The darkness of war fades when we actively work toward peace in all of our relationships. The darkness of long winters, of routine, and of overwhelming busyness fades when we stand in solidarity with those around us experiencing similar struggles, with the poor and homeless who really have to endure the cold, when we are compassionate to others whom we might not normally acknowledge.
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year A
At every Eucharist in the dialogue just before the breaking of the bread, we proclaim Jesus as the Lamb of God who, by his life of love and sacrifice, has come and continues to come into a broken world to heal us of our sinfulness. It is through our “communion,” our encounter with the Lamb of God, that we are empowered to enrich the world with an expression of God’s justice and peace.
Epiphany • Year A
Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God • Year C
The sacred narrative of the Gospel keeps a gentle approach to the role of Mary in her son’s mission. She learned, rather, “to treasure up all these things and ponder them in her heart (Lk 2:19) and to go silently, following Jesus through a uniquely personal and demanding “inward journey.” The Mother is there, centered in Christ, with unified and “total will.” Her fiat as a virgin has transformed her into the mother that lives “abiding in God.”
The Nativity of the Lord • Year C
What makes the birth of the child of Bethlehem something extraordinary is not so much due to the singing of angels and the gathering of shepherds. It’s not in the things that surround the birth, rather, it’s in the awareness of who this is, who he will become, how he will manifest himself, what he will say and what he will accomplish.
Fourth Sunday of Advent • Year C
God’s vision is less of a catalog of right and wrong and more of a radical dislodgement of our categories, a vision in which peace and goodwill are the entitlement of all. We give birth to Christ in our world though our vision, our compassion, our forgiveness, and perhaps most importantly our ability to see and hear things differently from humanity, to see and hear things as God would have us do.
Third Sunday of Advent • Year C
Submit to God, draw near to God, side with God. Resist the devil – resist all that is evil. Do not be of two minds. Cleanse yourself free of that two-mindedness. Try, with God’s grace to come to the complete and unassailable faith of Mary, to the radical and all-consuming hope of John the Baptist. Then indeed our parched land will exult and bloom, our blind eyes will be opened, and we will see the glory and splendor that God’s way holds out to us.
Second Sunday of Advent • Year C
John the Baptist reminds us that there is the Advent of children and the Advent of adults. The Advent of children is a time of wondering how things work, and what gifts they will receive. The Advent of adults must be a time of giving, of sacrifice and forgiveness, of the true repentance the Lord most desires. Christ wants that good fruit from us today.
First Sunday of Advent • Year C
The season of Advent challenges us to examine our lives for signs of sleep. St. Paul, in the second reading, tells us: “It is now the hour to wake from sleep....Let us cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Advent encourages us to build into our lives a series of checks and balances, so that present routines don’t lull us into complacency, so that we don’t fool ourselves with a false sense of security.
Thirty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
The letter to the Colossians continues to open out the nature of Christ’s kingship in some of the richest language of the New Testament. His intimacy with his Father makes it possible for us to claim in faith that every dimension of creation is organically interconnected with one another because Jesus is the means by which the Father created the universe of nature and humanity, and the world that transcends the sensual.
Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
We cannot get rid of God no matter how hard we try in our sinfulness. And it is precisely because God wants us to be more and more the sacraments of God’s presence to others that God calls us little by little, rebuking and warning and reminding us, says Wisdom, so that we can turn to the merciful and compassionate God, whom Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, proclaims as he enters into the house of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who was lost, but Jesus found.
Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
We cannot get rid of God no matter how hard we try in our sinfulness. And it is precisely because God wants us to be more and more the sacraments of God’s presence to others that God calls us little by little, rebuking and warning and reminding us, says Wisdom, so that we can turn to the merciful and compassionate God, whom Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, proclaims as he enters into the house of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who was lost, but Jesus found.
Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
Today, we see the importance of the disposition of humility in prayer. The humble and honest prayer of the tax collector reveals his true self. His example serves as a reminder to us that with and in humility we are invited to begin and end all prayer. What other thoughts does this Gospel raise for us?
Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
What is our body language? What is our posture? What is our stance in life? What is it that we communicate? Are we closed off from one another, to each other’s voices, ideas, concerns? Do we listen to one another, or are we too busy looking the other way? Or are we open to each other, looking at each other in the eye?
Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
Naaman's dignity is revealed with the healing waters of the Jordan. Likewise, the ten lepers were reunited with their family and community celebrating their dignity. Can we see a parallel meaning in our baptism? Washing may not have happened in a river, but it is an image of cleansing, an experience that celebrates our dignity.
Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
We see the impossible being done everyday by healthcare workers and laborers on farms and factories, by teachers finding ways to bring forth learning, by innovators and imagineers able to see possibilities never considered before. Without faith, so much remains impossible and untried. With faith, miracles happen because faith opens our eyes to the awe and wonder of what God has done and is doing in our midst.
Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
Our Catholic faith teaches us that there are two ways in which we can fall off the wagon – so to speak – on our pilgrimage through life. One is by the deliberate, conscious and willful choices we make to do harm, cause injury, inflict pain by word or thought or action. The other is more subtle, more hidden perhaps, more damaging in the long run – and that is the failure to do something positive where the opportunity presents itself.
Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
Christ then sums it all up by saying: “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or be attentive to the one and despise the other.” As followers of Christ we have a wonderful creed. We profess a marvelous faith. What we need to do is line up our lives with what we say we believe.
Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time • Year C
Like the father, the shepherd and the woman in Jesus’ parables, Moses ventures out to bring back what has been lost. It is more than just seeking or offering forgiveness. Moses and the brother’s father do not merely stand and wait for something to happen. They make it happen. They take the action needed for reconciliation
