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...
There is a sharp contrast in today’s Gospel reading between the opening expression of joy and thanksgiving expressed at the table with Jesus and the overshadowing sadness of the parable. Throughout the Gospels Jesus uses table fellowship and parables about banquets to...
Today’s first reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is often viewed negatively. Yet to understand it let us look at the background. Paul is giving specific recommendations to the members of a new Christian community, recently converted from paganism. The...
