At the end of the movie, The Wizard of Oz, the good witch asks Dorothy what she has learned after all her adventures. She answered, “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.” The same is true even when our heart’s desire is God.… Read More »

That a meeting between two pregnant women is the source of divine revelation vividly illustrates that we are going to find God in the very stuff of life. We who believe in Jesus as the Word made Flesh don’t look for God on the mountaintops or in sacred precincts but among the pots and pans,… Read More »

The modern city of Corinth has moved away from the ancient site. You can visit the ruins of Old Corinth and stand on the street where St. Paul stood, looking up at the judge’s bench where Gallio would have sat. The AcroCorinth, the garrison for the Roman soldiers is right behind. Paul was not intimidated… Read More »

Corinth was an ideal place for a tent maker like Paul to ply his/her trade. It was a port city with many people in transit needing temporary housing. In addition, the Isthmian Games were held in non-Olympic years so athletes and spectators would need a place to stay in the pre-Holiday Inn days. Paul stopped… Read More »

St. Paul made his way to Athens, the center of intellectual life in the ancient world. Athens was Harvard and Oxford rolled into one. Apparently St. Paul thought he needed to dazzle the Athenians with his brilliance. (I think of this as his Fredo moment — “I’m smart.”) He quoted the philosophers, the poets, the… Read More »

“Because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts.” Grief is not a feeling we seek. But grief is thrust upon us. Besides the griefs we feel when we lose a loved one there are other, more general, griefs which can overwhelm us. We grieve what we have lost. We have lost the family… Read More »

In the Acts of the Apostles St. Luke makes a big deal about St. Paul’s leaving “Asia” (the country of Turkiye today) and entry into Europe. He describes the route that he and his companions took to arrive at Philippi, Greece, “a Roman city.” (The Romans established cities throughout the Empire with retired soldiers to… Read More »

Church people are accustomed to obeying the Ten Commandments given to Moses: “thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal” and all the rest. Keeping the Ten Commandments is a good goal to have. What about the Jesus commandments? Unfortunately, they are not all neatly lined up on two stone tablets but the Jesus commandments… Read More »

As Paul and Timothy were on their missionary journey through what is now Turkiye their plans kept getting thwarted. “They had been prevented by the Holy Spirit from preaching the message in the province of Asia.”  A little lated: “ They tried to go on into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow… Read More »

There is a church-y word that packs a wallop: discernment. When we as a religious people “discern” we invoke the Holy Spirit so that we can know the will of God. We see this practiced in the Acts of the Apostles. An issue arose where the will of God was not clear — in this… Read More »