Friar Daily Reflection
The Best Seats in the Assembly
In our Christian assemblies we tend to forget the children. That is except of course the little babies who scream and cry. And to do away with the screamers, we put them in a special room in the back where they cannot be heard or seen! Overall, even the bigger...
The Astonishing Catch and the New Vocation
This encounter with Jesus that Peter and his companions had must have been quite shocking. They were professional fishermen. They knew all the tricks about fishing: how to fish, where to fish, and when to fish. Yet all their human experience, knowledge, labor and...
God’s Field
We are all aware of the divisions in our modern society. There are divisions and polarization not only in the political but also in the religious sphere. Perhaps surprisingly this is nothing new. We hear in today’s first reading that Paul must deal with divisions...
Wisdom and Folly
Today’s first reading from St. Paul is part of a cohesive thought that he has been building upon since the beginning of this 1st Letter to the Corinthians (which began with Friday’s readings and continues for about three weeks.) It all began after Paul left the...
Fulfilled in Your Hearing
In today’s Gospel Jesus does something you and I do each Sunday. Jesus went to worship his Heavenly Father on the Sabbath. He read from the Word of God and preached a noticeably short homily. The synagogue service began with Hymns and Psalms. Then there was a...
Nothing Borrowed
A world of information, expert advice, and knowledge all sit at our fingertips. With all that available to us via a simple query or the use of artificial intelligence such as Chat GPT, we should have plenty of answers to our questions. But will the answers carry...
Grace
In today’s first reading Paul greets the Corinthians with these words: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The words of this greeting are also used as one of the greetings at the beginning of mass: Priest: “Grace to you and peace...
The Woes
This is the week of “woes” as we listen to the reading of Matthew’s 23rd chapter. In English woe means sadness or distress. Seven times Jesus judges and rebukes the pharisees by saying sadness on you. In Spanish the translation is simply an emotional exclamation, not...
Judgement, Mercy, and Fidelity
Certain things in the Word of God are easy to measure, control, and even accomplish. Paying a tithe of a certain product is rather easy. All we do is weigh our harvest and then pay the percentage. We even get a receipt for our payment to prove that we are doing things...
Hypocrites
In today’s Gospel Jesus continues his denunciation of the scribes and the Pharisees. These along with the Sadducees were the religious leaders at the time of Jesus. At the time of the writing of Matthew’s Gospel (around 85 A.D.) the Pharisees were the main religious...