God does not live up to our expectations. Jeremiah presumed that the people returning from exile would experience a triumph equivalent to the exodus from Egypt. It didn’t quite work out that way. Joseph no doubt expected a nice, normal life of a working man surrounded by his wife and children. It didn’t quite work… Read More »
DECEMBER172020
St. Matthew begins his gospel with “the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.” You learn a lot from genealogies. Henry Louis Gates has a show “Finding Your Roots” where he introduces celebrities to their ancestors. Like the genealogy of Jesus their roots are populated by saints and sinners, by shirkers and workers. For Matthew… Read More »
DECEMBER162020
The czar of the Rus wanted to unite his people under one religion. He invited representatives from Judaism, Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy to convince him which would be the religion of his people. While he found much to admire in each expression of faith he decided on Orthodoxy because of the beauty of their liturgy:… Read More »
DECEMBER152020
The prophet Zephaniah talked about “the remnant of Israel.” With the destruction of the nation it was going to be a “remnant,” a small, core group that kept faith alive and would revivify Israel. Pope Benedict seems to have had a similar approach to living in a post-Christian world. He wrote: “Maybe Christianity will exist… Read More »
DECEMBER142020
I am reading a book on argumentation. The author stresses that an argument requires a common basis to go forward. That is what Jesus is trying to establish in his argument with the chief priests and elders: “I shall ask you one question, and if you answer it for me, then I shall tell you… Read More »
DECEMBER132020
There’s a TV show that has as its theme song: “Who are you?” sung by, of course, the group called THE WHO. (As near as I can tell the show determines who you are only after you are dead by examining bodies with cool gadgets but let’s not go there.) It’s a good thing to… Read More »
DECEMBER122020
Ten years after the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish the Virgin Mary appeared to a recent convert, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a Chichimec peasant. She spoke in his native language, Nahuatl, not in the Spanish of the missionaries. She dressed in the indigenous clothes he would be familiar with. She had the skin tones and… Read More »
DECEMBER112020
Jesus pointed out that “this generation” was going to criticize you no matter what you did. Actually that was not limited to his generation — it seems to be the human condition. That tells us that we should not let criticism determine our actions. We need to do always those things we think are God’s… Read More »
DECEMBER102020
The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force. We don’t associate Jesus with violence so this saying seems a bit odd. Of course Jesus frequently used exaggeration to make a point. (E.g. “If you eye is your problem, pluck it out.”) My mother used to say, “Hyperbole added for… Read More »
DECEMBER92020
One of the strange byproducts of the pandemic is a general feeling of being tired. Even though we aren’t moving around much we still feel overburdened. Hence, the invitation of Jesus to come to him when feeling overwhelmed couldn’t be more timely. Jesus proposes making a swap — our burdens which wear us down for… Read More »
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