Friar Daily Reflection
The Day of the Lord
“The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” (1 Thessalonians 5:2) - so proclaims our first reading. I have to admit “like a thief in the night” is a disturbing simile. But the point is not the comparison to the Lord and a thief - but it is indeed meant...
Fulfilled in your Hearing
Today our Gospel begins a largely continuous reading from the Gospel of Luke at the weekday masses. Today’s Gospel is often referred to as Jesus’ inaugural or programmatic address. He attends the weekly synagogue service as a good Jew. After the reading of the...
The Heartbreak of John the Baptist
In today’s gospel we heard the well known account of the beheading of John the Baptist. I have to admit, I wonder if John should have played the long game. He didn’t need to call out King Herod. It is not as though Herod was popular with Jewish people. He was thought...
Thanksgiving and Prayer
In today’s first reading we continue with Paul’s First Letter to the Christian Community in the Greek city of Thessalonica. This is probably the first letter that Paul wrote and indeed the earliest written document in the New Testament. This letter was written in...
Weal and Woe
In today’s Gospel Jesus continues to pronounce a sevenfold woe against the scribes and Pharisees: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites….” Today he again accuses them of hypocrisy because they neglect “the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy...
The Inside of Our Cup
Today Jesus starts off by sending “woe” to the hypocritical religious leaders. To me, this saying always seems like a Jesus is sending a curse on them. According to Google and Bing woe means great sorrow, grief, misery, pain, deep distress or lamentation over...
We have even more…
A starting note about language. “Woe to you.” We are conditioned to understand the phrase “Woe to you” as one of condemnation, or at least as a warning of the coming condemnation. The phrase calls to mind the evangelical preacher admonishing the backsliding,...
Not Just a Love Story
The Old Testament is a source of lots of bible stories for children: Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, Jonah and the Whale, and the list goes on. So, yes, you can read books of the Old Testament in search of a great children’s tale, suitable for bedtime stories. If this is...
The Open Invitation, Bad and Good
This parable is directed to the chief priests and the elders after Jesus’ formal entry into Jerusalem. He is in the temple teaching. We can imagine that after such a triumphal entry in Jerusalem, that large crowds formed in the temple to listen to his teaching. The...
A Parable of Ambition
The first reading today is from the Book of Judges and contains the Parable of the Trees (Judges 9:8-15). It speaks to a period of Israel's history after the people had entered the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua but before the establishment of the...