Azariah’s prayer is a plaintive plea bemoaning all of the loss in his life. He no longer has a country, no group he belongs to, no place to worship. All he has is God. The point of the prayer is that having God is sufficient. St. Teresa of Avila expressed that same prayer much more… Read More »

“If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?” These words addressed to Naaman, the Syrian, should resonate in the hearts of believers. They speak of the temptation we all face to imagine that God is to be found in the extraordinary, the miraculous, the unusual. In fact,… Read More »

Did Jesus use violence?  Look at the way St. John describes the cleansing of the temple.  We are told, Jesus “made a whip out of cords and drove them all out … and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.”  If we define violence as any force that inflicts injury, one… Read More »

The parables of Jesus are open-ended; we must complete them in our lives. Think of the story of the Prodigal Son. Three possible endings: the older son goes into the party for his wayward brother and is filled with the Father’s compassion and love. OR, the older son goes into the party because the Father… Read More »

“Here comes that master dreamer! Let us kill him then see what comes of his dreams.” These words of Joseph’s brothers always make me think of Dr. King. It is easier to kill the dreamer than it is to kill the dream! Whenever we hear about someone killing another, we wonder how it could happen.… Read More »

“My mind’s made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.” Don’t tell me about climate change, my mind is made up. This seems to be a mantra of our age but in fact goes back to the Bible. When the rich man tells Father Abraham that his brothers won’t listen to Moses and the prophets… Read More »

The people of Jerusalem figured that Jeremiah was more trouble than he was worth. They have all that they need to live out their religion “instruction from the priests,counsel from the wise, messages from the prophets.” The priests teach them the catechism, what they need to know. The wise give them advice on how to… Read More »

In the first chapter of his book the prophet Isaiah rails against his sinful generation. They are like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the arch sinners in the Bible. They are “doing evil.” Their sins are “like scarlet,” they are “crimson red.” But the list of sins the people are guilty of are not… Read More »

When you love someone you don’t think about how little you can get away with. A fiance does not think “What is the smallest diamond that will seal the engagement.” No, he thinks “What is the biggest diamond I can afford” and then goes beyond that. Love is not characterized by penny-pinching but by extravagance.… Read More »

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”  A famous story by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, begins that way.  Dickens uses the two cities… Read More »