Friar Daily Reflection
The Sermon on the Mount: Prayer
An essential part of being a true human being, a religious person is maintaining a good relationship with God. Over many generations’ prayer, fasting, and almsgiving formed a central part of religious life for the people of Israel. This continues to be true in God’s...
Righteous Deeds
I have always wondered about the practice of nonprofit fundraising and especially large capital campaigns that offer naming opportunities to attract seven-, eight-, and nine-figure donations from high-net-worth individuals. As far back as the first century CE, Roman...
The New Love – Mature, Christian Love – The Cross
In the Old Testament everything about our relationship with God and others became reduced to interpretations, delineations, and limitations of God’s will. God’s law helped Israel control the human tendency to violence and revenge. God’s intention was for his Law to be...
Withholding Forgiveness
During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus references Exodus 21 in which Moses is explaining the Torah to the people. It is a description of and an attempt to regulate fair punishment for violence so that the punishment did not exceed the injury. The instruction was aimed...
Where is God?
Where do we look to find God? Sometimes we expect to find God only in the spectacular and stupendous such as the parting of the Red Sea or Jesus walking on the waters during a violent storm. In today’s first reading Elijah needs to learn he can find God not just in...
Greater Righteousness
In today’s Gospel Jesus calls us to a “greater righteousness.” The word “righteousness” in Matthew’s Gospel means knowing and doing the will of God. We pray for righteousness in the Our Father: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done.” God’s Kingdom and God’s...
Teaching and Living the Law – The Sermon on the Mount
Today’s Gospel comes from the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount covers three chapters that delineate a new vision, a new human being, a new way of living with God and living with others. It is a beautiful Xray of a true human being. It...
Memorial of St. Barnabas
St. Barnabas was one of the prominent Christian disciples in Jerusalem, Jewish and Cypriot by birth. He was sent to Antioch as an emissary of the Church in Jerusalem and witnessed the work of the Lord. At some time before this, St. Paul had his Damascus Road...
Prophets and Kings
When it comes to the reading selections for daily Mass, I sometimes think the first readings are on their own track, telling a story, but only in bits and pieces, starts and stops. Today we are introduced to King Ahab and the prophet Elijah. To this point the First...
Mercy of God
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. This feast and today’s readings ask us to focus on the love and mercy of God. St. Paul speaks in today’s second reading of the “inscrutable riches of Christ.” In the previous chapter Paul has...