on a topic that most people generally think is beyond their reach – holiness. The main reason why most people think that holiness is beyond them is because it is attributed to the saints – the holy men and women the Church presents as a model for us. Secondly, our definition of a holy person is also skewed sometimes. We might think of a holy person as someone almost a little weird, awkward, someone who has no fun at all, someone churchy or preachy. Genuine holiness is not any of these things. The question is, is holiness really beyond our reach? Today, I would to like approach holiness as something normal; as something that we would actually love to aspire toward; as something we already are but also something that we can grow into more and more.
Saturday of the First Week In Ordinary Time
In today’s first reading from Hebrews, one cannot help but be struck by the immediate, natural personification (i.e. it’s able to do what people do) of the word of God: “The word of God is living and effective… able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him…” (Heb 4:12-13, my italics). God’s word is the subject of an action: it discerns. The “him” in the passage has no other clear referent besides “the word of God,” which is, of course, identified with God. The author, who wrote in Greek, was no doubt familiar with the Hebrew language in which the word “dabar” means not only “word,” but also “action” and “thing.” There is no easy distinction between the three – words are actions and they are alive!
Friday of the First Week In Ordinary Time
Today's first reading (Hebrews 4:1-5, 11) seems to proclaim something odd: that we have to strive for eternal rest. The Hebrews passage seems very busy, with constant commands to work for our rest, and that struck me as rather contradictory at first; how can working so hard for something make me feel rested or make me want to rest? I know from experience that when I've put a lot of energy into doing something, my adrenaline gets going and it is harder to rest. I have a new baby at home, and one of the first things the pediatricians told me was that sleep begets sleep. So a new parent wants to aim for good naps during the day because that will lead to good sleep at night as well.