Our usual picture of Jesus is as the great preacher, the miracle worker, the one acting with authority. While all of that is true it can tend to distance Jesus from us, to put him on a pedestal so far above us. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews offers a corrective to that… Read More »

In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” In St. Mark’s Gospel one of the ongoing themes is what scholars call the “messianic secret.” The apostles and others around Jesus just… Read More »

For the next several weeks we are in ordinary time in the Church’s calendar — not that the time is ordinary but that it is counted (think of the English term “ordinal numbers.”) In ordinary time the liturgy does what is known as the “continuous reading” where a particular book of the Bible is read… Read More »

The baptism of Jesus was a big deal for the four evangelists. Each of the gospel writers tells the story in their own way. In St. John, the baptism is referred to obliquely as John the Baptist recognized Jesus “when the Spirit descended upon him like a dove.” In St. Matthew’s Gospel it was at… Read More »

There are certain predictable moments as a child grows up. The “terrible twos” occur when a babies realize that they are not extensions of their mothers but rather individuals with their own needs and desires. They are terrible because the child does not have the maturity to communicate this effectively. Adolescence is a particularly dramatic… Read More »

So there are three who testify, the Spirit, the water, and the Blood,  and the three are of one accord. To  understand this rather odd statement in St. John’s first epistle we must look at the historical context. By the end of the first century, sixty or so years after Jesus’ death when this epistle… Read More »

Tony Gittens who used to teach at CTU compared the “great commission” at the end of St. Matthew’s gospel with the inaugural sermon of Jesus in Nazareth in St. Luke. Jesus’ last words in Matthew are to go out, to make disciples, to baptize and to teach. He observed that this commission is related to… Read More »

Christians believe that Jesus is the savior of the world. That thought is captured in the epistle of St. John: Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. Getting people on the “Jesus team” has been a powerful motivation for mission. You didn’t want all those… Read More »

Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. For St. John the criterion for membership is pretty straightforward — love. In the gospel of Matthew Jesus says, “Not everyone who calls me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven but… Read More »

Last year my brother was very sick. The family rallied around him and saw that he got the care he needed to recover. Now he is thriving. We went out of our way to care for him because that is what families do. The gospel challenges us to expand our notion of family. St. John… Read More »