Religious Education - Children
Catechist BlogThe Summons
In today’s Gospel Jesus “summons” the Twelve and sends them out to continue His work of healing. The word apostle (apostolos) comes from the Greek verb apostello, “to send.” An apostle, such as the Twelve or St. Paul, is one who is sent by Jesus to preach the...
Faith and Refining
While the nation celebrates Groundhog Day, we as a church celebrate the Feast of the Presentation as recounted in today’s Gospel. St. Luke's narration is of the Presentation in the Temple. The presentation that was required 40 days after Jesus’ nativity to complete...
The Cost of Healing
The Gospel passage tells us something about three people. It tells us about Jesus, the cost of healing. Each time that Jesus healed someone it took something out of Him. The point, we will never do something important in life, especially something that makes a...
Unclean, Unclean
In today’s Gospel Jesus comes face to face with a man possessed by a demon. Jesus cures the man by commanding the demon: “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!” Jesus heals or purifies both the man and this Gentile territory. This Gospel story is filled with signs...
Let’s not lose the battle, let’s let the seed grow
It is impossible to know how the desire for the Kingdom grows within us, but the Spirit does. We do know that God has placed a seed in each of us which is ready to germinate within us. The action of the Holy Spirit makes it possible for it to be formed until it grows...
Living a Decent Life
In Albert Camus’ iconic 1947 novel The Plague reads like a foreshadowing of our own tragic two years of the COVID pandemic. The physician at the center of the book, Bernard Rieux, battles the devastating epidemic day after day for almost a year. The escalating number...
Persistence Generosity
In the traditional understanding of the parable of “The Sower and Seed,” the focus is often on the soil as a description of our hearts, of our openness to the word of God being sown into our lives. The soil/heart is described as a well-trod path, rocky ground, a...
Conversion and Call
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the apostle. Paul was a zealous Jew who became a zealous missionary or apostle. In today’s first reading Paul offers his defense or apologia to the Jewish crowd gathered in the Temple as he describes his...
Discerning Family
Today’s Gospel is, in its own way, part of a thread in Mark’s gospel in which the nature of the family of God is slowly revealed. In Mark 3:7-12, Jesus is calling and appointing 12 as apostles, the foundation of the family of the Church. In v.21, Jesus’ biological...
Knowing Jesus
“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” So said Pope Francis on June 15th of last year as part of a papal audience. But it is not original to Pope Francis; he is quoting St. Jerome, the great biblical scholar and translator from the late 4th and early 5th...