Category Archive

Baptism of Jesus  January 13, 2013 Isaiah 43: 1-7  ;   Acts 8:14-17;   Luke 3 :15-22   The Benedictine tradition of a silent pause after each of our Scripture readings, allows the words to resonate in our minds and hearts. Hopefully there will be a word or phrase that echoes for you throughout today, and maybe it will shape your week ahead. That experience – of the Word of God as a living thing – the Hebrews called dabar.   This pairing of Isaiah 43 and Luke’s Gospel highlights one such phrase that powerfully proclaims God’s presence with  us:  Fear not! Fear …

Epiphany, 6 January 2012 Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12 In Matthew’s gospel both Jew and Gentile appear as, of course, does “the Word within a word, unable to speak a word,” Jesus the Savior, in Bethlehem.  The Gentiles in the persons of the Magi “saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage.”   To the extent that Herod does not and the Magi do actively live Isaiah’s words—“your light has come, and the glory of God has risen upon you”—the suggestion is that the advantages that once lay strictly with the Jews are …

24 December 2012 Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14, 3:4-7, Luke 2:1-21 Picture this scenario.  Forget every ten years.  The census will be taken this year during Christmas week.  We will all have to return to the birthplace of the man of the family.  This means that I must take my wife who was born in the Montreal area to Brooklyn, New York—a foreign country where the English language is unknown in any recognizable form to anyone from the Middle West.  That’s my itinerary.  Each of you can imagine your own.  But think of the larger picture.  Think of what the Interstate …

Philippians 4, “Rejoice…be anxious for nothing”   I would like to begin by taking a poll. This is for everyone. Not just the grownups but also the youth and kids.   Are you someone who worries? Do you get anxious? Do you ever get stressed?   Raise your hand!!   Once I asked David, my husband, if he ever worries.   His response was something like this , “I don’t have to worry because you do enough worrying for both of us”   That was a huge reality check!   I will confess that I do get anxious…   Anxious …

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time * Dan 12:1-3, Heb 10:11-25, Mk 13:1-8 * November 18, 2012   When the readings turn apocalyptic, we know Advent’s approaching; we’re completing one church year and preparing to start another.  Fall turns to winter, which will turn to spring.  Our faith turns on turning.  Death is a hinge to resurrection, and every end turns to beginning. This is good to remember as we hear about super-storms, climate change, spreading war in the Middle East, European debt crises, our own fiscal cliff … and, as my mom said, “Don’t look at the Mayan calendar!”  It’s …

4 November 2012 Isaiah 25:6-9, Revelation 21:1-6a, John 11:32-44   Did you notice that in each of today’s readings people are crying—or more literally are in “tears”?  When Isaiah tells us that God is preparing a feast for all and will “swallow up death forever,” these events will “wipe away the tears from all faces.”  Then in the Book of Revelation God makes all things new “wiping every tear from” from all “eyes.”  And then in the gospel Jesus dries Mary’s tears as well as his own by raising Lazarus from the dead. God, as Isaiah says, will lift “the …

Women and Children:  The Center of Our Concern in the Reign of God Mark 10:2-16 “Some Pharisees approached Jesus and, as a test, asked, ‘Is it permissible for husbands to divorce wives?’”  This question is a test, or better, a trap.  Legislating morality was tricky business then and it still is today.  Defining things like marriage, advocating regulation for things like fertility and justifying things like poverty leads into a quagmire that can get a prophet, a politician or even a homilist into big trouble. The Pharisees do indeed seek to lay this kind of trap for Jesus.  Earlier in …

I absolutely love this reading from the Book of Numbers. First of all, the People of God are doing what they always do in Numbers, and if we’re really honest about it the People of God have done throughout their history. They’re whining! After all God has done, the escape from slavery in Egypt, crossing the Red Sea and watching an army bent on their slaughter being swallowed up in it.  Being given water to drink from a rock and manna to eat from the sky. God’s People respond to all of this with, “God, Really, no meat?  You couldn’t …

Mark 7: 24-37   I don’t know about you but sometimes I get really, really tired. Exhausted. And then I am no fun to be around. When I am tired life feels overwhelming and there is not much to be hopeful about. Even doing the dinner dishes is too much! When I am tired my ability to hear decreases dramatically. Dave will say something and all I hear is sounds, I can’t make the sounds into coherent words. When I am tired it would be really best go to bed and get some extra sleep. Instead, you might find me …

Twentieth Sunday August 19, 2012 Proverbs 9: 1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58 We Benedictine, inclusive (c)atholic followers believe that Jesus is most emphatically here, with us, around this table. We call this Eucharist  “Sacrament”: neither symbol nor re-enactment, but a real time encounter with the God whose invisible activity works always, at the very heart of things.* “Just as the living God sent me and I live because of God, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”  John the Evangelist introduces us to Jesus as Sacrament, as Eucharist, to make of all we who would follow him First Generation Christians.* …