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...
The Cost of Healing
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Friar Reflection
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
Naming the Team
Up to this point in his gospel narrative, Mark has shown his skills as a storyteller. He has already achieved a mounting tension in the narrative. Chapter 1 ends with Jesus’ fame and reputation as a...
How Do We Compare to Jesus?
In today’s Gospel, we can see what the ministry of Jesus was like, and the impact it had. So many people flocked to Jesus that He asked his disciples to get a boat ready for him, to keep the people...
Condemnation
It seems that people, especially religious people, are quick to accuse and condemn. Some Pharisees in today’s Gospel, “watched Jesus closely to see if he would cure him on the sabbath so that they...
New Wine
In today’s Gospel Jesus comes preaching a new message, a message with authority, a message of love and forgiveness. This new message, this new wine, cannot be contained in old wineskins: “no one...
Authority to Forgive
In today’s Gospel Mark continues to present Jesus as one with “authority.” Jesus claims that as the Son of Man he has the “authority” to forgive sins and to heal. The Gospel Story is a wonderful...