The Gospel today is about being ready to meet our God. There is praise for the servant who is ready. We cannot know the day when the time to meet our God will come so we need to be prepared. There...
Are You Prepared?
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Friar Reflection
Choosing Sides
Choosing Sides Remember grade school and picking teams at recess for activities like dodgeball? If you were assigned as captain and had first pick, you wanted to pick “the one,’ the sure winner, the...
Your Friends Make Known
The refrain from today’s psalm proclaims: “Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.” The words of psalm are taken from Psalm 145, verses 10-18. The words proclaim the...
Me and You
The Mantu is the name of a small but busy restaurant in Richmond, Virginia, owned and operated by Chef Hamid Noori. The restaurant is more than a wonderful place to eat authentic Afghan cuisine –...
Faith is the Key to Eternal Life
Today, our first reading reminds us that faith is the key to eternal life. However, this key cannot be purchased as we are used to doing with many things in life. Also, it is not something we can...
The Grave
The Lord said: “Woe to you Pharisees! … You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.” (Luke 11:42). Back before this pandemic, I would often go with friends to the movie theatre....
Gospel
“I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes”. Paul speaks today about the Gospel or his Gospel. When Paul is writing his letters in the 50’s...
Saints of God
Today we begin reading Paul’s letter to the Romans. This letter is probably the last letter he wrote sometime in the late 50’s. It is a difficult and challenging letter to read but also one of the...
Demons
People today cannot just disagree they feel they have to demonize their adversary as being in “league with Satan” as they caricature their stance. Often these ad hominem attacks reflect more the...
Prayer
“Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Is this really our experience? I am sure that all of us have had the experience of asking for...
When Anger is not Helpful
A priest, on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, saw a rusty iron nail on the ground, next to one of the sacred monuments. He picked it up and decided to keep it because it would remind him of the nails...
Comes the Spirit
Today’s first reading is from one of my favorite books: The Book of Jonah. The book is only four chapters long and we are in Chapter 3. The whole Jonah and the “whale” have already happened, Jonah...
Mission and Belonging
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” It is a great passage, a great image,...
What a mystery human freedom is!
Today, we contemplate Jesus talking about the people of certain towns of Galilee (Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum) where He had preached and performed miracles. These towns had also been a cause...
Word of God
Today’s first reading from Nehemiah describes a Jewish “Liturgy of the Word.” Since Christianity started out as a Jewish sectarian movement our Liturgy of the Word is very similar to what is...
Under the Fig Tree
Today is the Feast of the Archangels with a reading from the Gospel of John in which Jesus encounters Nathaniel under a fig tree. It is only at the end of the reading that angels get a mention: “you...
Memorial of Saint Wenceslaus
Today includes an optional Memorial in honor of St. Wenceslas of Bohemia (which today we would understand as modern Czechoslovakia). The first reading for the memorial is from 1 Peter 3:14-17 and...
Welcoming the Children
Yesterday at the 9:30 a.m. Sunday Mass I heard the voices of children. I love to hear them calling out during Mass even during my homily. It is always a sign to me that our parish is alive when we...