Exploring the Word

16 Aug 2015

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Where's your umbrella?

Come to my fabulous dinner party! Wisdom calls from the heights of the city. Taste and see that the Lord is good! the Psalmist sings. Be filled with the Spirit! Paul urges the Ephesians. And Jesus proclaims that his flesh is true food, his blood true drink! Most of the folks who hear these marvelous calls go out, yawn and decline the invitation. Why is that?

9 Aug 2015

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Food for the journey

In the seemingly soft seasons of our spiritual practices, we’re developing a relationship that will sustain us through the arctic darkness when it comes.

2 Aug 2015

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

The great debate begins

For the next four weeks, the whole church concentrates on a single chapter of John’s gospel. Its subject is Jesus, the Bread of Life. It’s rare in the liturgical calendar to provide such a prolonged emphasis, but our intent focus is a matter of importance to our lives as Catholic Christians. We gather weekly around this table of our Eucharist, hoping to discover ever more deeply its meaning.

26 Jul 2015

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Do we really believe this stuff?

It’s easy to put your trust in God after the miracle. Faith requires front-loading your trust: in forgiveness, in resurrection, in divine rescue across the board.

19 Jul 2015

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Many ways to view a wilderness

According to the Bible, this is what God sees in every wilderness: not vacant wasteland, but a place for flowers to bloom. Not barren desert, but soil waiting for rain. It’s a quiet space for tired disciples to take their rest, for hungry multitudes to be fed. Wilderness is where water can spring from a rock or bread might fall from heaven. Meat can be supplied by a passing flock of quail. To God, wilderness is a clean canvas on which to paint a beautiful future.

12 Jul 2015

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Let's get this show on the road

Since we are all sent, how well do we bring our Christ-selves wherever we go? Do people see simply us, or do they catch a glimpse of the One who sends us?

5 Jul 2015

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

I know you

Knowledge is power, according to Francis Bacon. This phrase is chiseled into the lintels of many a school to confirm that the pursuit of knowledge is worthwhile. Too often, however, we equate knowledge with the random acquisition of facts and figures.

28 Jun 2015

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Interruptions are our business

All excuses aside, life is an endless series of interruptions that are overcome only by the final interruption of our demise. If you’re not being interrupted, you’re not living.

21 Jun 2015

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

We brake for limits

The authority to set limits, and to break them, is God’s alone. Jesus reveals his divine nature at the fracture point of transcending the established limits of sin and death. To live under God’s authority is the only way to move forward to a life without limits—or, as we say, a world without end.

14 Jun 2015

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Give honor and praise where it's due

The sower sows the seed. But the seed becomes grain by mysterious means. The sower can’t take credit for what happens once the seed pushes its first sprout into the soil. That’s the work of the seed’s Creator. And it merits praise