Lessons in Compassion
When we seek what Jesus is offering, we are often filled with more than we need, even finding we now have something to distribute to others. Do you trust Jesus to take your meager offerings and multiple them into blessings to fill you and to share with others?
What Really Matters?
Things all too easily become more significant than people, individuals can all too easily become objects to use and manipulate, and our agendas become more essential than God’s. Only the wisdom that comes from God can bring light to all of our darkness.
Called to Extend Mercy
Jesus tells the story of a farmer whose crop of wheat is attacked by an enemy who sows the seeds of weeds along with the grains of wheat. Once the violent act was done, there was no going back. The wheat and weeds had to be allowed to grow together.
Seeds Of Transformation
Just as a seed, once it is planted, has a power within it that drives it to become the tree it is meant to be, so God’s kingdom, once planted in our world and in our souls by Jesus himself, takes root and spreads its branches slowly but surely throughout all of human history.
Weighted Down
A myriad of scenarios can explain the weight that we hold deep within. The older we get it seems as though the more baggage we tend to collect. Our baggage has become our comfort and definition. We don’t experience what Jesus promised because we fear, or we doubt. But Jesus is patient as he is persistent.
Love God Above All Else
God is calling us to serve and love Him above all else. God speaks to us not as an optional side character in our stories, but as the passionate lover determined to make sure we know that the way to true happiness and freedom can only come from Him. The only way our stories will make sense is in light of the greater story of God’s plan of salvation for humanity.
A Life of Constant Devotion
Do we deny Jesus when we are uncomfortable, perhaps holding back who we are, particularly with family, friends, or co-workers? Does the warning Jesus speaks in Matthew’s Gospel hold no significance upon our actions?
The Presence of Christ
Nothing can stop grace. But separation cannot be allowed to last forever. We must connect again. We need to embrace the Eucharistic presence of God and our community of faith again in order to fully be who we are called to be.
A Unique and Dynamic Communion
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity reminds us that the God whom we adore is “one God in the Trinity” and “Trinity in unity” (from The Athanasian Creed), inviting us to consider that all of our relationships are reflections of that unique and dynamic communion that exists within God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Being Sent Forth Into The New World
This Pentecost is much like the first one. It finds us behind closed doors, in fervent prayer, longing for our Lord. The Holy Spirit leads us out into a world that has changed dramatically over the past year. However, the message is the same. God has won the victory in Jesus Christ.
Hide and Seek
I had thought it odd for the longest while that Jesus would say that he was going to go away. He had risen from the dead recently so couldn’t he stick around? On pilgrimage in the Holy Land, in a small church which has a marbleized footprint on the ground commemorating the last step of Jesus as he was lifted into the sky, I was still confounded.
A Reason for our Hope
In the Gospel we hear Jesus say to us, “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you…” This gospel is striking during our current times. In a time of confusion, suffering, uncertainty, and for many isolation and loneliness, God the Father is actively caring for us and telling each of us, you are not alone.