From Season to Season

Note: I have been publishing reflections via Aletia.org and on Facebook Notes for the past few years, but I am   happy to begin sharing again on this blog.  An earlier version of this reflection was posted Aletiea.org. on August 26, 2017,  For the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A, 2020) You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.  — Matthew 16:18 Several years ago, I read the novel  The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham . It’s the story of two brothers coping with the death of their mother and their family’s histrionics. One of the brothers, Barrett, is always trying to find a way to escape his own life and over the course of the novel, he comes realize how shallow he has become. At one point in the story, he remarks that, “The moment matters more than the future. The present—today, tonight; the sensation of walking into a room, and creating a real if fleeting hush—is what I care ...

An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. - Matthew 1:20 In the 15 th century “ Cherry Tree Carol ,” Joseph and Mary are making their way to Bethlehem when, stopping in a cherry orchard, Mary asks Joseph to pick some cherries for her. Joseph, with spite, answers, “Let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee.” In the carol, it is only after witnessing a miracle of the cherry tree bending down to offer fruit to Mary that Joseph accepts the divine nature of his young wife’s pregnancy.   This song, however, hardly reflects the simple obedience and faith Joseph shows in the Gospel for December 18. Although the gospels do not relate any words of Joseph, his presence and actions testify to his silent love for Mary and her Son. And, while Joseph is, in many ways, only a silent figure standing at t...

The days are coming when men will go mad; and when they meet a man who is not mad, they will rise up again him, and say, "You are not like us, you are mad." —Saint Anthony the Abbot There have been a number of things going on in the world recently that have led me to reflect on how we view other people. There are grand world events—like the Ebola crisis, the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, or this week’s elections—and myriads of little daily new items that bring into focus the divisions that exist within our communities and even our families. I don’t think it is unfair to blame some of this on the prevalence and power of social networking. And, although the internet has, in many ways, become a great equalizer because of its availability and freedom (for the time being, at least), resources like Facebook and Twitter have provided platforms to anyone who chooses to use them, including one individual who recently commented on a news article: “ebola is cool. give it to me....

The story of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite Woman ( Matthew15:21-28 ) that we hear this Sunday is one of the more difficult episodes of the gospels. Not because it shares the opaqueness of many of the parables or because Jesus is revealing a challenging theological truth. Instead, it’s difficult to read and hear because it is a story about Jesus that doesn’t fit our childish Sunday-school version of who Jesus was.  In this passage, Jesus has traveled to the Gentile (non-Jewish) region of Tyre and Sidon. John the Baptist has been murdered by King Herod ( Matthew 14:1-12 ) and Jesus himself is now on Herod’s radar. It is likely that Jesus has gone to these coastal towns to get out of Herod’s jurisdiction and to have some time alone to grieve the death of John the Baptist (throughout chapter 14 of Matthew’s Gospel, we hear, more than once, about Jesus trying to find solitude for prayer and reflection). This would be a region where he wasn’t known. And yet, he’s recognized by a...

Once upon a time, a teacher told a story. It simply began: “A sower went out to sow.” It’s a story that has come down to us largely unchanged from the way it was first told. And it is a story that we know well. Unfortunately, it seems that many of the stories told by Jesus (the “Parables”) have lost their power to surprise and inspire us. There seems to be two reasons for this. The first is that they often include images and anecdotes from everyday life that are significantly unrelated from most of our day-to-day lives. After all, how many of us have any first-hand experience with sowing a field and understand what goes into cultivating a fruitful harvest. The second reason why these stories have lost their impact is that we know them too well. With the stories of the “ Prodigal Son ” and the “ Good Samaritan ,” the parable of the “Sower and the Seed” is among the best-known of these stories of Jesus.   In Saint Matthew’s account of the parable of the sower ( 13:1-9, 18-2...

In the opening verse of Sirach , we read, “All wisdom is from the Lord / and remains with him forever.” Praise of Wisdom is echoed in other places in the Old Testament, including Proverbs , Wisdom , Baruch , and Ecclesiastes and certain psalms. Continuing its praise of Wisdom, however, Sirach continues: “Before all other things wisdom was created; and prudent understanding from eternity. The root of wisdom—to whom has it been revealed? Her subtleties—who knows them? There is but one, wise and truly awesome, seated upon his throne—the Lord. It is he who created her, saw her and measured her. Poured her forth upon all his works, upon every living thing, according to his bounty, lavished her upon those who love him” (1:4-10). The passage from the Gospel of Matthew that we heard on the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Matthew 11:25-30), comes in a section in which Jesus can be said to take on the persona of the Woman Wisdom, “speaking with the words and images attributed to he...