About the year 50 A.D. — twenty or so years after the death of Jesus — the first generation of Christians faced a choice. On the one side were those who thought it was necessary for the followers of Jesus to follow Jewish practices. After all, Jesus and all of his apostles were Jews. Why… Read More »

In 1955 Pope Pius XII designated May 1 as the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. This is the “May Day” of the communists and the Holy Father wanted workers to know that Catholic Social Teaching respects and honors workers. After all, Jesus was a working man and the son of a working man.  This… Read More »

The apostle “Judas, not the Iscariot” that we usually refer today as Jude Thaddeus asked Jesus: “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” This question occurs in the extended “Last Supper Discourse” that we find in St. John’s Gospel. In it the Lord speaks frankly to… Read More »

What makes a Catholic a Catholic is not so much the pope and bishops, the creeds and catechisms. What makes a Catholic a Catholic is the Holy Eucharist. The gospel for today provides exactly the right image of the closeness, the intimacy, the familiarity to which Jesus invites us as we eat his body and… Read More »

The apostle Philip said to Jesus, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Philip seemed to imagine that knowing God was some kind of out of body, extraordinary experience. Jesus taught that is was the very human encounter with him that revealed God. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” To… Read More »

You’ve seen this scenario play out in many a movie. The hero turns to his companions and says, “Do you trust me?” They all nod tentatively and then he leads them to jump off a cliff because he knows where it leads. Something like that is how Jesus spoke at the Last Supper in St.… Read More »

In order to bring the people in Pisidia to the faith, St. Paul told the story of salvation. In order to understand Jesus, you need to know how God has been at work from the very beginning. We live in an age of plans, projections, goals. One motto you hear nowadays: that was then, this… Read More »

We owe St. Mark a great deal. He understood the power of story, that telling the story of Jesus would lead people to faith. Before Mark the sayings of Jesus and the reports of what he had done circulated in an anecdotal way. Mark gathered the material together in a coherent narrative that would lead… Read More »

We read in the Acts of the Apostles: “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.” The followers of Jesus had developed a distinct identity that made them stand out from the rest of the population. They were nameable as a group because, according to contemporary accounts, “they loved one another.” In… Read More »

When Jesus described the Good Shepherd he said, “the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” The business of “calling things by name” seems a constant in human nature — even if there is no reason to give them a name. People name their cars. We… Read More »