The Word
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June 23-30, 2014Saints Peter and Paul (A), June 29, 2014
The question for the disciples came from Jesus himself, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The problem for Christians today in answering this question might be how to make sense of Jesus’ humanity in the context of his true divinity. For Jesus’ apostles, standing face to face with the flesh and blood of their friend and teacher, the relevant issue seems not to have been was Jesus God, but what sort of man has God sent to us in Jesus.
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June 23-30, 2014Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), July 6, 2014
How quickly should we move from the literal to the allegorical, figurative or spiritual meaning of words in the Bible? There is no one answer, for in reading the Bible sometimes the literal meaning of a word or a passage is indeed the spiritual meaning itself; at other times, the literal reading grounds a separate spiritual or allegorical meaning; and at still other times, both a literal and figurative meaning exist together.
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June 9-16, 2014Body and Blood of Christ (A), June 22, 2014
Bodies need nourishing, whether it is an individual body, a corporate body or a spiritual body. We need to be fed with the food that sustains, that is most appropriate to each body. Historically we see the corporate body of Israel fed by God in the wilderness with the material stuff of manna, necessary for life, and the subsequent entry of the people into a land of physical abundance.
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June 9-16, 2014Holy Trinity (A), June 15, 2014
The apostle Paul would not have been able to define the Trinity, yet he was able with ease to describe the activity and presence of the three persons of the Trinity. While propositions about God are significant, it is the experience of God that led to the nascent formulations of Trinitarian thought.
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May 26-June 2, 2014Ascension (A), June 1, 2014
One of the overlooked aspects of Jesus’ ascension has to do not with the continuing materiality of the risen Lord or the “whereness” of Jesus’ glorified body but with the earthly implications of the ascension for the church.
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May 26-June 2, 2014Pentecost (A), June 8, 2014
The Acts of the Apostles presents a reverse Babel at Pentecost, when the confusion of tongues described in Gn 11:1–9 is transformed into understanding among the earliest disciples of Jesus, who find themselves speaking “other languages.” The confusion of tongues at Babel gives to us an ancient etiology for the separation of peoples into linguistic groups, but Acts twice says that bewildered onlookers heard Jesus’ disciples “speaking in the native language of...
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May 19, 2014Sixth Sunday of Easter (A), May 25, 2014
To be a Christian witness in the ancient church was to make known the euangelion, literally “good news” or “gospel,” from which we derive our word evangelization. The Acts of the Apostles reports a great number of overt “signs and wonders,” including exorcisms and healings, as a part of the witness of the earliest evangelists, more than we might find today, though both then and now the Holy Spirit guides evangelization.
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May 12, 2014Fifth Sunday of Easter (A), May 18, 2014
Jesus was a tektôn, or craftsman, by trade (Mk 6:3), someone who built things with wood, brick and stone. We do not know what types of physical structures he worked on with his father, Joseph, but we can speak of his spiritual legacy as the one who built the house of God. The master builder constructs the church.
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April 28-May 5, 2014Fourth Sunday of Easter (A), May 11, 2014
Slaves in the Greco-Roman world were sometimes treated with kindness, but this was dependent upon the whims of masters, not legally required. Even domestic slaves, as mentioned in 1 Peter, were vulnerable to the demands of their masters, and 1 Pt 2:18 asks that they “accept the authority” of masters “with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh.” Possessing no right to the integrity of their own bodies, such a...
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April 28-May 5, 2014Third Sunday of Easter (A), May 4, 2014
There is a richness to the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus that makes it difficult to consume it in its entirety or to exhaust its sustenance. Even seemingly minor details nourish the reader in surprising ways. Emmaus itself, the village to which Cleopas and the unnamed disciple are journeying, appears elsewhere in the Bible in 1 Mc 3:40. It seems to bear little connection to Luke’s notice of the city, but there are intriguing links.