Friar Daily Reflection
Eternal Life and Resurrection
We are coming to the end of this year’s Easter season. We have celebrated and remembered the resurrection of Christ over the last 2 months. I hope celebrating this year’s Easter season and listening to the Word of God has given each of us a deeper experience of the...
Incomplete Christians
In the first reading for today, St. Paul met some men who, as William Barclay notes, were incomplete Christians. They had received the baptism of John but they did not even know of the Holy Spirit in the Christian sense of the term. Paul then said, "John baptized with...
Joy In the Resurrection
We are nearing the end of the Easter season for this year. Jesus prepares his disciples for his passion, death, and resurrection in today’s Gospel by announcing that their grief will be changed into joy. The message and language seemed hard to understand for those...
Evangelization Masterclass
The account of St. Paul’s address on the Areopagus in Athens is a masterclass in the evangelization of the culture - a skill surely important for our day and age. His arrival in Athens is, in its way, the introduction of Christianity to Europe. It was an event, while...
It’s About Sin
Today’s Gospel is one of the more difficult ones to hear proclaimed. It’s about judgement and sin. It tells us three things about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will convict men, mankind, of sin. When the Jews first crucified Jesus they did not think that they were...
The Advocate
In today’s Gospel Jesus promises to send “the Advocate,” that is the holy Spirit. The Greek word John used here is Parakletos (Paraclete). Sometimes this Greek word is translated as Advocate as here but elsewhere as Comforter. Jesus also refers to himself as an...
Jesus’ Prayer at the Last Supper: Communion and Unity
Today we celebrate mass with our grade school; therefore, the readings are different than those listed in the Roman Lectionary. What is the biggest miracle that you can imagine? Most of us begin to think of miracles outside ourselves in the physical word – like making...
Rules
Recently someone remarked to me that sometimes the Catholic Church seems to be a collection of rules just for the sake of rules. I could provide a long list of examples, but I suspect you have in mind your own list of rules that give you pause. Of course, one always...
It’s About Communicating
Butchers sign, ‘Try our sausages, None like them’. Tailors guarantee, if the smallest hole appears after six months wear, we will make another one absolutely free. Lost, a small pony belonging to a young lady with a silver mane and tail. Warning at a safari park,...
Evident to us
Our first reading today is taken from the 1st missionary trip of St. Barnabas and St. Paul. In Acts 13 and 14, the intrepid disciples go from Asia Minor to Cyprus, back to the mainland at Antioch, and other nearby cities. They met success, resistance, and out-and-out...