Archive for March 2021

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent Athletes and coaches look hopefully for more opportunities to compete this season. No matter the size of the spectator crowd, they will be ready to play. Early in the season it’s important to remember success breeds success. Gallup research behind Strengthfinders has proven that best results stem from…

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent If we are privileged to have gainful employment, we are very blessed. (Did you thank God today as you left for work?) Creation was not finished billions of years ago; rather it’s still happening as Teilhard de Chardin writes: “We serve to complete it [creation], even by the…

Monday of the Third Week of Lent A basic law of the psychological and spiritual life is that energy follows attention. In today’s gospel passage the people in the synagogue paid close attention to Jesus’ words. Infuriated by his references, they put their energy into driving him out of town with the intent to destroy…

Sunday of the Third Week of Lent In today’s Gospel Jesus drives out the money changers. These were the people who considered Roman money “unclean” and changed it into Jewish currency often at 20 times the market rate. Jesus is angry at the injustice of vendors who cooperated with the temple inspectors in rejecting “imperfect”…

What impresses me most in the Prodigal Son story is the waiting and waiting and waiting of the father. We may know persons who are waiting someone’s return—an estranged friend, a faithless spouse, an absent parent, a wayward child, a son on a tour of duty, a neighbor in the hospital. Like the prodigal father,…

Today’s First Reading said Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons. The famous tunic led to jealous sibling rivalry. What we don’t know is what Israel gave to the other sons. Maybe he was treating each one as an individual. Maybe the tunic wasn’t special privilege. Maybe the father was loving each of the…

Luke’s gospel is replete with meals. Even today’s parable is about food. The rich man ate sumptuously but never gave a crust of bread to the poor man outside his door, even though the beggar “longed to eat the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.” Whether the man died from his infirmities or…

Were the sons of Zebedee embarrassed when their mother asked Jesus to give these sons choice seats in the kingdom?  Whether they were or not really does not matter, because Jesus changes the topic: “Can you drink of the cup that I am going to drink?” Well, of course, they can, they thought. What about…

In his proclamation titled Patris Corde Pope Francis wrote a document that gives spiritual strength during our pandemic. Early in the document the pope salutes “ordinary people, people often overlooked.” He then lists a dozen workers who “daily exercise patience and offer hope, taking care to spread not panic, but shared responsibility.” The document remembers…

During Lent the Church encourages us to do spiritual reading, primarily the Bible, but there are many other resources. As we begin March, the month when we give particular honor to Saint Joseph, I would recommend to you Patris Corde proclaimed by Pope Francis on December 8, 2020, the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of…