“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 »

If you ask a mother who her favorite child in the family is she will, no doubt, smile and say: “I love all my children equally.” Which is true since love is a verb and a mother acts for the well being of all her children. However, it should not be a surprise that a… Read More »

“The LORD’s way is not fair!” The prophet Ezekiel heard people say that. I certainly have felt it. Why do the rich get richer? Why do good people get sick? Most recently, it doesn’t seem fair that the politicians who make decisions about who has access to weapons are letting school children become the victims… Read More »

The time Jesus spent with his followers at Caesarea Philippi was pivotal in their development as apostles. Taking the step from “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” to “who do you say that I am?” caused the twelve to invest themselves in the answer. Saying who Jesus was for them made faith… Read More »

One week ago we began Lent on Ash Wednesday. The scripture readings for this day are, not surprisingly, about repentance, a major Lenten theme. Jesus in the Gospel speaks of our need to repent. What is surprising is the Old Testament lesson from the book of Job where God is depicted as repenting. God “repented of… Read More »

We began Lent on Ash Wednesday by being reminded of three traditional penitential practices: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In Matthew 6 Jesus gives us specific instructions on prayer (“no babbling”) and provides us the model prayer, the Our Father. To this prayer Jesus appends a highlight to one of the petitions in order to stress… Read More »

There is an interesting contrast between the two readings assigned for today, the first Monday of Lent. In the Book of Leviticus you get a version of the Ten Commandments with many “thou shalt nots.” In the Gospel of Matthew, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, contains “thou shalts” — thou shalt feed… Read More »

Who made you? God made me. Why did God make you? God made me to know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Does that sound familiar to any of you old timers out there? It is, of course, from the Baltimore Catechism which was… Read More »

Lent is a season for the repentance of sin. When we think of sinfulness we ordinarily run through the Ten Commandments and see which ones we violated. However, in the Bible, sin is much broader than commandment keeping. For example, if we were doing an examination of conscience using Isaiah 58 as a guide it… Read More »

A Trappist monk once told me that when he was new to the monastery he would spend all of his time in the chapel. The Abbot called him in and the monk explained he was trying to become holy. The Abbot suggested, “If you want to be holy, spend your spare time helping the gardener… Read More »