We're returning to Ordinary Time, which is time ordered toward daily Christian growth in faith. It doesn't imply that "extraordinary time" is behind us for the next 25 weeks. Discipleship can be a heroic summons in any hour.

If God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn, why do you think we Christians sometimes do so? Is there a way for us to criticize without condemning?

Moses is hands-down the greatest figure in the Hebrew story. But his outsized significance is not as well appreciated in Christian circles as in Jewish ones. Before Moses, God looms in scripture as creator and judge and absolute authority—a distant Almighty figure who might share a few words with one of his creatures but was otherwise unapproachable.

I started high school in the '60s just as the boom in folk music began. I was overwhelmed when, underage, I sneaked into the Quiet Night in Old Town Chicago and first heard Peter, Paul and Mary live. For the next half century, I bought their albums, watched them on television and saw them in concerts everywhere from McCormick Place in Chicago to the Boston Commons.

"God's going to punish you!" the angry older sister said. Her little brother had been misbehaving since they'd arrived at the playground.

Back when I was a student in the seminary, we would be tested in general areas of theology as well as in the specific course work we were taking. They would give us an extensive reading list for those "area" exams. One of them included the theology of the Holy Trinity.

We turn to God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—for the forgiveness that reconciles us to God and one another.

Mystery of the living God, and of his love for humankind, the Most High sends his Son to us and reveals himself as our Father; Christ exalted in glory gives us his Spirit in whom we praise you, God who is, who was, and who comes!