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Monday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings So Jesus today speaks of the “sign of Jonah.” I think this sign could mean a couple of different things. First, it is a direct parallel to the life of Jesus. Just as Jonah spent three days as good as dead in the belly of the big fish before being disgorged to a…
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Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings I have to confess that part of me dislikes the Gospel reading we have today. Dislike is probably too strong a word: it just kind of makes me uneasy. That’s because I don’t like the idea that there is some kind of competition between the duties of hospitality and the joy of contemplation…
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Friday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings In today’s Gospel story, the Pharisees are supposedly defending the law that the Sabbath was a day of rest, in accordance with the Third Commandment. What the disciples were doing though, was to provide food for their own hunger. The disciples weren’t rich men, and so we can probably surmise that they depended…
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Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
Today’s readings Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 to a Christian Algonquin woman. Her parents died in a smallpox epidemic – which left Kateri herself disfigured and half blind – when she was just four years old. She went to live with her uncle who succeeded her own father as chief of the clan. Her…
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Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings Today’s scriptures are full of place-names. The places seem meaningless to us so far away in both time and place. But in those days, those places were extremely important. Isaiah speaks of Jerusalem, Damascus, and Samaria, strategic places in the ancient near east. The Old Testament of course places preeminence on Jerusalem, God’s…
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Monday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings It seems to me that the readings this morning are pretty direct, aren’t they? Isaiah makes it clear that if we pretend to worship God, no matter how beautiful our Liturgy may be, but forget about God as soon as we leave the parking lot, we might as well not worship at all.…
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Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings In today’s Gospel, Jesus prepares seventy-two disciples to go out on mission. They are to go out in twos, preaching the Gospel and healing the sick. He sent them out to villages he himself intended to visit, more or less preparing the way for him. It’s a moving story about how Jesus was…
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Thursday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings Amos and Jesus are prophetic voices that we hear in our Scriptures this morning. Unfortunately, as is often the case with prophets, neither is a welcome voice. Amos makes it clear that he is not speaking on his own, or even because he wanted to. If it were up to him, he’d go…
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Saints Peter and Paul
Today’s readings In today’s Gospel, Peter and the others are asked, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Both Peter and Paul were committed to the truth about who Christ was. They had too much at stake. Having both messed up their estimation of who Jesus was earlier in their lives, they…
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