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Saint Philip Neri
Today’s readings Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Philip Neri, founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, a community of Catholic priests and lay brothers. At the age of 18, he travelled to live with a wealthy relative to learn, and possibly inherit, the family business. But soon after arriving, he experienced a mystical…
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Thursday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings Today’s Scriptures extol the virtue of poverty of spirit, which is perhaps one of the more difficult virtues to embrace and nurture. Saint James illustrates how things of this world, specifically the pursuit of riches, can be not only a powerful distraction from the spiritual life, but can also leave one complicit in…
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Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings In today’s Gospel, we have the disciples arguing among themselves because they find they don’t understand Jesus’ message. And then that degenerates into a further argument about which one of them was the greatest. They’re doing an awful lot of arguing, and not nearly enough listening. All of this arguing betrays a real lack…
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Saint Matthias, Apostle
Today’s readings We don’t really know much about St. Matthias. We have no idea the qualifications that led to his being nominated as one of two possibilities to take Judas’s position among the Twelve Apostles. But clearly, they would have nominated a holy and faithful man, and then they left the deciding up to the…
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The Ascension of Our Lord
Today’s readings When I was on my pastoral internship in seminary, my supervisor and I talked about the fact that our Liturgy is very wordy. Think about it: all of the prayers and readings and songs – it’s a lot of words to take in in an hour or less, but we do it all…
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Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Today’s readings “You will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.” Jesus continues to prepare his disciples for his not being among them in the flesh. He knows that his death, resurrection and Ascension were all part of the plan, and he wants the disciples to…
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Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Today’s readings There are a lot of miracles going on in today’s first reading. First, there’s the earthquake that brings down the prison walls, although Paul and Silas did not take advantage of the situation. Then there’s the conversion of the jailer, who was an employee of the Romans, and so would have had to…
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The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Today’s readings I don’t know if you were counting or not, but between the second reading and the Gospel, the word “love” was used in one form or another eighteen times. So it’s pretty easy to see where the Church is leading us in today’s Liturgy of the Word. Love is a theme that runs…
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Saints Philip and James, Apostles
Today’s readings Today is the feast of St. Philip and the man we call “St. James the Lesser” because he is probably not the St. James that we know as a relative of Jesus and the traditional author of the book of James. Unfortunately, all that we know about this St. James is that Jesus…
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Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Today’s readings Today’s readings are a reminder that we disciples have to be discerning. It is important for us to discern what the truth is so that we can be led to the one who is Truth itself. The Gentiles, who worshiped idols, didn’t have the context of monotheism – that there is one God…
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