Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, 10 September, 2023: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20      If I’m looking for a calculus to cut off someone, I won’t find it in today’s Gospel. Jesus’ instruction makes every effort to ensure respect for the person who sins against me. And his final point is very challenging in […]

Lifeguards attempting to rescue a drowning person are sometimes hindered in their attempts by the panicking of the one they are rescuing. This usually results in their wildly thrashing around in the water and being unable to stop trying to save themselves and allow the lifeguard to do his/her work. This is somewhat analogous to […]

Nineteenth Sunday, Year A, 13 August, 2023: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew14:22-33 It’s too easy for a preacher to present Simon Peter as an impulsive, unthinking negative example for Christian disciples to avoid. Granted, none of the twelve Apostles garner high marks in comprehension during Jesus’ lifetime, but to reduce them to bad […]

Saint Paul’s insistence that all things work for good for those who love God, might perhaps be thought of as his expression of a similar conviction captured in that pious aphorism: God writes straight on crooked lines. As comforting as these words can be to the suffering and perplexed Christian, it is important that they […]

Sixteenth Sunday, Year A, 23 July, 2025: Wisdom: 13:16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43       Listening to these parables, I’d say that Jesus could never work for a political campaign or an advertising agency. Either of those occupations stress the positive advantages of the platforms they promote; Jesus’ description of the kingdom of heaven undercuts privilege, […]

Fourteenth Sunday, Year A, 9 July, 2023: Zechariah 9:9-10; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30       In a culture that valued scholars who studied God’s word, Jesus teaches a subversive opinion: Although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to little ones.       That’s not to say that […]

The totally uncompromising words of Jesus according to which whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, calls to mind Abraham’s call to sacrifice Isaac, his only son (and heir). Jesus’ call to an uncompromising love of him is thus among those so-called “hard sayings” of Jesus that test the […]

Twelfth Sunday, Year A, 25 June, 2023: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Romans 5:12-25; Matthew 10:26-33      Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known, says Jesus.      I remember as a teenager how I hungered to be known and understood by someone, no longer isolated in my secrets or the […]

But as for me, whatever is lacking in my own resources I appropriate for myself from the heart of the Lord, which overflows with mercy.  And there is no lack of clefts by which they are poured out.  …  But the nail that pierced him has become for me a key unlocking the sight of […]

The Ascension, although not quite the culminating solemnity of this glorious Easter Season is one in which we come back full circle—back to where it all began: In a garden, standing before a tree laden with forbidden fruit. As we know, our First Parents defied our Creator’s command and, at the Ancient Serpent’s beguiling suggestion, […]