According to the Acts of the Apostles after the martyrdom of St. Stephen, “there broke out a severe persecution of the Church in Jerusalem, and all were scattered throughout the countryside.” On the one hand this was a terrible tragedy. No one wants to be persecuted. However, God uses everything, even negative things. Because of the… Read More »

According to Acts when Stephen the deacon was martyred, the protomartyr or first martyr of the Church, a “young man named Saul” was present and we are told “he consented to the execution.” We meet that same Saul a few chapters later when he encountered the Risen Jesus on the road to Damascus which led… Read More »

St. John’s gospel makes explicit the memory of Jesus feeding the multitudes as the backdrop for Jesus continuing to feed the Church in the Eucharist.  It inspired in Julian of Norwich, a fifteenth century English mystic, the image of Jesus as mother! She wrote: “the mother can give her child to suck of her milk,… Read More »

“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all, according to Emily Dickinson. There can be miracles when you believe/ Though hope is frail, it’s hard to kill, according to Whitney Houston. When Jesse Jackson was running… Read More »

There is (almost) universal consensus among scholars that Mark’s gospel, although second in our New Testament, was the first gospel written — sometime around the year 70AD. Before Mark created the genre we call “gospel” St. Paul preached about Jesus — but talked very little about the events of his life before the Last Supper.… Read More »

When Gamaliel advised the Sanhedrin how to deal with the nascent Jesus movement he observed: if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them. The history of the Catholic Church proves the truth of that statement. There… Read More »

“We must obey God rather than men.”  These words of St. Peter and the apostles are ones we all can agree with; however, for me at least, what it means to obey God is not always obvious. For example, I know that it is God’s will that we take care of our “common home,” as Pope… Read More »

When sports are resumed and stadiums are full again no doubt there will be a sign in the stands: John 3:16. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. The key idea in that saying is that “God… Read More »

St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles portrays an idealized picture of the early Christians — they shared everything and everyone got along. He was not, of course, part of that community, but was reporting what he had heard fifty or more years after the events. Think about events of fifty years ago. The… Read More »

Nicodemus pays Jesus a compliment, you are a teacher who has come from God. Jesus is not distracted by that but immediately challenges Nicodemus: what are you going to do about it. This is the pattern for the rest of St. John’s Gospel  — Jesus proclaims who he is (I am the light of the… Read More »