Today's Scripture Let’s face it, people hear what they want to hear. Unfortunately, today’s Gospel is a perfect example of it. In an exchange with His Apostles about fasting, Jesus explains that it would be inappropriate for His disciples to fast NOW, because He (the bridegroom) is with them. So many people want to take that as ‘Christians have no need of fasting’. Well I hate to break it to you, but that is not what Jesus was saying, and it certainly was not what His discipl

Today's Scripture There is A LOT going on in today's Gospel. This is one of the busiest passages that you will read in Scripture. Jesus is working at a fever pace. Healing well into the night and rising before dawn to pray. I have written more than once about this frenetic pace. But today it was another line that drew my attention: "For this purpose have I come." While what Jesus is doing is truly fascinating, we have to agree that why He is doing it is ultimately more impor

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011326.cfm It is really amazing at times how inoculated we can become to the amazing events of the Gospels. We can read or hear them and not be overcome with wonder. The original witnesses to today's Gospel certainly didn't feel that way. They recognized several layers of Jesus' person that provoked awe and wonder. First was His authority. I have heard the difference between power and authority described this way: Power is the ability to

Today's Scripture Anyone who has ever had the duty of getting volunteers for a church or community event has to be in awe of Jesus in today's Gospel. He asks, they come. Done. Jesus doesn't even give them a clear description of what it is they will be doing, where they will do it, or for how long. And it is an interesting proposition that He makes to them: I will make you 'fishers of men'. At our parish fish fry during Lent, I spend time each week greeting people and visiting

Today's Scripture I've always loved the exchange between the leper in today's Gospel and Jesus. First the leper recognizes and calls upon Jesus' amazing abilities - 'Lord if you wish, you can make me clean.' I think most of us rightly read this as 'if you desire to'. Jesus wasn't really in the business of wishing for things, but it's also more than a desire. The classic definition of love is this: to will the good of the other. How is this different than 'desiring' the good o

Today's Scripture Jesus, at the beginning of His ministry, sets some high expectations: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Oh, is that all? In reality He will far exceed these expectations. He will do all of this and will give himself for the forgiveness of o

Today's Scripture An actual first century boat recovered from the Sea of Galilee What a ride it must have been to accompany Jesus, huh? I do think though that we might romanticize it a bit and not think of how jarring and challenging it was to have your perception of all of reality changed right in front of you. This came crashing down on me today as I read this line from the Gospel: "They had not understood the incident of the loaves. On the contrary, their hearts were harde

Today's Scripture An interesting fact about today's Gospel is that it is the only miracle that appears in the accounts of all four Gospel writers (other than the Resurrection). There are so many layers to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Today I couldn't help but focus on how the Apostles must have felt going through this. At first the task seems impossible to even consider, and they go to Jesus for help: Dismiss the crowds! Seems like a good, reasonable plan, rig

Today's Scripture As John the Baptist is arrested, leaving a void for his thousands upon thousands of followers, Jesus steps in to proclaim a bold new message: "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." This is radically different than John's message of "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Wait, what? For those who were there, there was a subtle difference in these two proclamations. John's could have ended with the phrase - "and He's standing right there." Jesus coul

Today's Scripture I am just going to preach to myself this morning, feel free to listen in. Sometimes the appropriate response is silence. We tend to think of silence as the absence of sound, like darkness is the absence of light. From a scientific perspective this is probably a well-founded belief. From a spiritual perspective, silence is making room for something. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, I have the privilege of roasting a huge turkey for my family. When it is time to

Today's Scripture I think that most people, whether they admit it or not, read today's Gospel and say: were they supposed to name Him Jesus or Emmanuel? And then: Did He really fulfill Isaiah's prophecy if His name was not Emmanuel? All good questions. I love questions. Our curiosity about God shows that we are interested and drawn to Him. I also love answers. I will share what I have (OK, mostly borrowed from the Church Fathers) and you can decide for yourself if your curios

Today's Scripture St. Matthew, in his Gospel, goes to great lengths to document Jesus as the answer to Israelite prophecy, the rightful heir to David's throne. As a matter of fact, the opening of his Gospel is this: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." It's not the Gospel, the story of the Messiah, the Good News, NOPE - the Geneology - not of the Son of God, but of the son of David and Son of Abraham. It's that important. In th

Today's Scripture Every time I hear this Gospel, I can't help but think of my sons when they were teenagers. I feel like they were often back and forth between these two responses when asked to do something. I can picture their exasperated two-syllable 'but Da-aad' initially, and then eventually getting around to the task, or the absent-minded 'yeah sure' when they were engrossed in a video game. Jesus is sharing a bit of the Father's viewpoint as he considers the actions o

Today's Scripture It sure seems like Jesus is being very cagey in today's Gospel. If you don't look beyond the surface, it appears that He is really just playing games with His questioners. Is He dodging their questions? No and yes. In order to decipher what's going on, we need to remember only one thing - Jesus is truth. Listen to what He says as Pilate tries to find out just who Jesus is: "For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Ever

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121225.cfm I remember vividly (OK vaguely but vividly sounds so much more impressive) when my wife and I were expecting our first child, we read (OK, she read, I skimmed) the book "What to expect when you're expecting". It was extremely helpful in navigating the physical and emotional ups and downs of pregnancy. I would like to say that I recall the specific application of some of this wisdom, but my wife reads this, so I'll have to be

Today's Scripture In today's Gospel, Jesus makes a rather mysterious statement that has actually sparked a lot of debate over the centuries among Bible scholars and theologians. As a theologian myself, I am going to propose my own theory on what Jesus was really getting at here. Take it or leave it, it's supported by scripture and church teaching, but there are certainly other thoughts on it. I just did not find them compelling. Most focus on the perspective that our 'spiritu

Today's Scripture I am probably going to make a bunch of you mad today. A very popular piece of prose hanging in people’s homes is the ‘footprints’ poem. In it, the author talks about looking back on their lives and seeing two sets of footprints, but only one in difficult times. God then says that ‘it was then that I carried you’. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when God carries us, but Jesus describes a different way in which he helps us through the difficult times.

Today's Scripture We encounter something in today's Gospel called the Messianic Secret. After healing two blind men, Jesus warns them sternly: "see that no one knows about this." Then they go and tell everyone. I never considered that perhaps when instructing two blind men to 'see' that no one knows, you might expect less than stellar results. They had no idea how to 'see' anything. When considering Jesus' desire to keep His identity a secret, we can rightfully think of the r

Today's Scripture I am an avid DIY'er and have done many projects on my home and in the homes of others. In my mind there is an important dividing line in home projects: new work or old work. As I thought about today's scripture this difference came to mind in a very practical and real sense. I am actually going to first address the easy one: new work. New work is building something from scratch, new materials, a plan from the ground up - laid out just the way we want it to g

Today's Scripture I am going to apologize now for what I am about to do this Advent. I am going to continue to hammer home the point that Christian hope is not wishing, or desiring - it is expecting! It is why the image of Mary carrying Jesus in her womb is such a powerful example. When a young woman is with child, we don't say 'she is hoping to have a baby', we say she is 'expecting'. What God promises for us is not something for us to wish for, but something that we can exp