Reflections for Ordinary Time

Yesterday we focused a little on the divinity of Christ. Today is unambiguously about his humanity. The story of how one man is tortured and killed. The pain and the suffering is all too relatable. But it is also all too common. How many people have died horrible deaths and continue to do so, in […]

As I read again the familiar story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet at their last supper together (Jn 13:1-15), I wonder if we’re not as shocked as we should be.  In the long history of the Church there have been periods when Jesus was seen as almost inaccessibly distant. Jesus the Son of God

Today we hear the final section of Jesus’ reformulation of the Law (Mt 5:38-48). He moves on from how we should handle situations where relationships have been damaged (as we saw last week) to the demands of love in any relationship. Even relationships in which we are taken advantage of, even with people who hate

“Can’t you just do as you’re told for once!” Maybe you remember being on the receiving end of that comment, or maybe you’ve been on the other side of the conversation. Maybe you’ve been fortunate not to have said it out loud, but haven’t you felt it sometime? Instructions, commandments, “just do it” – they

Other than air and water, salt is the most important need for our physical well-being. Animals will travel miles for it. It was one of the earliest commodities to be traded in human society. If salt were to lose its potency that would indeed be a disaster. So, while being compared to salt may not

The Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1-12a), also known as the Beatitudes, is Matthew’s compilation of some of the most notable and uplifting sayings of Jesus. Luke uses some of the same sayings, in a different context and with much more of a good cop / bad cop style: “Blessed are you who are poor

The Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1–12a), also known as the Beatitudes, is Matthew’s compilation of some of the most notable and uplifting sayings of Jesus. Luke uses some of the same sayings (Lk 6:20–26), in a different context, with much more of a good cop / bad cop style: “Blessed are you who are

Last week we heard Paul’s introduction to the first letter that he wrote to his church in Corinth. This is probably the earliest of his letters that we have and the first written testimony from any Christian teacher. We’ll be working our way through this letter in our Readings over the next few weeks. We

Our Christmas season leaves us with a clear message about who Jesus is: son of Mary, God with us, savior of the world. Now we immediately move to a related but perhaps more difficult question – who are we? What does this recognition of Jesus mean for our understanding of ourselves? In our readings today

Christmas more than any other of our feasts displays the diversity of our gospel tradition. You might expect that how God came to earth, became a human being, would be a key element in the Christian tradition. There should be a pretty clear consensus about this – it is the thing that distinguishes Christianity from