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The Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings In every homily there is, or should be, a “so what” moment. That’s the moment, very often toward the end of the preaching, where the Word that was preached is related to the people who heard it. I try to make every homily answer the question, “So what?” in some way. Maybe it’s…
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Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot and doctor of the Church
Learning to follow the path of perfection is the most important goal of the spiritual life. How do we get our relationship with God right so that we can live with him forever in heaven? That was certainly the goal of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, whose feast we celebrate today. In the year 1111, at…
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Monday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time
So the question today is, what is it that holds us back? The rich young man seemed to have it all together: he acknowledged Jesus as the good teacher, so he must have been familiar with what Jesus said and did. He says he kept all the commandments, so he certainly had a religious upbringing…
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The Transfiguration of the Lord
Sometimes I think that, because of the limitedness of our minds, we accept a rather small view of Jesus. We think of him as a friend and brother, which is okay, but he is also our Lord and God. The disciples had this problem too, although they had a good excuse: they didn’t have two…
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Monday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings What I think the folks in our first reading need to learn – and maybe us too – is that the spiritual life is always about the big picture. The Israelites in today’s reading have completely rejected the God of their salvation. God had taken them from abject slavery in Egypt, in which…
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The Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Bread of Life Discourse II
Today’s readings My niece Molly used to say that she wanted to open a restaurant when she grows up. She even had a name all picked out for it: “Hungry.” That makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Where are you going to go when you’re hungry? Well, to Hungry, of course!…
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Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings I think we get a more vivid picture of today’s Gospel if we’ve ever had the task of weeding a good-sized garden. I’ve done it plenty of times. It’s not a task I really look forward to, but it is kind of good in that when you finish a job like that, you…
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Monday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time
These parables that we have today regarding the nature of the Kingdom of God are head-scratchers for sure! I am sure we can all understand how the people were confused by Jesus’ description of the Kingdom, since it even seems foreign to our ears. One might wish that he would just say: “Okay, look, here’s…
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Monday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings It’s easy to have faith when our enemies aren’t pursuing us, isn’t it? When things are going well, we can be people of faith with the best of them. But it does take a certain amount of sainthood to have faith in the face of opposition of whatever kind you can imagine. For…
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