Friar Daily Reflection
When the Beatitudes become visible
Today is the second of three consecutive days when I am presiding at the parish daily Mass. The three gospels are all taken from Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. What follows is really one longer reflection delivered over three days because these three Gospel...
Who are we becoming?
Today is the first of three consecutive days when I am presiding at the parish daily Mass. The three gospels are all taken from Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. What follows is really one longer reflection delivered over three days because these three Gospel...
Look What God Can Do with a Mustard Seed
Today is the final Mass for the parish elementary school. It is also a day when we have alumni present with us - graduates from the St. Francis Class of 2022 - who in just a few days will be the graduating high school class of 2026. It is appropriate that our gospel...
The Two Great Commandments
In today’s Gospel a Jewish scribe asks Jesus a question that I am sure all of us have asked at one time or another: “Which is the first of all the commandments?” A Jewish scribe is one who has studied the Scripture and perhaps even memorized it. He might feel a...
The God of the Living
In today’s Gospel Jesus teaches us that God is a living God: “He is not God of the dead but of the living.” Jews, Christians, and Moslems all believe in the same God, the God revealed to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” “The...
Like a Refiner’s Fire
“The heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire” (2 Peter 3:12). Yikes! That was a hard start to our first reading. To modern ears, the language sounds catastrophic, end of the world kind of stuff. “Frightening” would be a bit of an...
The Cornerstone
In today’s Gospel Jesus retells the parable of the vineyard from Isaiah 5 and then quotes Psalm 118 to interpret his rejection by some of the Jewish leaders. Jesus teaches that he is the rejected stone that has become the cornerstone: “The stone that the builders...
Finding your way
As you may or may not know, in days long past, I served aboard U.S. nuclear submarines. There are lots of sea stories that I can tell. There are lots of questions I am asked about life aboard a submarine: how a submarine operates, if I did this one thing or another,...
Belonging To God – The Royal Priesthood
St. Peter makes some dramatic and profound statements in today’ first reading. Israel had a special covenant relationship with God. They were God’s chosen people. Their mission as a nation was to be a sign of God’s presence in the world. Their relationship with God...
Born Again
In today’s first reading from 1 Peter the author reflects on the meaning of our baptism, the meaning of being born again or born anew. It is the Word of God that gives us this new life: “You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through...