“If you will, you can make me clean” (Mk 1:40). In the leper’s prayer in today’s Gospel, there is everything: his faith, his fragility, his surrender. He asks for no explanations, demands no guarantees, and he does not express any sense of entitlement. He only trusts. Jesus looks at him,…
In today’s readings, we are invited into two sacred moments of calling—one in the quiet of the night and the other in the busyness of human suffering. Young Samuel hears his name spoken in the dark. Three times, he runs to Eli, thinking the voice belongs to his teacher. Only…
Dear Friends in Christ, today’s first reading speaks of barrenness, a reality many couples still face today. When I began reading and meditating on it, my mind turned to God’s first command to humanity, often referred to as the “Creation Mandate”: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth…” (Cfr Genesis…
“After John (the Baptist) had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God. This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15). A Prophecy Fulfilled John had been thrown into prison by Herod in Judea.…
Today, on the feast of the Baptism of Jesus, the evangelist Matthew tells us about Jesus at the River Jordan, where he does nothing else: he doesn’t preach, he doesn’t perform miracles, he doesn’t call disciples. He is simply in line with the others, with the sinners, immersed in the…
As a radiologist, I spend hours in a dark room every day reviewing images. On one monitor, I click on a patient’s name, and then I wait for the images to come up on the adjoining monitors. Sometimes a message comes up in capital letters declaring, “NO IMAGE.” Staring at…
Today the Church presents us with a profound meditation on the boundaries between the divine and the mundane. The eternal rivalry between the two finds man at its center. He must battle and overcome the attractions of the world through faith in Jesus Christ. The readings of today (1 John…
The Gospel of the feeding of the multitude (Mark 6:34–44) speaks to our shared human condition: scarcity, lack, weariness, fear and limits. Beyond this human condition, we are also confronted with God’s compassion, abundance, trust, willingness to share, blessing, faith and love. In Jesus, who looks upon the crowd with…
“He got into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were completely astounded. They had not understood the incident of the loaves. On the contrary, their hearts were hardened.” (Mark 6:51-52) The Douy-Rheims translation renders the last part of those verses as “their heart was blinded”, and…
Today’s very brief first reading from John’s first letter hammers home the message that we have been contemplating throughout the Christmas season. In four short verses, John uses some form of the word “love” ten times and says clearly what we have been living out in this Christmas season: “In…