Zacchaeus was a notorious public sinner in Israel. He collaborated with the Romans by collecting tariffs and tolls. That made him a traitor to his own country in the eyes of all his neighbors. To make things worse, he was a chief tax collector, ostentatiously wealthy...
November is the end of the harvest here in North America. This is the month when we celebrate Thanksgiving Day. It is also the month when we come to the end of our liturgical year. Advent brings the beginning of a new year in the Church at the end of November. The...
The Gospel is full of questions about the Kingdom of God. What will it be like? How can we recognize it? Who will get in? Who will be excluded? Today a group of pharisees ask Jesus when the Kingdom will come? Seems like the folks in Jesus’ times the same questions or...
When I was a kid, my brother and I worked all through junior high, high school and my first year in college doing all sorts of odd jobs in the neighborhood: raking leaves, shoveling snow, hanging wallpaper, cleaning houses, gardening, or painting. Then after my first...
The opening of today’s Gospel says that tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus. In a natural religiosity based on rigid rules and external purity, Jesus’ practices were scandalous. He constantly contaminated himself by actively associating...
