November 8, 2020

The life of faith often holds us in paradox between a fear of what is to come and assurance that in Christ all will be well. Christians must learn to live within that tension.

November 15, 2020

God invests in us; we in turn, invest our lives in God. The danger comes in making our spiritual lives too transactional. Rather, we invest-and are invested in-through our relationship with the divine.

November 22, 2020

The Glory of Jesus our king isn’t something we merely sit back and admire. It envelops us, and its majesty transforms us, until we become Christ-like through its presence and power.

November 29, 2020

Advent is a season that makes demands on our attentiveness. It is a time for us to pay attention to the ways in which the Divine beckons us.

December 6, 2020

John the Baptist is surely among scripture’s most challenging prophetic figures. To this day he points us to Christ and away from the world’s distractions.

December 13, 2020

There are times in human lives that a single, simple yes or no is all that is needed to clear the way for God’s great design. 

December 20-25, 2020

As we prepare to celebrate Christ's birth, we can take a close look at his humble beginnings. How many aspects of it would have seemed impossible, yet they were not!

December 27, 2020

God doesn’t promise a life that is always easy, or never knows sadness or trials. What God does promise us in Christ—is someone to share it all—the difficulties and the joys—no matter what.

January 3, 2021

Whether it was Isaiah’s listeners wondering where God’s light was, or the Magi following a star to an unexpected place, or us trying to broaden our understanding of God’s mysteries, we know that God illumines the way. 

January 10, 2021

Many times in the mission of Jesus, God uses commonplace things-river water, sinful men and women, bread and wine—to reveal the uncommon, divine grace.

January 17, 2021

The call of Samuel might reinforce a disproportionate sense of call (or vocation) as an individual event.  Jesus shows us we are truly called to work with others.

January 24, 2021

Jesus’ call to repentance is meant to lead us to spiritual health, not merely to be a scolding or a warning of impending punishment. We repent in order to live fully in God’s love.

January 31, 2021

Jesus, Light from light, illuminates and warms our lives; or, when we try to live as our shadow selves, the same Light from light can seem piercing and blistering. 

February 7, 2021

Following Jesus and living his Gospel message always requires movement. There are always new places and lives waiting in need of the Gospel's good news of great joy.

February 14, 2021

Jesus risks a lot. By touching the lepers, he could likewise have been banished to live the life of the unclean outcast. Bringing God's healing into the world was worth the risk. 

February 21, 2021

The desert wilderness is a tough place; only the strong survive. God, our strength, is with us in the deserts of life and guides us on the Lenten trek.

February 28, 2021

Many experiences in life are transformed by dazzling displays of light. In such displays, we can know ourselves as God’s beloved children of light.

March 7, 2021

Jesus wasn’t opposed to money/commerce but was opposed to its misuse in the dwelling place of his Father. His anger focused at the profiting from idolatry.

March 14, 2021

We can live in a life of externals and be affirmed for how we appear and what we do on the outside. Rebirth in Christ, however, happens inside first

March 21, 2021

There are many biblical covenants, but the final one is the one that was sealed on the cross of Christ on Calvary. We still reap its harvest of life.

March 28, 2021

The more profound the biblical story, the easier it can be sometimes to distance ourselves from it in mind and spirit. The Passion calls us, instead, to immerse ourselves more deeply.

April 4, 2021

Every life has moments of joy and light, which we sometimes don't completely understand. Resurrection is like that-relish the joy and light when it comes into your life!

April 11, 2021

The public ministry of Jesus was spent overcoming barriers and breaking through the hardness of people in different places. His ministry.

April 18, 2021

The disciples on the road to Emmaus came to realize that the elusive, burning feeling in their hearts was actually the awakening joy of coming to know that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

April 25, 2021

We live in a world that likes to put a price on everything. To Jesus, our Good Shepherd, the flock is beyond price, except perhaps the price of his own life.

May 2, 2021

Just as trees and other living things are nourished by sap flowing and sustaining life, so we must keep our own lives nourished by the life that flows to us through Christ.

May 9, 2021

To be a follower of Jesus is to live in his love. To live on in his love means to stop sometimes on the road of life for those who have been abandoned, those who are lost.

May 16, 2021

Just like the first part of his earthly ministry, the second part—his post-Resurrection ministry—had to come to an end. Those who follow Jesus will also follow him home, when his earthly life comes to an end.

May 23, 2021

We use different images to express the Spirit—wind, dove, breath, dewfall—but none of these ever fully captures or articulates who the Spirit is. The best we can do is rejoice for the Spirit is among us!

May 30, 2021

We have made many attempts to understand or express the mystery of the Trinity. In the end, however, we need to relax and bask in the mystery’s glow.

June 6, 2021

We distance ourselves from the Blood of Christ in the Eucharist in various ways, intentional or not. Yet to drink the cup Christ drank is central to our faith.

June 13, 2021

In the planting and growing of the reign of God, we often lack the necessary patience to be partners in God's plan. Yet, that is what we are.

June 20, 2021

It's easier-and tidier-to believe that once God intervenes, we move immediately to a place of strong faith. Most often we need to recall that God stays with us in that middle space, on the journey to faith.

June 27, 2021

To find or know healing and mercy from God, we have to respond to the ever-present invitation from God to trust, and to have faith.

July 4, 2021

In Christ, God makes all things new. God takes risks in order to bring success out of what seems to be failure. God brings forth life from death.

July 11, 2021

We all love to feel as though we’ve made a difference. When Jesus sends out his followers, it is to do just that, but not merely so that they feel good, but that God is glorified.

July 18, 2021

In his fully human nature, Jesus got tired; his Father had sent him on a very demanding mission! No matter what our mission may be, we know that Jesus understands our fatigue.

July 25, 2021

Time and again, Jesus (like his predecessors, the prophets) leads us to the God of the unlikely, the unexpected, the improbable—the impossible! All we need to do is open our eyes.

August 1, 2021

It’s human instinct to watch where we’re going. That well-worn path sometimes turns into a deep rut and we need Divine intervention to startle us out of it!

August 8, 2021

In these Sundays of John’s Bread of Life discourse, we explore the many ways that people reacted to that presence in their midst. How will we react, until we are raised up on the last day?

August 15, 2021

Perhaps nowhere do we see the divine virtue of hope more than in the life of Mary. Mortal like us, she shows the way that God will bring all of us to a life beyond this life.

August 22, 2021

The context in which we live our lives (family, friends, work, neighbors) play an important part in living our faith. Lord, to whom shall “we” go?

August 29, 2021

Jesus reinforces his teachings today: Merely observing external rituals isn’t enough. What those rituals are meant to signify is what is the most important.

September 5, 2021

There are times when life around us, beaten down or broken, doesn’t look as though God is keeping faith with us. At these times our prayer is for grace, so we may continue to trust.

September 12, 2021

Peter’s profession of faith was, no doubt, an unclouded moment, one that suddenly turned dark and stormy. In the dark and the storms of life, we often have to have Jesus “take the wheel” for us.

September 19, 2021

Jesus surely had moments of discouragement and despair—he was human, after all. Perhaps, like Jesus, we can rededicate ourselves to the Good News by recalling and seeking life’s glimmers of divine hope.

Sunday, September 26, 2021

One of the ways in which Jesus was clearly the incarnation of the God of the First Covenant was continued care and concern for the weak, the lowly, the poor, the marginalized, the children—all God’s little ones.

Sunday, October 3, 2021

There is a broader lesson in next week’s message about marriage. The vast, generous love of God is seen when two become one, fused together by the Divine.

October 10, 2021

Many Gospel figures appear once, and then never again. We will never know if the rich man who heard had another opportunity to ” follow me “ the words, sell all he had, to become a follower.

October 17, 2021

The words “hero” or “shero” get used quite a bit— sometimes deservedly, other times not. Jesus shows us how we, made in the divine image, already have the powers needed to be heroic. We just need to use them.

October 24, 2021

We can get caught up in wonder at the accounts of people Jesus healed. Step back, realize that heaven’s mercy overcomes human misery, and then go forth to bring that mercy to the miserable.

October 31, 2021

Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”Israel’s Shema prayer called the people to listen, so that they might remember that there is Someone who listened to them when they prayed.

November 7, 2021

Throughout scripture, God’s power is always with the weak and lowly, God’s favor is with the small and the marginalized. No matter how frail or little we may be, God considers that to be our greatness.

November 14, 2021

The world around us has an effect on the way we speak about, portray, and envision the end of our lives and the world. Can we allow the eternal virtues-faith, hope, love—to have an even greater effect?

November 21, 2021

We live in a shifting time, when people are replacing what is true with what they believe is true. In Christ, We know what a true king is, though it may not match

up with what others believe a king to be.

November 28, 2021

Though the followers of Jesus were told at his ascension not to stare uselessly up at the sky, faithful disciples will keep focused—with their hearts—on the power of heaven for guidance and comfort.

December 5, 2021

In Baptism we were named for Christ. This means that every day we are called upon to look around us for the presence of Christ in the world, and to live so that others see Christ present to us.

December 12, 2021

Hope happens in human bodies because our God— our hope—came to save the world by taking on human flesh. Not only do we believe in God, God believes in us!

December 19, 2021

Nothing gets us to perk up like a test. When we perk up and are attentive to the coming of the Lord, we can answer the question: "What are we to do?"

December 25-26, 2021

We think of church, or perhaps religious education classes, or a parish school as the places we learn about faith. But none of these is more central to learning to live our faith than the household and family.

January 2, 2022

We are tempted to think of Epiphany as a single day for celebrating the arrival of the Magi. Yet, every day in our own lives, we are offered the opportunity to behold and reveal the God-appearing that is Epiphany.

January 9, 2022

The baptismal garment is an outward symbol of the brightness and glory of Christ, in which we are wrapped—even swaddled—on our baptismal day and every day of discipleship.

January 16, 2022

Many scriptural figures try to get God’s revelation to work the way they want it to, from Jacob’s wrestling with the angel to Mary instructing Jesus at Cana. God wins, but so do we!

January 23, 2022

Following the Spirit who descended on him at his baptism at the Jordan, Jesus in his public ministry released God’s beauty—ever ancient, ever new,—into the world.

January 30, 2022

The word that the voice of Jesus speaks in the synagogue will die away unless other voices, our voices, continue to speak his word faithfully.

February 6, 2022

From Isaiah in the temple to Peter’s fishing boat, there is no place that we cannot be awestruck by God’s presence.

February 13, 2022

Jesus knows how tenuous life can be, especially when we put all our trust in the things of this life. Those things don't last. God does.

February 20, 2022

To love our enemies may be the hardest of all of Jesus’ teachings.. Harder still is to look at our enemies and consider them as people, created by and valued by God

February 27, 2022

To continue our growth as disciples, we also are in need of role models whose example we follow, and to whom we can be apprenticed in faith. First among these, of course, is Jesus.

March 6, 2022

Though we are made in the image of God, Jesus reminds us that we were also created to be part of larger groups: families, communities, faith traditions.

March 13, 2022

The Transfiguration is a glimpse into the glory of the Risen Christ. Every glimpse of light, however, can also return us to the mountaintop.

March 20, 2022

In Memory of Father Bill Gubbins: November 20, 1929-March 14, 2022

The farmer knows that no life will grow without being fertilized. God knows we cannot grow without mercy; yet even divine mercy, if we reject it, leaves us to wither.

March 27, 2022

It’s a note sometimes overlooked: the father in today’s Gospel doesn’t stand there with his arms folded to receive back his contrite son. Rather, his love makes him run, impatient to embrace his child.

April 3, 2022

In a scene out a a nature show-only with humans, not animals-the crowd today circles the woman, ready to strike and kill to feed their self-righteousness. Jesus sends their pompous hearts away empty.

April 10, 2022

By allowing himself to be raised up on a cross, Jesus stooped to pick up the heaviest part of our humanity, so that we too, one day, will be raised up.

April 17, 2022

In life’s trials or dark moments, we feel as if we’ve entered our own empty tomb. Easter calls us out of those spaces, to realize that resurrection is everywhere around us.

April 24, 2022

We can encounter our own locked doors. We likely don’t have the power of Jesus to pass through them, but we do have the power of the Spirit eventually to get to the other side.

May 1, 2022

The followers of Jesus have a new experience of what they encountered in him as disciples: the call to follow.

May 8, 2022

Daily lives of sheep and shepherds in Jesus’ day were filled with hazards. The best protection was to stay close, stay in physical contact. It is no different for us today with our Good Shepherd.

May 15, 2022

All words—even holy, sacred words—can suffer from overuse or misuse. When we say we’re going to glorify God, it must be with a sense of how much that calls upon us to do. Truly giving glory to God is not to be done light.

May 22, 2022

Often the biggest obstacle to knowing God’s love in our lives is being able to believe that God can love us. We know God can love others, but when it comes to ourselves being loveable.

May 29, 2022

The light we experience day to day is a reminder of the light of Christ. Light from light, whose eternal light radiates into our earthly time.

June 5, 2022

Fire. Wind. Giver of charismatic speech. We often think of the Spirit in big, dramatic ways. This might lead us to mission out on all the tender and gentle and quiet ways the Spirit, the Comforter, comes among us.

June 12, 2022

When we get overly bound up in abstract concepts about the Trinity, we can lose sight of the fact that they are persons, bound together by love, delighting in each other. We’re invited to their party!

June 19, 2022

There are many who are physically gorged with more than enough food, yet they hunger spiritually Like Jesus, we can turn to those who come to have their daily hungers satisfied.

June 26, 2022

To follow Jesus means to be in constant discernment about which path to choose. There are no “higher” or “lower” paths, only paths that lead us to the work of

God’s reign.

July 3, 2022

As Jesus continues his journey to Jerusalem, he sends out some of his followers in a preview of what will be expected of them following the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost.

July 10, 2022

The parable of the good Samaritan is so familiar, and comes from so long ago, that we can forget that Jesus’ first hearers would have been shocked: an enemy-outcast is the hero of the story!

July 17, 2022

Every one of us has a different set of gifts or abilities to make the world a better or more welcoming place for others.

July 24, 2022

Upon hearing the Lord’s Prayer we may think Luke forgot part of it; but his briefer form gives the prayer more urgency, as Jesus continues to Jerusalem.

July 31, 2022

Many things tug at us for our allegiance—some healthy, some not. Ultimately, only one of these can hold first place in our lives.

August 7, 2022

      Our word “remember” has its origins in the Latin word for being mindful: memor. Christians are called upon to be mindful again and again of the life and way of Jesus Christ, as we follow him daily.

August 14, 2022

Though Pentecost was months ago, Jesus reminds us that he came to set the world on fire. As members of the Church born at Pentecost, that is our work.

August 21, 2022

We pray for the reign of God: ”thy kingdom come.” Praying to God—keeping in touch—also happens when our lives reflect that reign, which welcomes in peoples of unimaginable diversity.

August 28, 2022

The word “humility” originates with the Latin “humus,” which means the ground or the earth. A truly humble person is one grounded in honesty.

September 4, 2022

In the same way we sometimes think that others are hearing us but not truly listening, God may likewise think the same; we hear, but don’t listen.

September 11, 2022

We can sometimes think too highly of ourselves, and at other times we have a falsely low self-image. God calls us to an honest evaluation of our lives.

September 18, 2022

Being made in the image of God doesn’t mean only our personal existence but also treating others in a God-like way.