Someone once quipped that we spend the first half of our lives struggling with the sixth commandment – Thou shalt not commit adultery – and the second half of our lives struggling with the fifth commandment – Thou shalt not kill! There’s a truth here worth examining. In the Catholicism I was raised there was…
Deacon Greg Kandra Ex 22:20-26 Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51 1 Thes 1:5c-10 Mt 22:34-40 Anyone who has spent time watching reruns of Law and Order knows the first rule of being a good witness in a courtroom: Never answer a question that you haven’t been asked. Stay on point. Don’t elaborate. Keep it…
There are different ways of being excluded in life. Earlier this year, one of my older brothers died. By every indication he had lived an exemplary life, one lived mainly for others. He died much loved by everyone who knew him. His was a life lived for family, Church, community and friends. Giving the homily…
Jem Sullivan 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 45:1, 4-6 Ps 96:1, 3, 4-5, 7-8, 9-10 1 Thes 1:1-5b Mt 22:15-21 “I am the Lord, there is no other,” the prophet Isaiah tells us in simple, evocative words. God’s power is universal, loving, and mysterious. And all earthly power comes from God, as…
In a book, The Book of Hope, which he co-authored with Jane Goodall, Douglas Abrams makes this statement: Creating the human race may be the single biggest mistake evolution ever made.
This Sunday’s scripture is not very helpful if you’re trying to stay on a diet. Again and again, we hear about extravagant dining: “rich food and choice wines” in Isaiah; a full table and an overflowing cup in the psalm; a rich wedding feast in the Gospel from Matthew.
Harvard psychologist Robert Coles, in describing the French mystic Simone Weil, once suggested that what she really suffered from and what motivated her life was her moral loneliness. What is that? Moral loneliness is what we experience when we ache for moral affinity, that is, for a soulmate, for someone who meets us, understands, and…
The Sunday Gospel Jem Sullivan Is 5:1-7 Ps 80:9, 12, 13-14, 15-16, 19-20 Phil 4:6-9 Mt 21:33-43 Scripture is filled with almost lyrical images for the divine human relationship. The first reading offers one such poetic passage as the prophet Isaiah uses the image of a grape harvest. In vine growing areas, the grape…
Perhaps all of Jesus’ invitations to us can be summarised in one word, surrender. We need to surrender to love. But why is that difficult? Shouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world? Isn’t our deepest desire a longing to find love and surrender to it? True, our deepest longing is to surrender…
Deacon Greg Kandra Ez 18:25-28 Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Phil 2:1-11 Phil 2:1-5 (alternate) Mt 21:28-32 This Sunday’s Gospel offers us an idea a lot of us need to hear: “It’s not too late. Any of us, if we choose, can follow another path.” Telling the story of two sons who made two different…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser