Wherever you have two people rubbing up against one another there will be conflict. Jesus provides a method for dealing with conflict that treats those who are in opposition  with dignity and respect. However, Jesus recognized that not all conflict can be settled amicably. Hence, the last phase of conflict resolution: If he refuses to… Read More »

Dag Hammarskjöld served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. After his tragic death in a plane crash his diary was discovered and was eventually published. It revealed a man of not only diplomatic skill but also of great spiritual depth. One entry reads: “For all that has been, Thank you. For all that… Read More »

 New wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” This saying of Jesus is something of a mixed metaphor. On the one hand “new wine in new wineskins” has been used as the image to describe the renewed way… Read More »

In Matthew and Mark the call of the four fishermen is pretty simple. Jesus walks up to them, says follow me, they leave their nets and follow him. In St. Luke we have a more realistic portrait of how the call of the first disciples occurred. Peter and companions gradually came to understand what Jesus… Read More »

Several years ago there was a priest meeting where we discussed the different attitudes of the various generational cohorts. I was struck when someone said “I am a John Paul II priest and you are a Vatican II priest.” It sounded an awful lot like the situation that St. Paul bemoans in the Church of… Read More »

The first acknowledgement of the identity of Jesus comes from a demon! “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” That goes to show you that having the right answer does not ensure that you are in the right. Maybe it helps to explain St.… Read More »

From now until Advent the daily gospel selection will be from St. Luke. In today’s passage Jesus inaugurates his public ministry in his home town of Nazareth. He makes his “mission statement” by quoting from the Prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings… Read More »

“Take up your cross and follow me,” says Jesus. Well, if going through this pandemic is not taking up one’s cross I don’t know what would be. It’s a cross to be socially distant from everyone. It’s a cross to have to wear a mask. It’s a cross to have so limited an option of… Read More »

The story of the martyrdom of John the Baptist is really about peer pressure. The daughter of Herodias, the wife of the king, (we know her name, Salome, from extra-Biblical sources) asked for the head of John the Baptist “on a platter.” The king, Herod Antipas, who had promised ahead of time to grant “whatever… Read More »

By the time St. Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians he had been in the preaching business for about twenty years. (His conversion can be dated to somewhere around 33AD and the letter around 53AD.) His pattern as described in the Acts of the Apostles was first to preach in the local synagogue… Read More »