Reflections for Ordinary Time

We may struggle a little with the story of the Ascension (Acts 1:1-11). Our first reaction might be to wonder, ok, what actually happened? Jesus disappears up into the sky, then what? This is probably the wrong question to be asking – wrong in the sense that we’re not going to get a useful answer. […]

Before we get to the main course for today, let’s take a quick side trip.  Last week we heard how Philip really didn’t do very well at understanding what Jesus was telling him, and Jesus, in the nicest way possible, took him to task for not seeing what was in front of him. Today in

Last week we heard how the Pharisees failed to understand Jesus when he talked about being the gate to the sheepfold. We mentioned the similarity to Jesus saying that he was “the Way”. Today we hear directly about the occasion when Jesus used that phrase. In this case he’s talking not to pharisees but to

We’re very used to hearing Jesus compare himself to a shepherd, talking about “his sheep”, and so on. At first we might think today’s reading from John’s gospel (Jn 10:1-10) is another one of these accounts. But it’s actually rather different. In this case Jesus is not casting himself as the shepherd caring for his

Given the importance of the Resurrection and the appearances of Jesus after his death, it’s perhaps surprising how little consistency there is in the various accounts we have of these events. Today we hear Luke’s story of the first meeting that anyone has with the risen Lord (Lk 24:13-35). In his telling the women went

The story of Thomas, “Doubting Thomas” as he is often called, is very familiar (Jn 20:19-31). We hear it every year on this Sunday just after Easter. But after so many years I noticed something I had never seen before. Jesus appears to all the disciples, except Thomas, and breathes on them and they receive

We have traveled through the up and downs of Holy Week, through 40 days of Lent, and if not 40 years in the desert, then some years in a world that may seem strange and alien and disconnected from our inner self. We have traveled to arrive again at the celebration of Easter, of the

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