The neighbor with the splinter in the eye helps us discover and acknowledge the beam in our own eye in two distinct ways. The first is simply by being who he or she is. The neighbor whose presence irritates, unsettles, or angers us may, in fact, be revealing something about the beam that distorts our […]

Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great: In reflecting on our first reading, it is worth noting that Paul doesn’t say that if anyone among you considers himself wise, let him realize that he is a fool, but rather let him become a fool, so as to become wise. Becoming a fool is not about unplugging […]

On this day when we are called to pray for the care of creation, we must also pray for forgiveness—for the many ways in which we ourselves have failed to care for the world God has entrusted to us. It is all too easy to think only of governments, large industries, power companies, and other […]

“Hitting rock bottom”—a phrase familiar to those who have emerged fruitfully from serious addictions—can also describe a decisive moment in our spiritual lives and in our struggle against the compulsions of sin. The Lord, speaking through Jeremiah, portrays this moment starkly: your wound is incurable, your bruise grievous, and there is no remedy for your […]

Saint Paul in writing to Saint Timothy reassures him that although we are unfaithful, God remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.  Paraphrasing these consoling words, we might say that although we may give up on ourselves, God never gives up on us. Accordingly, like the potter, who tries again and again when the object […]

The spiritual quest for wholeness and integration—also known as holiness—seems inevitably to be preceded by an experience of disintegration and fragmentation. For, just as the walls of Jerusalem, whose rebuilding Pope Leo invokes as an image of our cooperative labor in a fractured world, first had to be breached and demolished—so too must our own […]

As Christians we are so familiar with the notion of seeking God and so we might miss the nuance in this morning’s response to the psalm in which we are exhorted to seek always the face of the Lord. And yet, to seek the Lord and to seek the face of the Lord, are not […]

Reassuring us of God’s constant care, Jesus insisted that not one sparrow falls to the ground without our Father’s knowledge. He then added those consoling words: Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. In today’s gospel, it would seem that the liberation of two demoniacs was worth more than an entire […]

Lord, if you wish you can make me clean. In that simple plea, the leper in today’s Gospel makes a twofold act of faith. First, he truly believes that Jesus has the power to heal him. Second, he trusts in Christ’s intrinsic goodness—his desire to relieve suffering and restore what is broken. There is also, […]

Living, as we do, in an age of religious pluralism, the problem that occupied the prophet Elijah may seem irrelevant to many in our own time and culture. For some, it appears far more important that the people of Israel believed in a god than whether the God they worshipped was the Lord of Israel […]