From a human-interest point of view, there’s very little about Mary in Luke’s Gospel—but there is some such information. She’s close to her family and she’s a worrying, even scolding, mother to her adolescent son. Other details than these hold the Evangelist’s interest, while of dogmatic issues, like the Immaculate Conception, he displays no […]

A superficial observation of daily monastic life might well give the impression that we are guilty of the very thing that Jesus is warning against in his description of the behaviors of the people in the time of Noah. As monks we go about our very ordinary daily tasks in much the same way as […]

      We read in the Book of Deuteronomy:            When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget your God, […]

What is the relevance of the title, Christ the King of the Universe? What’s the point of kings in this day and age, after their dominions have been overthrown or their sovereignty limited by constitutional constraints?     Of course, the archetypal force of kingship still parades through our dreams and legends or even in our […]

If you have found this morning’s gospel confusing and disorienting, you are not alone. Things that seem stable and immovable (like the great temple) will become a pile of rubble; wars and insurrections and mass civil unrest do not signal the end of time; earthquakes, plagues, and famines, for their part, add to the confusion […]

Celtic spirituality has long cultivated the belief in so-called “thin places” where the veil separating heaven and earth, time and eternity, is thin and where the experience of the sacred and the divine is heightened. Places of Christian pilgrimage and shrines are among the more commonly recognized “thin places.” Monasteries and their immediate environs are […]

     With a predictable regularity guests at our Retreat House ask me whether we are living in the end times. Although I realize this has been a perennial preoccupation and fear in every era, I am in no position to know. I always repeat what Jesus himself said: only the Father knows.      Even without […]

Increasing numbers of people are avoiding so-called “organized religion” and labeling themselves “spiritual” rather than “religious.” In doing so, they seriously challenge traditional approaches to the divine, in general, and Christ, in particular. In times past this has sometimes been integral to mystical movements within the church in which God’s grace reaching the mystic in […]

Today’s Gospel occupies an interesting place in Luke’s Gospel. It’s preceded by this self-effacing admission of good servants: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we are obliged to do. And it is followed the realization: Behold the Kingdom of God is among you. I believe that this healing of ten lepers both illustrates […]

Masochism is that mental and psychological aberration according to which a person voluntarily seeks out pain and suffering and actually derives pleasure and satisfaction thereby. I mention this because today’s parable of Lazarus speaks of the great chasm separating the place of torment from the peaceful and joyous repose with Abraham. The latter explains that […]