When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you…[read more]
For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance. Romans 8: 24-25 St. Paul speaks of “hope” in Romans 8 in the context of the groaning of all…[read more]
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. Romans 8: 16-17 In my earliest religious upbringing there seemed to be in…[read more]
Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? As you go to a magistrate with an adversary, try to make things up with him while still on the road. Otherwise he might drag you before the judge and the judge will hand you over to the bailiff and the bailiff will throw you into…[read more]
When you were slaves of sin, you felt no obligation to righteousness, and what did you get from this? Nothing but experiences that now make you blush, since that sort of behavior ends in death. Now, however, you have been set free from sin, you have been made slaves of God, and you get a…[read more]
But thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted. Romans 6: 27 And the servant who has known the desire of the master yet has not prepared or done anything in accordance with his…[read more]
Have your belts cinched tight and your lamps lit. Be like people waiting for their master to return from a wedding, so that when he arrives and knocks they can open the door for him immediately. Blessed are the servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Luke 12: 35-7 Today’s passage from Luke…[read more]
Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions. Luke 12: 15 In the Working Paper on Life Form that is part of the Xaverian Charism Study, we read: The Xaverian expression of the life of the evangelical counsels has always included a…[read more]
Indeed, whatever things you say in darkness will be heard in the light, and whatever you whisper in a private room will be proclaimed from the roofs. but I tell you, my friends, don’t fear those who kill the body and afterwards can do nothing more. I will show you whom to fear. Fear…[read more]
Woe to you lawyers! You have taken the key of knowledge. You do not enter yourselves, and you close out those trying to enter. Luke 11: 52 Jesus’ charge against the “lawyers,” the “scholars of the law,” is that they are not only mired in their own ignorance but that they also exert effort to…[read more]
When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you…[read more]
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