Jer 2:1-3,7-8,12-13 / Mt 13:10-17

Today’s gospel doesn’t sound like Jesus. It sounds like the worst and most cynical aspects of a capitalist economy: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And it seems to have the Lord’s blessing!

That’s…

Jer 1:1,4-10 / Mt 13:1-9

Most of life’s tasks hit us in the face without warning and without preparation. I was never married before — what do I do? I was never a parent before, never a kid before, or a…

Mi 7:14-15, 18-20 / Jn 20:1-2, 11-18

Pay special attention to the responses Mary Magdalene makes in today’s Gospel. When she responds to the angels, she says “they have taken the Lord. . . .” When she speaks to Jesus, she…

Mi 6:1-4,6-8 / Mt 12:38-42

The Roman emperors heard and felt one constant pressure: “Give us bread and circuses!”  Political candidates hear the same chant, and too often they respond with panicky 30-second sound-bites, which mean nothing and add nothing to…

Wis 12:13,16-19 / Rom 8:26-27 / Mt 13:24-30

When a boss is at a dead end with an employee, it can inspire some real eloquence. Here are a few samples of frustrated bosses’ evaluations of their less than competent employees:

1) This…

Is 38:1-6, 21-22 / Mt 12:1-8

One of the more desirable consequences of growing a little older is that at least some of us begin to develop a greater awareness of our own faults and limitations, and stop projecting them onto…

Is 26:7-9, 12, 16-19 / Mt 11:28-30

We human beings have an uncanny knack for making simple things complicated. We go from San Francisco to Los Angeles by way of Hong Kong, we respond to simple questions with answers befitting a…

Is 10:5-7, 13-16 / Mt 11:25-27

It’s something of a standing joke in our culture that some of the most learned professors and cleverest scientists are thoroughly incompetent at the most basic of tasks, like changing a tire or pumping their…

Is 7:1-9 / Mt 11:20-24

By the very nature of the human condition, we get caught up in the little stuff. Somebody has to pick up the dry cleaning, pay the light bill, fill the car with gas, and carry out…

Is 1:10-17 / Mt 10:34-11:1

When we think of Jesus, the images that usually come to mind are of a man of peace who brings healing and forgiveness to people, the man who saved the life of the woman caught in…

Is 55:10-11 / Rom 8:18-23 / Mt 13:1-13

A bright little fifth-grader was doing an experiment on a grasshopper for his science project. He put the grasshopper on a table, leaned down till his face was just inches away, and shouted,…

Hos 14:2-10 / Mt 10:16-23

Today’s gospel contains one of the most notoriously misused passages in all the Bible, and the chief culprits are the clergy. Jesus said, “Don’t worry about what you are going to say or how you will…

Hos 11:1-4,8-9 / Mt 10:7-15

Some problems have no easy solutions, but that doesn’t stop the toughest of us from continuing to try, and try, and try again. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” And more often than…

Hos 10:1-3, 7-8, 12 / Mt 10:1-7

For those of us who are reasonably conscientious and self-aware, the reality of our unfinishedness can sometimes be a heavy burden. It’s more than just our sins, which, like the poor, seem to be…

Hos 8:4-7, 11-13 / Mt 9:32-38

Good help is hard to find. It’s always been so, and we need only listen to our own conversations to verify it. In the course of any week, a lot of us will have rendered…

Hos 2:16-22 / Mt 9:18-26

Every one of us carries considerable baggage left over from earlier parts of our life’s journey.  And not only our bodies but our spirits bear many wounds, some self-inflicted, others the result of simple bad luck,…

Zec 9:9-10 / Rom 8:9, 11-13 / Mt 11:25-30

St. Paul is walking on a two-edged sword in this weekend’s reading. We need to be right there with him. What are the two edges? Trying to put it tightly: 1) we…

Amos 8:4-6, 9-12 / Mt 9:9-13

Self-knowledge is a hard-won treasure, and even the best of us are blind to much of what our friends see clearly. Too often we blithely give convoluted explanations of our actions and intentions which convince…

Eph 2:19-22 / Jn 20:24-29

More than a century ago, Abraham Lincoln made the famous observation, “You can fool all of the people sometimes, and some of the people all the time, but you can never fool all the people all…

Amos 5:14-15, 21-24 / Mt 8:28-34

In every generation, one of the most popular children’s games is Hide-And-Go-Seek. And, one of the more rotten things that children sometimes do in this game is to send their playmate off to hide and…

Amos 3:1-8; 4:11-12 / Mt 8:23-27

Fear is the real Public Enemy Number One.  It’s what lurks behind every one of our sins.  Greed starts with the fear that I won’t have enough. Anger is rooted in the fear of losing…

Am 2:6-10, 13-16 / Mt 8:18-22

Most people are fairly accomplished at the art of making excuses, no matter what the issue.  Indeed many of us got an early start with the dog eating our fictional homework or our little brother…

Acts 12:1-11/2 Tm 4:6-8, 17-18/Mt 16:13-19

A salesman rang the doorbell at a rather fine suburban home, and the door was answered by a nine-year-old boy who was puffing on a long black cigar!  Hiding his amazement, the salesman asked, “Is…

2 Kgs 25:1-12 / Mt 8:1-4

There’s an old saying, “Some folks never get the message.” There’s no doubting that it’s true, and it’s rarely more obvious than on those two Sunday mornings every year when the government announces that we…

2 Kgs 24:8-17 / Mt 7:21-29

Most of us were very young when we first heard the old adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And very probably most of us paid no attention to its wisdom at the…

2 Kgs 22:8-13;23:1-3 / Mt 7:15-20

Forgetfulness is something we all have to struggle with.  As children, we start out by forgetting simple things like our times tables and our locker combination. Later we graduate to forgetting meetings, birthdays, anniversaries, and…

Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist

Is 49:1-6/Acts 13:22-26/Lk 1:57-66, 80

A jetliner was roaring down the runway when, just before takeoff, the pilot reversed engines, slammed on the brakes, and taxied back to the gate. Then it just sat…

2 Kgs 17:5-8, 13-15, 18 / Mt 7:1-5

Not so long ago, I found myself trapped in a long, unavoidable, and thoroughly inconsequential meeting, and the refrain of an old song began running through my mind: “Yakety yak, yakety yak”!

For most…

Jer 20:10-13/Rom 5:12-15/Mt 10:26-33

Here’s an unusual prayer:

Dear Lord, I want to thank you for being with me so far today.  With your help, I haven’t been impatient, or lost my temper, or been mean, cantankerous, grumpy, or judgmental.  But now,…

2 Kgs 11:1-4, 9-18, 20 / Mt 6:19-23

There are very few of us who cannot see well enough to drive or read or watch TV.  We may have to wear glasses or even use magnifying glasses for close tasks, but…

Sir 48:1-14 / Mt 6:7-15

Our ways of praying reveal so much about what we really think about God. As Jesus says in today’s gospel, many of us multiply words in prayer, as if we had to persuade God to do…

2 Kgs 2:1,6-14  / Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

The perennial question asked of small children, and older ones as well, is “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  After a while kids develop stock answers for that, and college…

1 Kings 21:17-29 / Mt 5:43-48

Every year without fail, there is heartbreaking news at almost every high school of any size: Some students have been killed in a tragic accident.  A glance backward at old high school yearbooks reconfirms such…

1 Kgs 21:1-16 / Mt 5:38-42

Our access to the internet, cable TV, 24-hour-a-day news, and all sorts of print media has broadened our lives immensely and has expanded exponentially the boundaries of what seems possible. Indeed, we are more and…

Ex 19:2-6a / Rom 5:6-11 / Mt 9:36-10:8

A little girl was saying her night prayers with her mom at her side. “God bless mommy and daddy and Nana. And please, God, don’t let Stevie shoot any more little birds with…

1 Kings 19:9,11-16 / Mt 5:27-32

It’s hard to imagine a worse nightmare than finding oneself in the middle of a vast desert with neither food nor water.  The hours pass and then the days, and we rapidly grow weaker and…

1 Kings 18:41-46 / Mt 5:20-26

By the very nature of things, life is filled with conflicts. However charming and mellow the people we live with may be, we inevitably have differences of taste, preferences, interests, goals, visions,…and whatever. Because of…

Acts 11:21b-26; 13:1-3 / Mt 5:17-19

On this feast of Saint Barnabas I would like to start by looking at the third stanza of our Responsorial Psalm: “All the ends of the earth have seen/ the salvation by our God./ Sing…

1 Kings 17:7-16 / Mt 5:13-16

Heroes energize us and draw us forward. Sports heroes regularly do what seems impossible — run the mile faster than ever, swim the channel in record time, sink the longest putt ever recorded. Entrepreneurial heroes…

1 Kings 17:1-7 / Mt 5:1-12

“Desperation” has many meanings. It can mean, as in today’s Old Testament reading, that there’s a famine, no more food or water and we’re facing death. It can mean that we’ve just lost everything and…

Hos 6:3-6 / Rom 4:18-25 / Mt 9:9-13

What an interesting dinner party that must have been at Matthew’s house, with Jesus and his host at the head of the table, the prim and proper Pharisees hovering on the side, a…

2 Tim 3:10-17 / Mk 12:35-37

Again, Paul is writing to Timothy from his prison chains: <i>”…Yet from all these things the Lord delivered me. In fact, all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But wicked…

2 Tim 2:8-15/ Mk 12:28-34<i>”But the word of God is not chained.”</i>

This is another one of Paul’s letters written from prison. He himself is in chains, but he recognizes that you cannot chain the word of God.

I would have loved…

2 Tim 1:1-3; 6-12/ Mk 12:18-27

Today we move into the marvelous personal letter from Saint Paul to Saint Timothy. As usual, Paul does not waste time getting to the heart of his matter:

<i>”Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the…

2 Peter 3:12-18 / Mk 12:13-17

This world of ours is an astonishing place, and the societies and institutions that have evolved on our planet are so complex that no one fully understands exactly how they work and how we can…

2 Peter 1:2-7 / Mk 12:1-12

Life is a wonderful gift — no doubt about it! And most of us regularly thank the good Lord for giving us this gift which we could never earn or merit. But sometimes life can…

Ninth Sunday in Ordinary TimeDt 11:18, 26-28, 32 / Ps 31:2-3, 3-4, 17, 25 / Rom 3:21-25, 28 / Mt 7:21-27

A violin by the 18th century Italian luthier (maker of stringed instruments) Antonio Stradivari was once purchased by an investor. The…

Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dt 11:18, 26-28, 32 / Ps 31:2-3, 3-4, 17, 25 / Rom 3:21-25, 28 / Mt 7:21-27

A violin by the 18th century Italian luthier (maker of stringed instruments) Antonio Stradivari was once purchased by an investor. The…

Dt 7:6-11 / 1 Jn 4:7-16 / Mt 11:25-30

Now as the devotion to the Sacred Heart makes us true and faithful adorers of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and as it consecrates us in a special way to this…

1 Pt 2:2-5, 9-12 / Mk 10:46-52

For about 1500 years, from the time of Moses down to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, Jewish worship centered on sacrifices in their temple. There was a special sacrifice…