Matthew 22:34-46
Spiritual journeys begin in very simple ways. Usually they begin by a dawning awareness of some sense of connection that runs deeper than we anticipate. Or they begin again because there is a desire to grow deeper in our life…

Luke 24:13-35
There are times in our life that are disorienting. Often these are times that involve change. There can be times of stagnation as well that disorient us. Perhaps someone has died and we enter into grief with its dragging weight…

Matthew 26:14-27:66
What do you prefer to have in your hand today? The palm? The thirty pieces of silver? The Eucharistic bread which was celebrated on this night in this gospel and which we will receive here? A pillow for sleep? The defending sword? The helpful touch of the cross like that of Simon of Cyrene? The nails and the hammer?…

John 9:1-23, 28-41
The video that went viral on YouTube this week was of a British woman, age 39, named JoAnn, who was hearing for the first time by the gift of implants. Her reaction is not at all subtle. There’s tears of amazement, there’s joy, there’s a nervous shaking of her hand as she hears sound for the first time…

Luke 2:22-40, Malachi 3:1-4
I thought, earlier in the day, that on February second we mark a secular feast that’s called Groundhog Day, but I was informed that the real secular feast is the Super Bowl. But for those of us who are in liturgical time, it is the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ…

Matthew 2:1-12
From the earliest of our traditions, Christmas falls in the winter, with its shortened days. The ancients lit fires to break the spell of winter, those darkening days, with the hope of bringing back the sun and its longer days and the good fortune that came with it, or so they hoped…

Here we are on the fourth Sunday of Advent, that Sunday when the sense of the season begins to shift toward Christmas space. The image before us is the image of preparing ourselves for Jesus’ coming…

2 Luke 22:33-43
Many of us have hopeful pictures in our lives. We might call them “dream pictures,” pictures that are early set in us and are often deep. Pictures of how we would like life to be. Or perhaps some picture that our parents have painted for us of the good life…

2 Luke 18:1-8
“Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” For how many of us, was that the first prayer we were asked to memorize? Or did you rewrite it for your children as I did for my daughter?…

2 Timothy 1:1-14, Luke 17:5-10
There’s a great tendency to think of faith as something that I own. “My faith,” you often hear someone say. “The way I believe.” For faith is some felt experience of being right with God, is another interpretation. Or of God moving in knowable ways in my life. If I perceive it, I have faith. If I do not, then I am short on faith…