God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in them. This passage from St. John’s first epistle is both a consolation and a challenge. We are consoled by this passage because it reminds us that family and friends we are close to who do not practice the faith have a… Read More »

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that God loved us. Is this saying hard to believe because we are Americans (“there is no such thing as a free lunch”) or simply because we are human? For St. John the truth that we have God’s love unasked and unearned is the… Read More »

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested … Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” St. Matthew reports that the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus flowed from the work that John the Baptist had been doing. The gospels are almost apologetic that Jesus had a… Read More »

The magi came because they saw a star. We saw his star at its rising.   It is obvious but worth pointing out that to see the stars you must enter the darkness. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”  Annie Dillard wrote: “You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If,… Read More »

You sometimes hear someone claim to be “spiritual but not religious” because they don’t need “all that doctrine.” St. John in his first epistle would beg to disagree. It is exactly “doctrine” that grounds our spirituality, he would assert. Who is the liar?  Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ.  Whoever denies the Father and… Read More »

The Bible provides us words to live by — perhaps the most famous is the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Popular culture possesses similar adages, proverbs, sayings which are meant to guide behavior. Some we think are wise: a friend in need is a friend indeed. Others… Read More »

I wonder if the creator of the lectionary was having a little December 31 fun with the first reading beginning, it is the last hour and the gospel starting off, In the beginning. Ending the year with the prologue to St. John’s gospel seems fitting. The structure of the passage is the key to its… Read More »

When Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel they deported the ten tribes there and they, apparently, never returned — as did the tribe of Judah deported from the southern kingdom by the Babylonians almost 200 years later. The “lost tribes of Israel” have entered into cultural myth. However, the Bible suggests maybe they weren’t… Read More »

In the days after Christmas we read from the first epistle of St. John. To understand its message it helps to know the context in which it was written.  The epistle of St. John is written in response to a crisis in the church. Certain people were claiming they were the true believers and anyone… Read More »

The feast of the Holy Innocents is a reminder of the suffering that children have endured throughout the ages.  It should inspire us to do what we can to protect innocent life. On a more theoretical note, this feast has inspired theological reflection on the statement in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus “descended into hell.”… Read More »