In the Gospel this morning, Jesus quotes the Old Testament when he says, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” A great deal many people in the world today will use this sort of glimpse into the Scriptures to claim God was a God ofContinue Reading
Yesterday I talked about how that Jesus told us that holiness wasn’t just conforming to the religious laws; it was supposed to be about interior change. In today’s Gospel, He begins to lay out what exactly that means. He fleshes out how the Old Testament’s moral law is supposedContinue Reading
Jesus says in the Gospel today that He came to fulfill the law, not destroy it. To understand that statement, we have to look at what the purpose of a law is. Laws are created to instill and facilitate order and keep peace within a society. Religious law, though,Continue Reading
The word sacrament comes from the Latin word sacramentum. A sacramentum was an oath sworn to the gods in an act of consecration. It was also the oath to the death a Roman soldier took to the emperor. The Church defines a Sacrament as, “Sacraments are outward signs of inwardContinue Reading
There is so much here this morning. These readings are rich with insight into the human condition. I want to focus, though, on something I think apropos to the current situation we find ourselves in as a nation. Maybe even as a species. Here in Tobit, we find this youngContinue Reading
A lot of the time, when we encounter this particular Gospel, we focus on what Jesus did. He healed a blind man. Giving sight to the blind is indeed a miracle worth talking about. I want to focus a little bit on what the blind man, Bartimaeus, didContinue Reading
In the Gospel this morning, Jesus reminds us that following Him is not always a rose garden. It involves taking up the cross. He says to James and John, “Can you drink the chalice that I drink?” In their enthusiasm, they declare that they can, and history shows thatContinue Reading