An essential part of being a true human being, a religious person is maintaining a good relationship with God. Over many generations’ prayer, fasting, and almsgiving formed a central part of...
The Sermon on the Mount: Prayer
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Friar Reflection
Righteous Deeds
I have always wondered about the practice of nonprofit fundraising and especially large capital campaigns that offer naming opportunities to attract seven-, eight-, and nine-figure donations from...
The New Love – Mature, Christian Love – The Cross
In the Old Testament everything about our relationship with God and others became reduced to interpretations, delineations, and limitations of God’s will. God’s law helped Israel control the human...
Withholding Forgiveness
During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus references Exodus 21 in which Moses is explaining the Torah to the people. It is a description of and an attempt to regulate fair punishment for violence so...
Where is God?
Where do we look to find God? Sometimes we expect to find God only in the spectacular and stupendous such as the parting of the Red Sea or Jesus walking on the waters during a violent storm. In...
Greater Righteousness
In today’s Gospel Jesus calls us to a “greater righteousness.” The word “righteousness” in Matthew’s Gospel means knowing and doing the will of God. We pray for righteousness in the Our Father:...
Teaching and Living the Law – The Sermon on the Mount
Today’s Gospel comes from the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount covers three chapters that delineate a new vision, a new human being, a new way of living with God and...
Memorial of St. Barnabas
St. Barnabas was one of the prominent Christian disciples in Jerusalem, Jewish and Cypriot by birth. He was sent to Antioch as an emissary of the Church in Jerusalem and witnessed the work of the...
Prophets and Kings
When it comes to the reading selections for daily Mass, I sometimes think the first readings are on their own track, telling a story, but only in bits and pieces, starts and stops. Today we are...
Mercy of God
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. This feast and today’s readings ask us to focus on the love and mercy of God. St. Paul speaks in today’s second reading of the...
Listen and Love
The question posed to Jesus in today’s gospel seems trivial to us. Why so much concern about which commandment is important? For the people of Jesus’ time, it would have been a very important...
St. Boniface: missionary zeal
The readings for the memorial are an option for today and are well chosen for the life of St. Boniface. The account of St. Paul before King Agrippa and the gospel message of Jesus as the good...