Feast of St. Augustine, Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time, Year A: 1 Thes 1:1-5, 8b-10, Mt 23:13-22. Apart from St. Paul, it’s hard to think of a more pivotal early figure for the Roman Catholic Church than St. Augustine of Hippo. Even in the heady time of …
Memorial of Saint John of the Cross, priest and doctor of the Church, Monday in the 3rd Week of Advent: Numbers 24:2-7, 15-17a, Matthew 21:23-27. Today we celebrate the memorial of one of our great mystics and doctors of the Church, St. John of the Cross. He cultivated an intense …
Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion: Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12, Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9, John 18:1 – 19:42. With so much evil at work in the events of the Lord’s Passion and Crucifixion, it feels almost like an oxymoron to call this “Good” Friday, but Truth that is Christ, the Word …
Wednesday of Holy Week: Isaiah 50:4-9a, Matthew 26:14-25. Today’s gospel focuses on Judas’s betrayal, much like yesterday’s reading. Coupled with the first reading from Isaiah, we get a clear look at what it means to live in the light compared to living in darkness. Today’s first reading is from a …
Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent: Genesis 17:3-9, John 8:51-59. Today’s readings compare God’s foundational covenant with Abraham and the New Covenant He offers through Christ. The terms of the covenants change, both the scope of God’s promise as well as the requirements from humanity. The constant, however, is …
Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Lent: Daniel 3:14-20, 91-92, 95, John 8: 31-42. Today’s readings give us a glimpse of what it looks like to be freed from the slavery of sin alongside the Son of God and also what it looks like to be stuck in our slavery. …
Friday in the Fourth Week of Lent: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22, John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30. I don’t know about you, but I get a clear sense of inertia drawing us towards the Passion and Holy Week in today’s readings. I’ve always found the rejection Jesus experiences in St. John’s gospel to …
Fourth Sunday in Lent: 1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41. Today’s readings reveal to us how differently from us that the Lord sees, and how Jesus came to both reveal the blindness in us and reverse it through Himself. The dialectic of light vs. darkness is another …
Friday in the First Week of Lent: Ezekiel 18:21-28, Matthew 5:20-26. Today’s readings are very much concerned with what is central to a person, what is in their core, as opposed to the actions they take on the surface. First from the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel and then from …
