Through the Cross to New Life

The next week marks the high point of our Church year. The French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus once wrote, “There is no sun without shadow. It is essential that we know the night.” Christians know that there can be no resurrection without the cross.
We hear two different versions of Jesus’ Passion this week. On Palm [...]

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Finding Life in the Midst of Death

For much of our lives we wander in a hazy routine of daily tasks and comfortable relationships. But when tragedy breaks into our lives, even the most orderly among us can’t prevail against its chaos. We see this in the reaction of Martha, so familiar as the woman too busy with her domestic tasks to [...]

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Seeing the Unexpected Possibilities

Today is the middle of three Sundays that explore the great metaphors of water, light and life, all key images for the baptismal promises we celebrate at Easter. In today’s Gospel, John tells the story of the man born blind and what happens when he encounters the Light of the world in the person of [...]

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Our Stories and God’s Story

Lent calls us to step aside from our ordinary routines, to spend time listening to God, to believe that we can tell our stories in a new way. The word of God challenges us to explore the story of our faith once more and discover for ourselves that Jesus really is “the savior of the [...]

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Living With Questions

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet, “…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and…try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you [...]

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Daring to Be Transfigured

Lent, perhaps more than any other season, gives us permission to focus on our spiritual lives, to take time apart from the everyday demands to listen to what God might be asking of us. Today’s Scripture readings can seem beyond us, describing those events that we might label “Significant Religious Experiences,” things that happen to [...]

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Rich in What Matters to God

People often talk about the 21st century, particularly in America, as a time when capitalism, consumerism and advertising have run amok. And while they’re not wrong, it’s somewhat encouraging to discover that as it is now, so it has always been. It’s a difference in degree, not in kind, and it has its roots in [...]

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Doing Something New

Our journey through the desert becomes one of new birth, the discovery of new life where no life existed before, the hope that comes from putting the past behind us so that we are free to enter into a new life of water and the spirit.
No matter how bleak things may look, the Lord promises [...]

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Giving Up Sweets for Lent

Watching The Colbert Report tonight, I found myself wondering whether other people have noticed the ongoing subtext of Lent and the Americone Dream. And in fact I discovered a nice compendium of accounts of Stephen’s Catholic identity here. And this. I’ve just loved the way he’s so typically understated but determined about it. Periodically over [...]

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Coming Home to Forgiveness

Today’s Gospel tells the familiar story of the Prodigal Son. Most of us can identify on some level with this rebellious younger son who loses himself in pleasure and adventure. And we also know what it’s like to come to our senses and realize that somewhere we’ve taken a wrong turn.
Our wandering in the desert [...]

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