“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…” (Mt 10:37) I think there is a tendency among believers that when we hear those words, we respond with, what I call, “the holy nod.” It is our reflexive response: Jesus said it, it must be true,...
Yesterday, the first reading was the story of Jacob wrestling with the divine. In yesterday’s reflection, in part, we considered that some modern scholars interpret the episode as an inner struggle—a symbolic rendering of Jacob’s crisis of identity before again...
Growing up in Florida in the early 1960s, one of the staples of Saturday television programming was “Championship Wrestling from Florida” with Gordon Solie as host and play-by-play announcer. The show was filled with heroes and villains and served as a televised...
In today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Silas are stripped, beaten, and thrown into prison. Their only “crime” was setting a slave girl free from possession by a spirit – and interfering with the men who profited by her oracles. But what...
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you…You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:12,14) I have to admit the words “if you do what I command you” have always struck me as somewhat “off.” These words come in the middle of a long...
