St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is unlike his others since he is writing to a community he does not know. The letter served as an introduction since he planned on coming to Rome on his way to Spain. He wanted the Roman Church to provide support for this new missionary effort.  I aspire to… Read More »

St. Paul says that  Christ is Lord of both the dead and the living. Why then do you judge your brother or sister? To understand the not too obvious connection between Christ’s Lordship and the command not to judge we might look at a poem, “Invictus” by W.E. Henley, which has the line: “I am the… Read More »

“Everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”  The really hard part of heeding this word of Jesus does not have to do with the stuff we’ve accumulated in life but in the “possessions” which are part of our make-up. A famous prayer of St. Ignatius goes: “Take, Lord,… Read More »

A story by Ursala LeGuin has a scene where a visitor discovers that the people there can actually predict the future. The visitor wonders why the locals don’t think this is a big deal. They ask him, what is the one sure thing that we can say about the future, yours and mine? He answered,… Read More »

There was a book a few years ago, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? We all wonder that at times when we see a loved one going through some difficulty. However, Jesus would not have posed that question in quite that way. Jesus wanted us to understand that we don’t need to do… Read More »

You have, no doubt, noticed that my examples from popular culture are, well, old. I don’t know much about contemporary music or plays or TV… which is illustrated in an (of course, old) song from a 1958 Rogers and Hammerstein play entitled The Flower Drum Song. In the song the children are bemoaning the fact… Read More »

For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. St. Paul reminds us that the Chosen People are still the Chosen People. God does not change the divine mind. That is why even a whiff of anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish sentiment (such as reared its ugly head during the pandemic) is directly counter to the… Read More »

The current debate over “critical race theory” is something of a puzzlement to me. If you don’t know your history, how do you ensure don’t make the same mistakes again? For example, some of the ugliest chapters in the history of the Church were times of violent anti-Semitism. Since at least the fourth century Christians… Read More »

You are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God,  built upon the foundation of the Apostles. We confess in our creeds that ours is an “apostolic” faith. That does not mean that the apostles wrote down everything that we believe as Christians and we merely hand it on from generation… Read More »

We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. I find this word of St. Paul incredibly consoling. Try as I will, I never seem to be praying right. Despite courses and workshops and years of practice I still am not sure that my efforts are,… Read More »