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Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus
Today’s readings Today’s memorial of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus is a feast of siblings, which is unique and compelling. It’s a wonderful reminder of how family should be: united in faith, and bringing each other to Christ. The story of the raising of Lazarus, of which we have a fragment in today’s Gospel reading,…
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Friday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings Maybe you remember memorizing the Ten Commandments as a child. I do. I sometimes think that memorizing things is a lost art. Certainly memorizing things like the Ten Commandments doesn’t happen as much as it used to, and that’s too bad. The Psalmist is the one who tells us why today: “The precepts…
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Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings During the summer before my final year of seminary, I worked as a hospital chaplain. It ended up being a pretty rough summer for me and the other men and women in the student chaplain group: we had a record number of deaths and tragic accidents to deal with, and it was, as…
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The Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings I’m not a person who has a green thumb. When I was growing up, we had a family garden, but I wasn’t the greatest at making it happen. I’d pull the weeds and stuff, and even try to help it grow, but it never worked out very well. But I’m glad I had…
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Saint Kateri Tekawkitha, Virgin
Saint 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 uncle…
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Saint Benedict, Abbot
Today’s readings The spiritual life, almost by definition, isn’t easy. Today’s first reading proves it. As the reading begins, Jacob wrestles with “some man,” who turns out to be God himself. They tussle all day long and finally declare a draw, but the battle leaves poor Jacob limping from the fight. In the end though,…
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The Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings You are not in the flesh;on the contrary, you are in the spirit… Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans is really a masterpiece of Christian doctrine and discipleship. If you haven’t read it in a while, or ever, I think it’s good summer reading. That reading will give you a vast array of…
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Thursday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings God wants to heal us from the inside out. Which is why Jesus says to the paralytic, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” It would have been easy for Jesus to snap his fingers and heal the man’s paralysis, but that is not what he was most concerned about. Sometimes when a person…
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The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings There’s a hymn that we sing often called “All are Welcome.” It’s been around for a while and is somewhat of a “moldy oldy.” That’s because I think we like to say we are welcoming, but sometimes it’s really hard to really welcome “all.” But that song came to mind this week as…
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Saturday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings Growing up, did you ever laugh when someone else got in trouble, or when things were tense, and then get caught? “Who me? No, I didn’t laugh…” That kind of sounds like the conversation between the Lord and Sarah today. Yesterday, it was Abraham who laughed, and for the same reason. They simply…
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