Our prayers, works, sufferings and joys are not independent sacrifices looking for their own justification before the throne of God. What brings them to life is the sacrifice of Jesus, His eternal yes. Mark 12: 28b-34 sees another of those dialogues between Jesus and a private individual – in this case, one of the scribes. Which is the [...]
It is not easy to die on the Cross under whatever guise it comes to us this day (stresses, strains, losses, pains). But if we think of it as dying in His arms—His arms outstretched caressingly—then maybe, like Mary our model, we can say yes. Luke 9:22-25 offers us one of Jesus’ starker prophecies: the [...]
Lent is a great time to take stock of all the good things that God has given us and to realize our utter dependence on God, while also realizing he is with us every step of the way. In my time in ministry, first as a diocesan seminarian and now as a Dominican student brother, [...]
The madness of our self-sufficiency comes to the fore in the discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper. There, we see that our path of perfection is in point of fact a path towards union. Not only does Jesus promise to dwell with the Father in those who love Him, He also affirms that we [...]
If we wish, like the disciples, to be taken to the eternal banquet, we had best look like we have a taste for wine (love and salvation), "woman" (Mary's obedience), and song (the return of love for love received). Indeed, we should indulge as frequently as we can! John 2: 1-11 gives us that classic [...]
While being the salt of the earth requires the Gift of Knowledge, being the light of the world requires the movements of the Gift of Counsel: the gift of knowing when and how to intervene, of when to echo the words of Jesus and when to emulate His silence. Matthew 5: 13-16 sees Jesus deliver [...]
Why doesn’t Jesus just try harder with the Nazarenes? To a great extent, the Lord’s choices in this moment are a mystery to us. Mark 6: 1-6 sees Jesus back in his hometown, preaching as He did elsewhere, but finding the people incredulous. After all, they knew Him, did they not? He was just Jesus, [...]
Having made known God’s will, Christ neither demands servile submission from us nor desires groveling self-abasement. He asks of us something far greater and costlier: “Will you follow me?” To riff on Tertullian – what has obedience to do with love? How does obedience to God show love for him? To our modern sensibilities, the two seem like [...]
John the Baptist comes not simply to know Jesus – He knows He is the Messiah – but to know what that means, to know something more of the depths of that mystery of who He actually is; to be initiated further into that knowledge that Jesus says is the essence of the eternal life. [...]
Mark 1:29-39 shows us the organic rhythms that underpinned the life of Jesus and those that should underpin our own lives also. Jesus begins by visiting His friends, but His sociability very quickly turns into ministry, as He heals first Peter’s mother-in-law, then the sick from around the neighbourhood, and also delivers those possessed by [...]
Matthew 3: 13-17 recounts the episode of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan at the hands of his cousin John the Baptist. How strange are the paths of the Lord! Behold John, six months the elder of Jesus, sent before Him to make straight His paths, whose sandals he was not fit to loose, now performing [...]
This is how the rich pursue God: self-sufficiently, driven on by the conquest of curiosity, inevitably instrumentalizing the knowledge they seem to acquire for their own self-satisfaction. The poor of the Lord, however, must take another path: the path of the wise men. Matthew 2: 1-12 gives us the only narrative in the gospels of [...]
Come out of the shadow of death, out of the darkness of sin, to take our place beside Zechariah, Joseph, and John the Baptist, and cast our eyes on the grace-filled sunrise which begins now in the crooked crib of a newborn babe. Luke 1: 67-79 is a moment of prophetic insight and praise, as [...]
When Joseph obeyed the command of the angel in his dream, he was following a long tradition of obedience to God’s messengers. He could not, like Mary, reverse the disobedience of our first parents by his simple consent to God’s plan. Today’s gospel (Matthew 1: 18-24) relates the circumstances in which Joseph considered “putting Mary [...]