We love one another as God loves us. How does God love? How do we show God’s love for us in the way we love others?

What does it mean to offer a blessing? What are we doing when we engage in this most religious of activities? Because we are part of a religious tradition that sees fit to bless people, homes, ground, water, bread and wine, oil, certain hours, feasts, and seasons—and in various ethnic traditions, rosaries and scapulars, pets and cars and roller skates, and just about anything else you can haul to church—it would be good to reflect on what precisely we think we’re doing with all this blessing activity.

We had some tough kids in our grammar school. I suppose by today’s standards they were pretty tame, but they scared the heck out of me. We had one guy who could have walked directly onto the cast of Grease without any changes to his appearance.

The same five girls kept showing up for detention after school, so the detention monitor decided to organize them into a kind of detention club, an association of misfits rejected by the other teachers.

We pray now to the Lord who is head over all things.

The Word is the face, the countenance, the representation of God, in whom he is brought to light and made known.