Friar Daily Reflection
Taking the Plunge
I can remember coming home from 3+ years of mission in Kenya, friends were driving me home, and as we wound through trees, I could see the porch light on at my home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Even from afar, it shone like a welcoming beacon. It was the sign I...
Follow Me
Jesus’ invitation to Philip in today’s Gospel is simple, “Follow me.” How does Philip respond? He brings Nathanael with him to follow Jesus after telling him, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote and the prophets.” Philip proclaims that Jesus fulfills the...
Faith in Action
Elizabeth Ann Seton has a personal history that we would not expect in the life of a saint: orphaned when 3 years old, married at 19 years old to a wealthy husband, mother of five children, widowed at 29 years old, and then a convert to the Catholic church. She...
The Lamb of God
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” We hear the same expression at every Mass, but do we hear the words in the same way as John the Baptist would have understood them? For us, the image of a lamb conjures up thoughts of innocence, cuddly and...
Family and Faith
After the death of the first twelve apostles, the Church entered the patristic stage, a time of guidance by the early fathers. Basil and Gregory come from that period. Basil lived from 329AD to 389AD. Gregory died ten years before Basil. During their lifetime both had...
Abba
In today’s Gospel Mary, the Mother of God, serves as a model for how we are invited to hear the Word of God. The Evangelist Luke tells us that Mary, after she had heard all the amazing things being said about her child, “kept all these things, reflecting on them in...
Maybe in my lifetime
Today’s gospel from St. Luke is the narration of the Presentation in the Temple. The presentation that was required 40 days after Jesus’ nativity to complete Mary's ritual purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the firstborn son, in obedience...
Holy Innocents
“A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.” Sadly, this passage is all too real today as we see the children massacred in Israel and the babies and children dying...
Seeing is Believing
Today’s readings reflect on the relationship between “seeing” and “believing.” In today’s Gospel passage from John, we hear that both Simon Peter and the “other disciple” went into the empty tomb but only this other disciple, “saw and believed.” In today’s first...
It is as He Said
Today’s readings have always struck me as oddly placed only one day after Christmas. It is the story of the protomartyr of the Christian faith - St. Stephen. While I know that the feast day is mentioned in the Christmas carol classic “Good King Wenceslas,” it does...