Episodes
7 days ago
Drinking the Blood of Christ
7 days ago
7 days ago
Friends, on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, we hear one of the most pivotal passages in the Old Testament: Jeremiah 31:31. Jeremiah knew the long Israelite history of covenant and blood sacrifice, but he prophesies, “The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” This passage will find its fulfillment about six centuries later at a Passover supper, where a young rabbi—the covenant in person—offers his own lifeblood for his people to drink.
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Face Your Fears
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Tuesday Mar 05, 2024
Friends, the Gospel on this Fourth Sunday of Lent includes one of the most famous verses in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). In many ways, this verse is the Gospel in miniature. But we can isolate this line too much and miss the real import of it when we don’t attend to what happens right before—namely, Jesus’ reference to the serpent in the desert.
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
A Tour of the Ten Commandments
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, the Church asks us to look at one of the great texts in the Old Testament—namely, the Ten Commandments from the book of Exodus. Lent is a time of getting back to basics spiritually, and walking through the Ten Commandments is a great way to do it. Go back to this text in Exodus, commit the Commandments to memory if you haven’t, and use them to examine your conscience.
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
When Your Faith Is Put to the Test
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Friends, we come now to the Second Sunday of Lent, and we’re on both dangerous and very holy ground with the first reading from the twenty-second chapter of Genesis. The ancient Israelites referred to it as the “Akedah,” which means the “binding”: Abraham binds and is ready to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command. It’s hard to imagine another text in the Old Testament that has stirred up more puzzlement and opposition. I am with Søren Kierkegaard: if you don’t experience “fear and trembling” having read this text, you have not been paying attention. And it’s naming something of absolute centrality in the spiritual life.
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Are Your Soul and Body at War?
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Friends, we come now to the holy season of Lent. The Gospel for this First Sunday of Lent is Mark’s laconic version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Mark does not give us the details we find in Matthew and Luke, but we do hear this mysterious observation: “He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.” We are given here a kind of icon of the union of the spiritual and the material, the soul and the body, in the human being—both the glory and the agony of human life. And a really good way to pray through Lent is reflecting on our own struggles in light of that icon.
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Reaching Out to the Lepers
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Friends, this week, our Gospel is the marvelous passage from Mark about Jesus curing a leper. These moments of healing stayed so deeply in the imaginations of the first Christians. What do we make of this particular healing of a leper? Let’s look at it from three angles: life on the margins of society, the shame of our own sin, and the absence from right worship.
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
Pray, Serve, Evangelize
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
Friends, the Gospel of Mark is a fascinating literary work. St. Mark seems to write in a breathless, staccato, even primitive manner, but the deeper you look, the more his Gospel appears iconic. He presents scene after scene in a very concentrated way, telling us some rather deep truths about the faith. Our Gospel for today from the first chapter is a good example of this. We see on clear display here what Pope Benedict described as the three essential tasks of the Church: it worships God, it serves the poor, and it evangelizes.
Monday Jan 22, 2024
Surrender to the Holy One
Monday Jan 22, 2024
Monday Jan 22, 2024
Friends, the first reading from Deuteronomy today is of signal importance. Moses, speaking to the people before they enter the Promised Land, says, “A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen.” These words haunted the mind of Israel. Moses was the supreme authority; there was no figure in the Old Testament more important. Who could be greater than Moses? We find the answer in the Gospel: Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God, who speaks on his own authority.
Tuesday Jan 16, 2024
Listen to the Voice of God!
Tuesday Jan 16, 2024
Tuesday Jan 16, 2024
Friends, though the book of Jonah is only a few pages long, there is something inexhaustible about it. It’s a biblical commonplace that God speaks to certain people and gives them missions, as he does with Jonah in our first reading. But God also speaks to us all the time, precisely in the voice of our conscience. Do you listen to the voice of God or not? Do you listen to what your conscience is telling you or not? If you do, you become a vehicle of grace for yourself and for all those around you. If you don’t, chaos ensues.
Monday Jan 08, 2024
The Voice of Conscience
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Monday Jan 08, 2024
Friends, we commence now with the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, and our first reading is one of my favorites in the Old Testament: the account, in the First Book of Samuel, of the call of Samuel, who as a young man hears the voice of the Lord for the first time. In the history of salvation, in the lives of the saints, occasionally God really does speak in a voice that can be heard, but I think what’s being described here is the word of God in the voice of the conscience, and what to do when we hear it.