From Season to Season

Some weeks ago, the pastor of Seaside Community Church in Torrance, California, invited me to preach at the church's Sunday service. Here is my reflection for Sunday, June 29. The text upon which I am reflecting is Matthew 10:37-42 . Do you ever think about those first women and men who followed Jesus? We hear about them all the time in the Gospels. After all, without them, Jesus wouldn’t have had people to hear his wise words. There wouldn’t have been all those sick and broken people calling out to him for healing and wholeness. Without those women and men, we wouldn’t have the great stories of forgiveness, as Jesus reached out a loving hand and shared a meal with everyone who came to him with an open heart. They are an essential part of all the stories we know about Jesus. From the shepherds who went to the stable in Bethlehem on that first Christmas, to the disciples who stood on that mountain looking up at the sky that day Jesus ascended to heaven, to each one of us ...

How many of us were asked, when we were young, what we wanted to be when we grew up? I’m sure that of all the answers we might have given—or that we might have heard, for that matter—“I want to be like John the Baptist” was not among them. And yet, aren’t we called to be like John the Baptist, whose birthday we celebrate every June 24? Who was this John, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah? In essence, John was simply a prophet. In fact, Jesus himself said that John was “more than a prophet,” going on to say, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11: 9-11). High praise, indeed.      Since the early days of the Christian Faith, John the Baptist has been revered as the one chosen by God to prepare the way for the long-awaited Messiah, in much the same way that Mary was chosen to be the mother of Jesus. This is the reason why, other than the birth of Jesus at Christmas, the only birthdays celebrated i...

I first read about Aluigi Gonzaga when I was about 9 years old. Leafing through an old St. Joseph’s Daily Missal that I had found in my grandmother’s cedar chest, I saw page after page of saints’ names and the prayers assigned to various days of the year. When I turned to June 21, I came across an image of a Renaissance prince (wearing a ruffled collar, breeches, and hose) kneeling before a statue of Mary. Although the short bio that preceded the prayers of the Mass assigned for the day didn’t provide much information, something resonated within me. That was the moment when I began a relationship with the young man who is now remembered as Saint Aloysius Gonzaga . Today, when most people hear the name “Gonzaga” they think of the great Jesuit University in Spokane, Washington. For Reformation-era Europeans, the name of Gonzaga meant something very different. Distant relatives of the Holy Roman Emperors and counted among the greatest families of Italy, Spain, and all of Europe, the...