Category Archive

The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in today’s Old Testament reading is one that opens with desolation, hopelessness, and the grief and dreadful feeling in the pit of our stomachs that we may feel when encountering the imagery of a desert expanse filled with the long dead, very dry bones of the masses. God gifts Ezekiel this vision in a time of great trouble, in a time when the world feels like it is falling apart. The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones occurs during the Babylonian Exile, a time when the people of Israel witnessed the …

There is so much intensity in the Triduum: the tender Thursday ritual of washing each other’s feet, and the heavy knowing of how that evening unfolded in love and betrayal;Our touching the large cross, and being seized by the harsh reality of Jesus’ Crucifixion; holding the quiet, pondering and praying. All followed the next evening by boundless joy, exhilarating music, fire, singing “Christ broke the chains of the darkness!” Are not our hearts full? For some these following weeks may be a bit melancholic, a letdown as the intensity of catharsis and the joy of Easter gives way to the …

Every morning, I set a timer and sit in my prayer chair for 30 minutes.  It is a half-hour of doing nothing; nothing except attending to the sensation of my breath moving in and out; nothing except noticing that my mind has been wandering down some rabbit-hole of thought or feeling, and then, as gently as I can, returning my attention to the sensation of my breathing.  This happens over and over again until the timer bell rings.  This is an activity–or non-activity–that I have practiced daily for many years now.  It has no purpose other than being present to …

This unexpected meeting between the risen Jesus and the weeping Mary Magdalene may well be the most poignant episode in the whole New Testament or indeed in the whole Bible. Mary was a woman with both a painful past and a gracious, indeed miraculous, transformation. Luke’s gospel (8:2) tells of “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.” Mark’s gospel (16:9) assigns this powerful exorcism directly to Jesus himself. Pope Gregory I, in 591 CE argued, perhaps misreading an earlier passage (in Luke 7), that Mary was a reformed prostitute whose sins Jesus had fully forgiven. However we …

Those of us of a certain age will remember a bumper sticker with the initials W.W.J.D.?  What Would Jesus Do? It was a way of prodding people to think about their actions, their behavior as if Jesus were confronted by the day to day issues we all face. I think of this gospel passage in this way. No other Christian scriptural source suggests that Jesus ever had a mission to Samaria. He had a mission in Galilee. He had a mission in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. In all likelihood this gospel writer had a community that included Samaritan converts …

The serpent in the wilderness is a reference to Numbers 21. The refugees from Egypt, already weary from their long wilderness migration, have been denied passage through Edom and are dejectedly detouring around it. They’ve been eating nothing but manna for ages, and they’re beginning, not for the first time, to question their leadership and the wisdom of leaving Egypt. If St. Benedict had been around, he might kindly have warned them that grumbling divides and corrodes community and that the journey to freedom requires patient acceptance of hardships. But any divine attempt to warn the people verbally through Moses …

Joel’s words of alarm caught my attention in our readings for this evening.. Blow the trumpet; sound the alarm; something is seriously wrong.           So many people in our world today live in a state of alarm. Day and night, sirens go off in Ukraine in spite of peace talks and in Gaza in spite of the ceasefire. Many people live in emergency situations in Sudan, in Iran in our own cities where people are afraid to leave their homes. The pastors from Minneapolis who were here for the CCR cohort 6 immersion in January spoke of living with a …

One of my now deceased homily mentors, the Capuchin Alexis Luzi once wrote: There are three ways with which to proceed with Matthew’s eight Beatitudes. Some preachers choose to give time and attention to each Beatitude in one and the same homily. Jamming all eight into one homily makes for a very lengthy homily. What’s more, it violates a golden rule of homiletics: “One idea — one sermon! Two ideas — two sermons!” Some choose to give the Beatitudes separate treatment by means of eight separate homilies. That’s a good way to proceed. Or the preacher can search for the …

In just over a week, we will come upon a transition day in the calendar that the Celts call Imbolc.  Imbolc is that day half way between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  This year it is on Feb. 1.  It is a day about the first stirrings of spring, and is a time to remember we are slowly, but methodically, moving through the dark and into the light.   I once heard a Druid commentator say that Imbolc was established at a time when survival through the winter wasn’t a given.  The ancients hoped they’d have enough food stored …