We live in a world dominated by science, meaning to know. From science we know the substance of the stars and the intricacies of the womb. We do not, however, know the origins of either – the origins of life. Life is a mystery. All of humanity lives within the mystery that is life…
Disciples are alive with the Spirit of the Risen Christ. They are giving witness to a free and revolutionary way that disturbs the system and those who arrange for its undisturbed dominance. Those dominating the system during Jesus’ time included the Sanhedrin, rabbis who ruled ancient Israel. When Jesus’ peaceful revolution started disturbing those…
Betrayal is an old story. It is the story in Sunday’s Gospel in which a woman has betrayed a marriage. She is caught in the act of adultery, and, without her male partner, is forced into the street. Jesus does something unusual by how he relates with the woman. He humanizes her and frees…
Advent’s liturgical readings leading up to Jesus’ birth focus less on Mary and more on John the Baptist. Today’s reading on John focuses on how he relates to his body. John subjects his body to austere desert living, withholding basic needs from his body. John’s life style, asceticism, which neither Jesus nor Mary live,…
Rulers who opposed Jesus from the beginning have had him forcibly arrested. He stands before Rome’s ruler for the territory, Pontius Pilate. Pilate assumes Jesus is some type of ruler, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus is not such a ruler, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom…
Jesus tells a parable about a banquet. It includes criticism of holy rulers who oppose him and the banquet. The holy rulers are being replaced with a people’s movement and their banquet is being replaced by a table of communion. The rulers banquet is referenced in today’s first reading from Isaiah. In it, Yahweh,…
Jesus tells a parable about people in a vineyard who go on a killing spree. They “seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned.” “They treated (others) in the same way.” Then, “when they saw the son, they said, “Come, let us kill him.” The men kill…
Jesus has a marked ability to ask life-changing questions. He asks one such question of Peter in this Sunday’s Gospel. “Who do you say that I am?” It is both a prayerful question in that it contemplates Divinity and a realistic one in that it considers human practicalities. Peter answers Divinely, “You are the…
Those disturbing the peace in Jesus’ time were the rulers. The rulers waged war on the people using capricious decisions, financial burdens, and punitive unto violent behaviors. Those restoring the peace included commoners like Jesus, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives peace do I…
This Sunday’s long Gospel is about the suffering and violence inflicted upon Jesus. It describes his arrest, trial, torture, and murder. Scripture scholars usually sanctify the violence done to Jesus as in keeping with a ‘suffering servant’ character from Isaiah. Of Isaiah’s 1,292 verses, 30 are so titled. One sample ‘suffering servant’ verse is,…