In today’s Gospel Jesus says to a tax collector, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” This man was both a tax collector and a sinner. In Jesus’ time tax collectors...
Tax Collectors and Sinners
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Friar Reflection
Compassion
The gospel today is Luke’s account of the blind man on the roadside who cries out: “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” The underlying word is eléos – I don’t know why they translate it as “pity”...
The End is Near!
Do you live in the past, in the present, or in the future? Some of us like to remember the “good old days” but then we remember that not everything was good in the past. Some of us like to live in...
Is the Kingdom of God among us?
This week’s readings have been helping us to reflect more deeply on the mystery that the life of faith holds. Today the focus is on the evangelizing potential of the believing community. A Christian...
In Thanksgiving
In Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides, the central character, a high school teacher and football coach named Tom Wingo, remembers the one bright light of his dark and violent childhood in South...
Where the River Flows
The Lateran Basilica in Rome is not the oldest church in Rome – that honor seems to belong to Santi Quattro Coronati (314); but then that depends on what sources you believe. Old St. Peter’s, the...
Faith and Forgiveness
In today’s Gospel Jesus teaches about faith and forgiveness. Like the apostles our faith at times is strong but at other times we question and we doubt and so we need to ask Jesus: “Increase our...
Where Do We Invest Our Wealth?
Rachel is a wigmaker in her hospital’s oncology department. But she is more than that. As one of her clients writes, “she is a one-person support group, combining her styling skills with the...
We are found by God
Today the Gospel offers us two everyday images of things that have been lost and found: a sheep that gets lost in the field and a coin that gets lost in the house. Who has not ever lost the keys, a...
Adjusting the Plan
“Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?” - words from today’s Gospel. Seems like good, practical...
All Souls
Today we remember in prayer all our loved ones who have died. St. Paul reminds us that nothing can separate us for the love of God, not even death: “What will separate us from the love of Christ?...
A Parade of Saints Known and Unknown
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. The Gospel is the section of the Sermon on the Mount known as the Beatitudes: “Blessed are …” The Beatitudes are like a job description of the one...