Most of us organize our lives in such a way that we are occasionally united to God’s will. If we were to draw a graph of our lives, God’s will would be a straight line down the middle of the page,...
United to the Father
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Friar Reflection
New Possibilities
The scene in today’s gospel (a woman caught in adultery) is a mixture of zealous righteousness that seeks to enact the law without pardon or quarter, the leadership who want to trap Jesus between...
This is the Way
In today’s first reading we read from the Book of Wisdom which was written about fifty years before the coming of Christ, likely in Alexandria. That places the author in a deeply Hellenistic...
Righteousness
St. Joseph does not appear much in the Gospel. But the moments when he is present leave us very clear examples of a life centered on God, hope, obedience, and faith. Those virtues lead to be a...
More than Remembering
The connection between the first reading and the Gospel becomes much deeper when we notice how the Servant imagery in Isaiah quietly anticipates the way Jesus speaks about Himself in John’s Gospel....
Missionary Zeal
For the first three hundred years after the resurrection of Jesus, the Christian faith spread across the Mediterranean through the missionary work of the first apostles and disciples. The Christian...
Signs and Wonders
In John’s Gospel Jesus performs signs and wonders, also called extraordinary deeds or miracles in the other Gospels. These signs lead to faith but ultimately faith comes through an encounter with...
Forgive One Another
The readings today go right to the core of Christian life: forgiveness. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus repeats the centrality of forgiveness – in teachings, parables, and conversations with his...
The Finger of God
God is in our midst but sometimes we refuse to listen to him and refuse to see his hand at work. This is the message of the prophet Jeremiah in our first reading and the message of Jesus in our...
Old and New
Today we listen to another portion of the Sermon on the Mount which is the central core of Jesus’ project for human beings. Tradition was extremely important for the Jewish people and rabbis of that...
The Bulwark
We should certainly hear an echo of the Lord’s Prayer in today’s gospel: ““Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you,...
Prophet
In today’s Gospel Jesus recognizes that is it hard for a prophet to be recognized in his hometown. “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.” Even when the people of...