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The Transfiguration of the Lord
Today’s readings “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” This feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord can be a puzzling one for us to understand. It’s an event we’ve heard about in Gospel readings, but it’s not something that we’ve ever seen. So it’s hard, I think, for us to figure out. If…
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Thursday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings The Israelites wandering in the desert would seem to have had the spiritual life easy. How could they possibly miss God’s presence? There was a cloud to lead them to the Lord by day, and fire by night. But just like the stuff that ended up in the net in today’s Gospel, some…
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Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Today’s readings In today’s first reading, Moses sets about putting up a meeting tent as a place for the Lord to be among his people. The Lord never abandoned his people; he was present in a column of cloud during the day, and of fire at night. The presence of God helps us to focus…
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Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Priest
Today's readings Saint Ignatius was all set to accomplish great things in the military when his leg was badly injured by a canon ball. As he was convalescing, he asked for romantic novels to read. But nothing like that was available, so he had to settle for books on the life of Christ and the…
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Saint James, Apostle
Today’s readings “Can you drink the chalice of which I am going to drink?” What does that even mean for us? We know what Jesus’ chalice was like: it led him through sorrow, and abandonment, and ultimately to the cross. If we have ever been in a situation in which we have felt intense grief,…
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The Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings This week in my bulletin column, I have a reflection on the introductory rites of Mass. But maybe in the homily, we can take a step back from that and think about what we’re supposed to do before Mass. And what we do before Mass, and I mean before we even come to…
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Saint Mary Magdalene
Today's readings Today’s feast of St. Mary Magdalene is a good opportunity to set the record straight. Mary Magdalene was not the woman caught in adultery, nor was she the unnamed “sinful woman” who anointed the feet of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. That said, she is the woman from whom Jesus expelled seven demons, also…
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Monday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings It’s a frightening thing, I think, to hear Jesus say in today’s Gospel reading, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” And it’s frightening not because of some actual sword that might harm us, but instead because…
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The Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings I’m not very good at it, and I don’t do it much any more, but I used to help plant a family garden. Now my sister mostly does that. What’s remarkable to me about a garden is that the seed that is planted looks, for all the world, lifeless … like something that…
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St. Benedict, Abbot
It is with great fondness that I observe this feast of St. Benedict the abbot, and father of western monasticism. My Benedictine roots stem from my college days at Benedictine University in Lisle (then called Illinois Benedictine College), and I have a deep fondness for the monks of St. Procopius Abbey, who staffed the college,…
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