The Sunday Gospel Gn 2:18-24 Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 Heb 2:9-11 Mk 10:2-16 or 10:2-12 Fr Joshua J. Whitfield As Eve to Adam in the purity of Eden, as bride to groom in the joy of a wedding: it is a primeval holiness, the holiness of a woman in love with a man in…
Several years ago, I went with another priest to visit a mutual friend. Our friend, a successful businessman, was living on the top floor of a very expensive apartment overlooking the river valley in the city of Edmonton. At one point during our visit, he took us out on his balcony to show us the…
The Sunday Gospel Nm 11:25-29 Ps 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14 Jas 5:1-6 Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48 In our divided and divisive times, this weekend’s Gospel should give all of us pause. It poses some hard questions about how we judge others – and asks us to look more closely at how we judge – or…
Several years ago, at a time when the national news was much fixated on a high-profile case of sexual harassment, I asked three women colleagues: “what constitutes sexual harassment? What’s the line here that may not be crossed? What’s innocent behavior and what’s harassment?” They answered to this effect. It’s not so much a question…
The Sunday Gospel Wis 2:12, 17-20 Ps 54:3-4, 5, 6 and 8 Jas 3:16—4:3 Mk 9:30-37 The lives of the saints reveal the many trials and persecutions that the holiest men and women encounter from within or from outside the Church. We learn that some saints who founded religious orders were even rejected by the…
One of the great religious stories in history is the biblical story of the Exodus, the story of a people being set free from slavery, passing miraculously through the Red Sea, and finding themselves standing in freedom, on a new shore. Most of us are familiar with this story. A nation of people, Israel, was…
The Sunday Gospel Is 50:5-9a Ps 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9 Jas 2:14-18 Mk 8:27-35 I can still remember the priest who taught us Scripture during diaconate formation talking about the passage from the Gospel that we hear this Sunday, and then asking us what seemed an irrelevant question. “Where does it come in?” he asked…
Inside each of us, beyond what we can picture clearly, express in words, or even feel distinctly, we have a dark memory of having once been touched and caressed by hands far gentler than our own. That caress has left a permanent mark, an imprint of a love so tender and deep that its memory…
The Sunday Gospel Dt 4:1-2, 6-8 Ps 15:2-5 Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27 Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Are we doers? The letter from James this Sunday lays it all on the line and reminds us of what truly matters. Think showing up at church, saying prayers and dropping an envelope in the collection basket is enough?…
Some years ago, an op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times by Frank Bruni, entitled The Wages of Celibacy. The column, while provocative, was fair. Mostly he asked a lot of hard, necessary questions. Looking at the various sexual scandals that have plagued the Roman Catholic priesthood in the past years, Bruni suggested that…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser