“But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” Matthew 6:6 It would be a great grace of Lent if we were to become aware of our greatest pretenses and then have the courage to…[read more]
Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like. But the one who…[read more]
So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, “Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.” . . . David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord,…[read more]
As living and sacred words, the scriptures live anew for us in every given moment and phase of our lives. To read the words from Maccabees this morning is to experience from our own perspective the problem of faithfulness and syncretism. What our immigrant grandparents so valued and longed to enter into, the “melting pot” of American culture, is for us who attempt to hold to a gospel faith an increasing experience of inner and outer conflict. In practice we sacrifice on a daily basis our lives to the cultural values of competition, consumption, and commerce, while relegating our relationship…[read more]
Jonah has been called “the reluctant prophet.” He also had to be one of the most amazed. He was only one day through his call to repentance to the people of Nineveh, when all, from the king on down, recognize and turn from their evil and violent ways and fast and pray in repentance. Jonah, as we know, is deeply upset with the Lord’s readiness to forgive, we can only assume because the prophet himself had clearly not repented of and forsaken his own violence.…[read more]
On this Ash Wednesday, we are at first summoned by the words of Joel to “return to me with your whole heart.” When I was a boy, my mother would on every Ash Wednesday repeat the words of one of her colleagues at work. “Oh, this is the day that all the Catholics come to work with dirty faces.” Unless the word “return” strikes us to the core of our being, all today is is the one on which we walk around with dirty faces.…[read more]
“Whenever a strong man is fully armed and guards his palace, his possessions are secure. But when a stronger than him breaks in and wins victory, he strips off the armor on which the man had relied, and distributes his spoils. The person who is not with me is against me. The one who does…[read more]
Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt / and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance; / Who does not persist in anger forever, / but delights rather in clemency, / And will again have compassion on us, / treading underfoot our guilt? / You will cast into the depths of…[read more]
Jesus began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But…[read more]
For lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble. And the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch, says the Lord of hosts. But for you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of…[read more]
“But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” Matthew 6:6 It would be a great grace of Lent if we were to become aware of our greatest pretenses and then have the courage to…[read more]
Recent Comments