So, what is Thanksgiving? It is a time for rediscovering the meaning of giving thanks. To rediscover the gifts, the good things that we have been given, and not take them for granted. We live in a...
A Time for Rediscovering
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Friar Reflection
The Memorial of Andrew-Dung-Lac and Companions
“Beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans” (Mt...
The End
How will it all end? It is natural human curiosity to want to know how things will end. We hate TV shows that end the season with “cliffhangers” since we have to wait to see if all the main...
Jesus’ Lament
As Jesus arrives at the holy city of Jerusalem he weeps and laments over the city, its fate and how some Jewish religious leaders have led it astray. He laments over the coming fate of Jerusalem:...
What is Your Priority?
Ten years ago, when I was attending classes at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, one of my professors shared with us that when Franklin Roosevelt was president, he preferred...
Church and State
“Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mark 12:17). We have all heard this famous saying of Jesus. At first Jesus seems to call for an equal distribution of...
St. Elizabeth of Hungary
The gospel today is in celebration of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. In her short life, Elizabeth manifested such great love for the poor and suffering that she has become the patroness of Catholic...
Tax Collectors and Sinners
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...
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...