A Dwelling Place of God in the Spirit

You are Fellow Citizens with the Holy Ones. “Brothers and sisters: You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the house of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.” It can be very tempting…

Read More

A Day of Martyrs

The gospel reading tells us that Herod was perplexed by the reports about Jesus and “he kept trying to see him.” This is strange since all Herod would have had to do to see Jesus was to follow the crowds who were going out to hear Jesus preach. Yet the Gospels are devoid of any…

Read More

We Give Thanks to God for All of You

Recent events in my life have caused me to think with gratitude about the accidents that led to the gift of my Catholic faith, though, of course, nothing is an accident with God. My family heritage is mostly Protestant, yet my parents were baptized into the Catholic faith. My maternal grandmother converted to Catholicism because…

Read More

Yielding a Hundredfold

Who Indeed Bears Fruit? Last fall, one of our ducks basically lost the use of her right leg, so much so that she was unable to come out of the pond to join the other ducks at feeding time. I took her to the vet, who determined that she had a fracture and prescribed several…

Read More

By Their Fruits

So Shall Your Descendants Be. Today’s readings speak about the future. Abram (he has not received his new name yet) is facing his mortality, as all of us will have to do. He reasonably points out that he has no offspring, no one to inherit the households, herds and property he has brought with him,…

Read More

Receive the Holy Spirit

They Were All in One Place Together. The first thing to notice is that when the Holy Spirit comes to the Apostles, He does not come to them individually. He only comes when they are “all together in one place,” in a group. They have been together since “the evening of that first day of…

Read More

The One Who Feeds on Me Will Have Life

He Got Up and Was Baptized It is interesting that the Acts of the Apostles states that after being knocked off his feet, Saul was baptized and then, “when he had eaten, he recovered his strength.” They are talking about physical food in that case but the theme of strength and eating continues into the…

Read More

The Will of the Father

Statue of Jesus Christ crucifix on the cream wall

I Do Not Belong to This World We are getting close to Holy Week and the tension between Jesus and the people who reject his message is intensifying. Even as “many came to believe in him,” the authorities find his identification with God the Father more and more repugnant. There is a sober and somber…

Read More