One of the enduring tensions in the life of faith is the tension between control and trust. In the first reading, the elders of Israel come to Samuel with what sounds like a reasonable request: “Appoint a king for us to govern us, like all the nations to judge us.”...
Today’s Gospel is the story of Jesus healing a leper. While the disease of leprosy has been pretty much eradicated today there are still many people in society today who are treated as outcasts or lepers. Jesus teaches and shows us how we must respond to such...
Today’s first reading is the story of the call of the prophet Samuel. His first couples of responses are “Here I am” as he mistakes the voice of God for the voice of the priest Eli, thinking that it is Eli who is calling him. Finally, Eli helps Samuel to realize...
Most people will miss what is happening in today’s Gospel. Most of us modern day listeners would tend to focus on the expulsion of the demons and lose the rest of the importance in today’s Gospel. Then we even tend to explain away the expulsion using modern science,...
One of the quiet truths of Scripture is that God often begins something new not at moments of obvious strength, but at moments that feel empty, unproductive, or closed off. Today’s first reading places us with Hannah, a woman living with a deep and painful barrenness....
