From Season to Season

It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee  and was baptized in the Jordan by John. On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open  and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens,  "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."   —Mark 1:9-11 To be baptized is an act of humility. After all, no one baptizes himself or herself. In accepting John’s baptism, Jesus fully embraced what it means to be a human person, with all of humanity’s weakness, limitations, and suffering.  That Jesus, the Incarnate Word, humbled himself in this way shows that he chose humility as the way he would redeem us. The Baptism of Christ by Giotto (1305) As we have heard time and again in these Christmas days, the Savior of the world did not come with any sort of fanfare or grandeur. He came quietly into the world as a baby, the lowest and the least of humanity. Then, after spending thirty years in an...

Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, Jesus asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. —Luke 5:3–6 This past week, as I was reflecting on this Sunday’s Gospel and thinking about what I would write in this reflection, I happened to have a conversation with another member of my religious community , during which he shared a question he recently asked the members of his parish in a daily homily: “How do you respond when someone confronts you about something you’ve done wrong?” It’s a good question. He shared three possible responses with his parishioners. “First,” he said, ...

Happy to share this reflection, which was published for today in Give Us This Day from Liturgical Press. To read today's Mass Readings, click here . In his Rule , St. Benedict is very clear that monks are to avoid any semblance of private ownership: “without an order from the abbot, no one may presume to give, receive, or retain anything as his own, nothing at all” (ch. 33). This challenging teaching gave rise to a number of practices in monasteries, including monks or nuns of times past referring to “our habit,” “our cell,” or “our book,” as a reminder that all the goods of the community were shared among the members.    St. Benedict went so far as to call private ownership an “evil practice” because he recognized how easy it is for us to focus our attention on things and lose sight of life-giving relationships. This is why he was so insistent that the monks should “look to the father of the monastery” for the necessities of day to day living and ministry. ...

In my commentary for this Sunday, I reflect on what it means to welcome a little child as Jesus did. Jesus and the Little Child by Carl Bloch "There is no great theological discourse or political rhetoric here. In a single gesture, Jesus summarizes the beauty and the mystery of his message: even those whom the world sees as insignificant are important in God’s eyes. To be Jesus’ follower means that we have to be willing to embrace those dismissed by the world. True greatness comes from serving others." To read the full reflection, click here .

Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; The woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Acclaim her for the work of her hands, And let her deeds praise her at the city gates. —Proverbs 31:30-31 We often fall into the trap of thinking that living the Gospel means doing extraordinary things. Certainly the experiences of so many of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East and Africa—who are witnessing to their faith in heroic ways—remind us that any one of us could be called upon at any moment to give our life for Christ, but, for most of us, our life of discipleship will be lived out in small, daily sacrifices and times of prayer. I think that one of the great tragedies of our faith tradition is that much of the beauty of the lives of the Saints has been lost within a haze of miracles and martyrdoms. But, like each of us, these women, men, and children lived ordinary lives. What set them apart wasn’t that the majority of their actions or prayers were extraordinary—w...

Included in a collection of essays entitled A Maryknoll Reflection on the Liturgical Year is this story from Father Ken Tesing, a Maryknoll priest who spent decades serving in East Africa: I came back to the United States from my mission in Tanzania, and I was visiting my brother and his family at their farm. As farmers always do, we went out to look at the fields and crops. My brother asked me, “Look, do you recognize those weeds?” I replied, “No, I don’t think I have ever seen them before; how did they get into your fields?” He said, “Some years ago herbicides were developed; the weeds and grasses we struggled with in the crops when we were just growing up have all been eliminated. All these seeds were just lying dormant in the ground; they could not compete earlier with the dominant weeds and now they have sprouted and come forth.” We talked about this. My brother said farming is like life; there will always be challenges, always be differences. We need to be patient and t...

The man who would be known to history simply as “Saint Louis” was born in 1214 and became King of France in 1226, when he was only twelve years old. In 1234, he married Margaret of Provence and the couple eventually had eleven children. Known for his spirit of penance and prayer, Louis was mindful of both the temporal and spiritual needs of his family and his people. During his lifetime he was well acquainted with Saint Thomas Aquinas and other learned men of his day, and under his rule France experienced a cultural and spiritual renewal. Louis is also remembered for the construction of La Sainte Chapelle in Paris, which he built to house the relic of the Crown of Thorns.   In 1248, and again in 1270, Louis joined in the Crusades to the Holy Land.   It was during his second Crusade that Louis contracted dysentery, dying at Tunis on August 25, 1270, as he made his way to a battle. His relics were returned France and enshrined at Saint-Denis, where many miracles have bee...