“You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’”(Jas. 2:8). This quotation from Leviticus in our reading today has a very distinguished track record. Not only […]
Learn more“So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you” […]
Learn more“When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’”(Jo. 6:60). Jesus is creating a stir in our Gospel today: challenging conventional wisdom and religious understanding. As we’ve heard over the […]
Learn more“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them”(Jo. 6:56). Where do you feel at home? I remember my grandparents’ house in Jacksonville, Florida, when I was a small boy: a […]
Learn more“Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life”(Jo. 6:47). Jesus is casting a big vision this morning in our Gospel reading: a vision that refuses to be bound by the borders of our time and place. […]
Learn more“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (Jo. 6:35). Our Gospel reading this morning sounds like a lot of other things that […]
Learn more“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’”(2 Cor. 12:9). Years ago I came to a bad patch in my ministry as a priest, and experienced a crisis of […]
Learn more“As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little’”(2 Cor. 8:15). St. Paul was an evangelist and preacher, a leader of the […]
Learn more“[The kingdom of God] is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth…”(Mk. 4:31). What a difference one person can make! We sometimes think that nothing we […]
Learn more“But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”(Gen. 3:9). One of the searching questions that people ask in the face of catastrophe is “Where were you God?” Where was God in the tragedy […]
Learn more“For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”(2 Cor. […]
Learn more“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit”(Jo. 3:6). “I’m spiritual, not religious”: pundits tell us that when people say this they’re taking an anti-dogmatic and anti-institutionalist stance. In […]
Learn more“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears… He will take what is mine and declare it to […]
Learn more“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (Jo. 17:11). This morning our Gospel reading from John shows us Jesus at prayer. Nothing remarkable […]
Learn more“I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jo. 15:5). As we know, Easter is a season not a day: fifty days, in fact, enabling us […]
Learn more“Abide in me as I abide in you” (Jo. 15:4). “Abide” is a funny word, with an old-fashioned Smoky Mountain sound to it: you can imagine your hillbilly grandma saying, for instance, “I can’t abide fiddle music.” Or […]
Learn more