Most Recent Posts
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New Heavens and a New Earth
Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent: Isaiah 65:17-21, John 4:43-54. Yesterday we leapt forward, pushing our clocks ahead an hour as we transitioned into Daylight Savings Time. My wife spent her life getting up early to swim (around 5 am!) and so this transition always bothered her because just as the sun would be…
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Lifted Like the Serpent
Sunday of the Fourth week in Lent: 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23, Ephesians 2:4-10, John 3:14-21. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus has a memorable meeting with Nicodemus, a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin, a faithful Jew, and eventually a full disciple of Jesus who comes with myrrh and aloes along with Joseph of Arimathea to retrieve…
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The Jesus Prayer
Saturday in the Third Week of Lent: Hosea 6:1-6, Luke 18: 9-14. Today’s readings seem to be about us — about our fidelity and about how we pray. But just under the surface, they reveal themselves to be all about Jesus Christ, body and soul, as befits prayer itself. Reflecting on these readings, it is…
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Internal Transformation
Friday of the Third Week in Lent: Hosea 14:2-10, Mark 12:28-34. Today we hear Jesus affirm the greatest commandment to love God first and then your neighbor. The short exchange with the scribe after his answer seems at first glance either to be unnecessary or to elevate the scribe as judge of Christ’s answer. But…
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The Scattered People
Thursday of the Third Week in Lent: Jeremiah 7:23-28, Luke 11:14-23. In today’s readings, we hear a lament from Jeremiah about the faithlessness of the Jewish people coupled with a gospel reading where Jesus’s exorcism of demons is met with skepticism. I am struck by a few things: the reluctance of humanity to accept God’s…
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Forgiveness is Mercy in Action
Tuesday of the Third Week in Lent: Daniel 3:25, 34-43, Matthew18:21-35. Today’s readings slide from Azariah’s beautiful placement of his fate in God’s hands to the damning of the unmerciful servant in the gospel. If ever there was a day to consider the term fear of God, this is it. The Books of Psalms and…
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The Unexpectedly Common
Monday of the Third Week of Lent: 2 Kings 5:1-15ab, Luke 4:24-30. You’ve likely heard the adage that God works in mysterious ways. Today’s readings put a finer point on this: God ways are mysterious because they paradoxically appear to be common. Another way to say this is that God uses the things and people…
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The Radicality of the New Covenant
Third Sunday of Lent: Exodus 20:1-17, 1 Corinthians 1:22-25, John 2:13-25. Today we receive the Word of God in its most accepted and unchallenged form (the Ten Commandments) and then it its most radical and challenging — St. Paul bragging of the humiliation of the Cross and Jesus himself blowing up the concept of the…