Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
Parents raising young children know very well the challenges of guiding their little ones to be respectful and polite when asking for something. It is not always easy for children to grasp the difference between, “Give me that!” and “May I please have the ball?” Consequently, they often need to be told, “It’s how you ask for something.” Even then, we know there’s more behind those instructions than just the right words.
Jesus’ parable about the two men who went to the temple to pray has to do with how we ask for something, but in the same way it is not just a matter of the right words. It has everything to do with our attitude, everything to do with our heart.
Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
Persistence: What a curious quality to attach to prayer. Why do we need to be persistent?
Does God need to be reminded of what we need? Does He forget what He has promised?
Does our heavenly Father have selective hearing, as so many earthly fathers do? As a
teenager, sometimes I would go to speak to my father while he was reading the newspaper after dinner. He would look up, stare at me, even nod, but five minutes later have no recollection of what I had said. Yet, if I whispered a request to my mother to use the car, he would suddenly yell from two floors away, “Don’t let him have it, Marge!”
Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
At this time in our country great debates are taking place as different senators and other politicians try to look for what they call a just immigration reform. People have different ideas about how to treat “foreigners.” Many question their rights or lack of them. Today, our Scriptures help us turn toward the foreigner or the outsider. Certainly the first reading and the Gospel turn our attention upon the salvation and faith of the “foreigner” or the outsider, the one who lives on the fringe, the edge of society. Scriptures help us turn toward the forgotten man or woman, the one who is hopeless, the outcast and the no-person.
Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
Dinosaurs on television! Who would have ever imagined? Animals and plants even older than dinosaurs, ancient seas, the continents of earth in a far different arrangement than what we know today. Stars a-booming, colliding, dividing, galaxies spinning off into space. Amazing what you can discover on television!
And then they show you how all these living things developed. And how they – suddenly! – came to an end. And, of course, when the dinosaurs, the great reptiles, died out, little mammals came to populate the earth, little mammals like – eventually – you and me.
Twenty-Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
This past week I’ve just finished writing an article on the problems facing the board of directors of the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club, you will recall, is a nonprofit organization that has been around for over 100-years with the mission of protecting the environment from harm. Since the late 1990’s there have been many attempts at a hostile takeover of the board by antiimmigration groups. They are the ones who would like to see the Sierra Club embrace an antiimmigration agenda as part of the club’s environmental mission.
So what does the Sierra Club or anti-immigration enthusiasts have to do with the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time? On the surface, nothing, but underneath, the heart of today’s readings.
Justice, both socially and spiritually, is at the heart of today’s readings.
Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
The parables are always about the practical implications of faith.
The theme of justice seems pretty obvious in today’s Liturgy of the Word. Justice is the rendering of what is due to, or merited by someone. It includes ideas like fairness, equity and impartiality. It doesn’t allow for favoritism, which always divides and hurts some people.
Twenty-Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
One of the greatest challenges many of us face in striving to live out our Christian vocation in the real world, it seems to me, has to do with the issue of forgiveness. If the people we often see on newscasts – people who have been aggrieved, against whom some crime or injury has been committed – if such people are at all representative of the population at large, justice rather than mercy often seems to be the prevailing force that moves us.
Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
I am pretty sure that all parents have, at one time or another, found themselves in the position of trying to get their child to do something difficult or boring or distasteful, and having their child refuse with these words: “You know, I didn’t ask to be born!” The logic of the complaint seems to be that, by not actually requesting birth, the child must now be held to a lower standard of compliance with parental oversight. If children asked to be born, then it would be their own fault that they were here, and they would have to accept the consequences of mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, and studying algebra. But since they didn’t ask to be here, they expect to be cut some slack.
Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
Today’s Gospel story asks the ultimate question: “What seats do you have?” Jesus tells a parable about the seats people want at a banquet to some Pharisees. In other words, Jesus teaches a group of educated, competitive, hard-working people with acquired tastes – a group of people a lot like me, and perhaps you, too.
Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year C
I remember an early morning this spring when I was awoken from a deep sleep by the severe sounds of an approaching storm. There was a tremendous clap of thunder followed by a bright flash of lighting, the intensity of which drew me from my bed instantly and to the window. My immediate reaction was to quickly bless myself, making the sign of the cross, followed expediently by an act of contrition. The violence of the storm combined with the strange light of the morning in these moments just before dawn to frighten me and to wonder if this might be the end of the world! My response to the storm triggered a spontaneous spiritual reaction, readying myself for what might be the end.