Nativity of the Lord • Year B
As a result, Christ is born in a barn: “there was no room for them in the inn.” These words comes to us as a simple statement of fact, but they are also prophetic words, and the crowded inn is a mighty symbol. How many of us here, like the inn of Bethlehem, have no room in our lives and in our hearts for the Lord of Life Himself? How many of us are keepers of an inn cluttered with ancient grudges and new hatreds? How man of us lead lives firmly settled on gluttony, lust, and sloth, and will abide no inconvenience to offer hospitality to the Christ?
Fourth Sunday of Advent • Year B
So Mary is given a message about bearing a son who will become king. Maybe, now, she is calling to mind the current rule under which she lives, an empire that dominated the Mediterranean, and the Roman soldiers she would pass in the streets. She could see their threats and their violence and she knew the high taxes they demanded. She could have thought this and perhaps wondered, how could a king come from Nazareth? How could his kingdom be a match to Rome’s?
Third Sunday of Advent • Year B
Having reflected for the past two weeks on the second coming of Jesus, next Monday we celebrate the first coming, of Jesus. We have many reasons to rejoice. We rejoice because even in our brokenness God loves us so much he sent his only son to free us from, and forgive our sins. We rejoice because as we celebrate Jesus’ birth (his first coming), as well as his life, death and resurrection, we realize that at his second coming we have the opportunity to see God face-to-face.
Second Sunday of Advent • Year B
The season of Advent is supposed to be a time to renew our commitment to listening to the voice of the Lord, the only thing that gives meaning to our life in this desert. The desert voices remind us that nothing that we seek in this life to comfort ourselves will ever do so completely, for only our covenant relationship with God can do that.
First Sunday of Advent • Year B
It is good for us to hear again the stories of God who has journeyed with us from the beginning and who in the fullness of time took on flesh and came to walk in the world with us. We need to hear the story again, because often we forget. We forget what Jesus brought us and gave us. We get drowsy and overloaded with the anxieties of life. So in the Gospel Jesus tells us as he told his listeners: It is like a man traveling abroad…[who] places his servants in charge…and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch…. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
Solemnity of Christ the King • Year A
It is Christ we serve. It is Christ we are. We are the Christ with plenty sharing with the Christ in need. We are the Christ at home welcoming the wandering Christ. Just as the death and resurrection of Christ gives us life, we give Christ life when we care for him out on the street, down on his luck, lost in addiction, far from his friends, troubled in marriage, looking for answers, praying for health, crying in secret, staring at walls, reaching through bars, breathing his last.
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year A
The scriptures call us to look more deeply at the brief span of our years here below, and the quality of living and service to others we offer. Yet the ads in the Sunday newspapers and the stores ready for Christmas at Halloween urge us, “Yes, the time is very short, so shop now.” We are pulled in at least two directions. The readings encourage our pondering our future in eternity and how we’re doing at living well. The present world wants to lure us elsewhere.
Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year A
All too often the circumstances of our lives will force us to confront such mysteries as the death and our own mortality. Natural disasters, disease and our own human finitude threaten, and take us and our loved ones everyday. November is the month in the liturgical calendar that the Church reserves to remember, and honor those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.
Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year A
God’s word today challenges all of us who are priests, prophets, and kings by Baptism, but especially the ordained leadership of the Body of Christ, to reflect deeply on what it means to be Christ for others today. We are most the Body of Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist, which the Second Vatican Council calls “the center and summit of the Christian life,” and therefore, each of us individually and together must be Eucharistically focused.
Fr. Bill Atkinson, O.S.A. Symposium at Villanova | From the Desk of Fr. Rob
November 1, 2023 Dear friend of the Augustinians, On Tuesday, October 3, over 150 people joined the Augustinian Friars, special lecturers, and friends and family of Servant of God Fr. Bill Atkinson, O.S.A. for a special symposium discussing Fr. Bill’s extraordinary life and the Cause for his beatification and canonization. We Augustinians are very excited and invested […]