St. Matthew begins the public ministry of Jesus with the long discourse we call the Sermon on the Mount. After the Sermon Jesus is depicted as exercising a healing ministry. He cleanses a leper, heals the centurion’s servant, restores Peter’s mother-in-law, and drove out the evil spirits by a word and cured all the sick  in… Read More »

A friend of mine who was born and raised in Louisiana but has lived for the last few years up north told me of discussions with his family who are still back home. They were highly critical of Black Lives Matter. When my friend tried to explain to them the significance of the movement they… Read More »

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” If you are anything like me you worry about your family members and loved ones who aren’t believers. The Faith is so important to me I suppose that they… Read More »

The Old Testament lesson for the Birth of John the Baptist is from Isaiah: I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength. At the time of the Baptist’s death he could not see the fruits of his labors, God had not intervened. Yet in the tradition of the Church… Read More »

The threat against Judah was very real. Just twenty years earlier the Assyrians had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and deported its people. So when King Hezekiah’s appealed for God to intervene and protect “his holy city, Jerusalem” he was desperate. How relieved he must have been when the Prophet Isaiah brought the message:… Read More »

We are accustomed to thinking of the Ten Commandments — the list of things inherited from our Jewish forebears to do or not do in order to stay right with God. What we don’t notice very often is that Jesus gave us additional commandments. Since they are not in the “Thou shalt not …” formula… Read More »

Fear again. Just a few weeks ago the scriptural themes centered on fear and now here it is again. Maybe in the providence of God as we are in this scary time of pandemic the Church understands that we need some guidance on how to live in an atmosphere of fear. As we move into… Read More »

“Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”  I find these words that Mary addressed to Jesus consoling. If the Holy Family had difficulty in understanding each other, in communication, we who are not saints should not be surprised that we share in the… Read More »

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that God loved us. I think for people in the United States this most basic of Biblical truths is hard to accept. We have been raised with the mentality that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” As the old ad put it:… Read More »

During the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew Jesus teaches us what we call today “the Lord’s Prayer.” There is another version of the prayer in St. Luke which is slightly shorter. We can never know the original form but the differences are instructive. For example, in Luke the invocation is simply “Father” whereas… Read More »