I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a…[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]
Given his audience, Matthew begins his gospel by asserting the credentials of Jesus as the long awaited Messiah. This is not unlike the practice throughout antiquity of introducing a god through his or her lineage. The later gospel of John will begin with Jesus’ Divine lineage, but for Matthew it is vital to establish that Jesus is indeed the longed for and promised Messiah. For us, however, the lineage of Jesus is a reminder of the Divine and human interaction through which the Kingdom of God is revealed. It includes men and women of every stripe and experience. Their lives,…[read more]
Today is the Feast of St. Francis Xavier, the patron of my congregation. Our Founder, Theodore James Ryken told us that “The name of this insatiable laborer for souls will indicate with one word what is intended for the congregation.” Now I have to admit that there are very few ways I am able to identify with St. Francis Xavier. Perhaps if at the age of 17, when I was making the decision to join the congregation, I had known these words of Ryken I would have sought out an order or congregation more suited to my personality and temperament.…[read more]
On this first weekday of Advent, we pray that when the Lord comes and knocks, we shall be found “watchful in prayer.” To be in prayer is to be awake and watchful in a way far more truly and distinctively human than the way we are present to life much of the time. In today’s gospel Jesus exclaims to his disciples that in no person in Israel has he found the faith that the centurion manifests. For what Jesus experiences among his own people is what he well may experience among his church today when he comes. He may find…[read more]
In his commentary on the above verse from Luke, Luke Timothy Johnson writes: “In Greek moral philosophy, misos (“hatred”) is often associated with envy, phthonos, and like it tends toward the harming of another.” To hear repeatedly in the gospels of the hatred of many of the religious leaders of Jesus gives rise to the question of “Why?” Conventionally we answer this question by pointing out that Jesus poses a threat to their status as leaders by revealing what is impure and self-serving in their motivation. However, there is perhaps an even more fundamental reason for their hatred of him,…[read more]
Alas, the day! / for near is the day of the Lord, / and it comes as ruin from the Almighty.Blow the trumpet in Zion, / sound the alarm on my holy mountain! / Let all who dwell in the land tremble, / for the day of the Lord is coming; / Yes, it is…[read more]
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the Kingdom of heaven before people. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.” Matthew 23: 13-14 From our perspective, the seeming malevolence of the scribes and Pharisees, at least as presented in the gospels, is more than…[read more]
Then all the trees said to the buckthorn, “Come you reign over us!” But the buckhorn replied to the trees, “If you wish to anoint me king over you in good faith, come and take refuge in my shadow. Otherwise, let fire come from the buckthorn and devour the cedars of Lebanon.” Judges 9: 14-15…[read more]
The Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have and save Israel from the power of Midian. It is I who send you.” But Gideon answered him, “Please, my lord, how can I save Israel? My family is the lowliest in Manasseh, and I am the most insignificant in my father’s…[read more]
I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a…[read more]
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