Spiritual

The Sunday we continue with the three wonderful stories from John’s Gospel. These stories are used every year for RCIA because they are filled with images of baptism, confirmation, and conversion. I am not going to talk about that today exactly. Instead, I want to muse on a phrase that stood out to me in […]

St Cyril of Jerusalem Today’s readings are about humility. The prophet Hosea begs “Come let us return to the Lord…” and humbly admit our failings. The most famous penitential psalm, Psalm 51, promises that a “humble and contrite heart, the Lord will not spurn.’ And Jesus, in Luke, recounts the parable of the proud man

St Patrick The beautiful Jewish prayer, the Shema is the cornerstone of today’s Gospel from Mark. Jesus says that this prayer, which proclaims that there is only one God, and God should be loved above all things, is the crux of our faith. If I acknowledge God, and repent of my transgressions, then the prophet

What a wonderful invitation we are offered today. Jeremiah speaks the consoling words of God “I will be your God and you shall be my people.” God will walk with us! Jesus in the Gospel excerpt from Luke calls “…whoever does not gather with me scatters.” The psalm calls us to ‘Come and sing joyful

I find the readings for today to be just a bit sad for me. The last line in the excerpt from Deuteronomy commands that we teach the law of the Lord to our children and our children’s children. The Psalm says that God has blessed the children of Jerusalem (all believers) and Jesus in today’s

Today we hear Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, say that we must forgive anyone who harms us 77 times! Seven is the number of perfection, so Jesus is saying that we must be perfect—hold no grudges and show mercy. Wow, that is a lot to take in and even harder to do. Just how am I

Today a little girl shows me what I need to do. In the excerpt from 2 Kings, Naaman, the highly esteemed army commander, is a leper. It is a young Israeli slave girl, whose faith is strong, who tells him about a man of God who will cure him of his leprosy. She is convinced

Today in the 1st reading from Exodus, we see how the Israelites were unhappy about leaving Egypt. They hated the food on this journey, and they were thirsty, and they missed their homes, and and and…. Well, change is hard. Being uprooted and moving, no matter if the move is for the better, it is scary.

Today the prophet Micah calls on God to tend the Israelites like a shepherd—to pasture them again as of old and forgive their sins. The image of a shepherd is not one that we in the United States can really identify with. There are not a lot of sheep farms and few of us know

The famous dreamer of the Hebrew Scriptures’ book of Genesis, Joseph, is sold into slavery today, by his brothers. We know that Joseph goes on to be far-sighted, storing grain so the whole county and more can survive a drought. Meaning that those who did not work for grain, are given it. In Matthew’s Gospel,