Here’s a question to start today: When we try to pray, how do we begin? What do you do? I would imagine that if we actually took a survey here today which, don’t worry, isn’t going to happen, it would take way too long, but if we did, I think we would get a wide variety of answers, ranging from one of the memorized or traditional prayers that some of us have known for years, to a few people who would be very honest and say, well, you know, a lot of times I don’t really know how to start, I feel awkward and like I am not really good…
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Today we find ourselves back in Ordinary Time, but with a gospel that isn’t an ordinary everyday gospel. We are right at the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry in the gospel of Mark, and Jesus has begun his work, but he hasn’t begun it with quietly teaching and preaching. He is telling people that the Kingdom of God needs to be built on this earth, but he is also confronting some opposing powers head on, the forces that don’t want that Kingdom built. And his opposing powers aren’t the scribes, coming around already here to pick at him and question him, he is opposing something bigger: He is confronting demons,…
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We have all been trained, maybe not on purpose, it just happens, but we’ve all picked up an image of God that isn’t entirely correct. In fact, it might even be all wrong. It’s not so much our idea of what God looks like that’s wrong, but about where God is. The problem is that we hear people talk all the time about God “up there.” You know, “the big guy up there” and all that. Maybe it happens because we’ve all seen pictures of an ancient God the Father seated in a chair in the clouds, maybe it’s the paintings in the Sistine Chapel of God literally on the…
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Years ago when I was a college student, I remember that it was the fashion for the evangelical students on campus to come up to people and ask them if they had a personal relationship with Jesus. For all I know, this is still a thing, but it certainly was back then. And of course my reaction was, besides please go away and leave me alone, my reaction was it seemed like if they did have a personal relationship with Jesus that they were being really braggy and smug about it, you know, of course I have a relationship and it’s a great one, it’s easy, and that seemed wrong.…
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The ritual we are going to see in just a couple of minutes I would say that most Catholics have never seen in their lifetimes. I can say that with some confidence because we only see this ritual on Holy Thursday, when we read John’s gospel of the last supper, the only gospel where we hear about Christ washing the disciples’ feet. And so the only people who get to see this are you, who are among the elite who have figured out that this next three days, no offense meant to anything else, but this three days are really the best thing the Catholic Church has to offer all…
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If you were listening to the reading from the Old Testament, I wonder how many of you were immediately discouraged when the first thing you heard was about scabs and pustules. If you have ever sat down to try to read the Old Testament all the way through it’s passages like this that probably convinced you that if you were going to make it there are some parts you would end up skipping. But the fact is our ancestors in the faith thought that things like this were a serious issue for their community. There are many rules and regulations about various illnesses and most importantly, types of uncleanness. Why…
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I tried to see whether there was any research done on this topic, but I couldn’t find anything, so I’ll just have to go with my own observations over the years, and you can tell me if you think I’m wrong: which is that John the Baptist really isn’t anyone’s favorite saint. He has great name recognition, you have to admit that, but it often doesn’t go much beyond that. You never hear about anyone who has a special devotion to John the Baptist, you know, who just loves the idea of him being a role model. You don’t hear about people choosing him as a confirmation name. I’m sure…
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We all have a question after hearing this story, and we have this question no matter how many time we’ve heard it. And the question is, “Why?” Why did this have to happen? We’re told Jesus in some way died for us, that this was necessary. Even he said so, it had to happen, and no one understood him, and we don’t either. So how do we answer this “why” question that is here each Good Friday? Our mistake is to see what happened here as a tragedy, someone who got something terrible he didn’t deserve. But we can’t ever forget what kind of story this really is. Because what…
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We all love the Christmas message, which is that there is a God of love who cares about this world enough to be with us. And now we find out something more, what we find out is that God doesn’t just love us. In the end, God wins. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Like at Christmas, the signs of this aren’t always spectacular. There is just an empty tomb, and the reports of people who are absolutely certain about what they saw and experienced, which is that someone they knew and loved was fully alive and present in a completely new way that no…
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Jesus’s ascension is a very hard scene for us to picture. It’s a moment of spectacular special effects, maybe, or a religious vision that most of us have never experienced anything like. But however it happened and however you picture it, this ascension is something Jesus told the disciples would happen, that after his resurrection his physical presence would only be with them for a while, and then their world would be turned upside down yet again. It must have been hard for them. On that first Easter they all found it hard to believe the story of the women, they all found it hard to accept that he was…