Why was Jesus angry with the disciples for trying to stop people from bringing children to him? For one, he liked children and wanted to give them his blessing. He also didn’t want his disciples to get in the way of a teachable moment about why it was important to have the trust of a child in order to accept the kingdom of God.

Many of us would be happy to take gender off the table. Gender issues prove divisive in state, church, society, and often family. Let me say as a female I wasn’t particularly conscious right away of the way gender shaped my future. Having five sisters and two brothers, I suspect I viewed the female as the norm. But from the playground to the classroom, from the pews to the doctor’s office to the work place, gradually it was impressed on me that in most places, man was the norm. Being a woman made me an aberration to be accommodated. Even exclusive language insists I’m a “man” until proven otherwise.

The letter to the Hebrews celebrates Christ’s liberation of all from death, and we know from the gospels that Christ saw his mission to be one who was “sent . . . to proclaim liberty to captives.” On the small island of Bastoy in Norway you’ll find a village with wooden houses, a school, a library, and a church. The men who live there are building, farming, cooking, doing their laundry. But you’re not in just any Norwegian village. You’re on a prison island.

We ask for continued blessing and forgiveness from the one for whom and through whom all things exist.

"What God has joined together, no human being must separate.” The readings this week speak of lifelong fidelity to shared relationships rooted in God. Adam and Eve share not only similar names (‘ish and ‘ishshah in Hebrew) but also one flesh and even the same basic material as animals—the soil. The result is a covenantal partnership of support based in God.

Few New Testament texts have had their meaning debated so vigorously as those in which Jesus discusses divorce. Biblical scholar Raymond F. Collins says there are eight versions of Jesus’ teaching on divorce and no easy way to identify which one reflects his views in their purest form. From the days of the early church to the present, the question continues to provoke debate.

Your Son went down from the heights of his divinity to the depths of our humanity. Can anyone’s heart remain closed and hardened after this? —Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)