What’s going on with the barren fig tree in today’s Gospel? It’s growing in an orchard and a gardener cares for it. It should have everything it needs to bear fruit, but it’s barren. So what’s the problem? When the orchard owner tells the gardener to cut down the barren tree, the gardener asks him to spare it: “Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize…
Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. – Luke 9:28 In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus took his closest disciples to pray in the quiet of the mountains. Our world is so noisy and full of information. Lent is an ideal time for cultivating quiet in order to draw closer to God. Personally, I am trying to quiet some noise in my own life, so I made a list to…
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. – Luke 4:1 Lent has arrived, and we are sent into the desert with Christ. Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert in order to be tempted. This can be a scary thought. What will be my temptations during this Lent? Will I be…
…from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks – Luke 6:45 This scripture passage is convicting to me. It’s not enough to “watch my mouth” and try to limit my speaking only to what is true, good, and beautiful. I must think about what is true, good, and beautiful first. Even before that, this makes me realize that the types of things that I “plant” in my mind will bear fruit in my thoughts,…
Palm Sunday – March 28, 2021 You are not your own; you were bought with a price. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). We who are baptized are free children of God. Christ Himself, in His messianic role, freed us from the captivity of sin and death. But our freedom was not free. It came at a great price: the death of God Himself. His death freed us from Satan’s grasp, who seeks to enslave us. His death…
I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? “Father, save me from this hour?” But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” John 12:27-28 Lent is a time when we can practice dying to ourselves. By dying to our own desires, we learn to live this verse: “whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life” (John 12:25). Hating our lives does…
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” John 2:19 Wow! Jesus made quite a mess when He cleansed the temple. Take a moment and place yourself at the scene of this Gospel passage. Imagine the chaos as Jesus flipped over tables, brandished a whip, and angrily ordered the money changers to leave. People and animals scattered. As the tables turned over, coins rolled to the ground and people climbed over…
Our journey through the desert of Lent has brought us to this point: Holy Week and the cross. On this Palm Sunday, we walk along beside Christ as He lays down His life for us. Imagine you are there with the Blessed Mother, St. John, and the Magdalen as they walk with Jesus through His passion. Helplessly, you watch Jesus suffer as He is beaten, mocked, spat on, and crowned with thorns. Imagine yourself there,…
In today’s Gospel reading, we hear how Jesus restored the sight of the man born blind. Just as David was anointed with oil and received the spirit of the Lord in our first reading (1 Samuel 16:13), Jesus anointed the blind man with clay, a combination of the earth and Jesus’s spit: “…he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes…(John 9:6). Recall that God formed…
Here in the desert of Lent, the Lord brings us to the oasis of Jacob’s well. The Samaritan woman came at noon to fill her water jar. Had she been without water all morning? Perhaps she came at noon to avoid people who gossiped about her and her five husbands. We can use our Gospel imagination and suppose that she came to the well dry, thirsty, and ashamed. But something amazing happened: she had an…