The Good Word

Bishop Blase J Cupich a friend and contributor to America was installed last week as the sixth bishop of Spokane Washington Here we are happy to reprint his homily from that occasion The installation Mass took place on Friday September 3 the feast of St Gregory the Great The late Father Dav

This is the second in the series What is the Good Word Here is how I learned the number of books in the Bible there are 39 in the Old Testament if you multiply 3 x 9 you get 27 which is the number of books in the New Testament when you add the two together you get 66 which is the number of

John W Martens an associate professor of theology at St Thomas University is well known to readers of The God Word In our latest podcast Prof Martens reflects on the question what is the Bible The answer depends on whether you are Jewish Catholic Orthodox or Protestant Even among Englis

The Gospel reading for the Twenty Third Sunday of Ordinary Time Luke 14 25-37 is one of those passages that I just ache to cut down to size to make certain that it says something more palatable easier to handle than what it seems to be saying nbsp Jesus speaks to a crowd ldquo now large cro

In the Gospel reading for the Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time from Luke 14 1 7-14 Jesus speaks two parables The first deals with honor embarrassment humility and exaltation In the NRSV the first parable is as follows ldquo when he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor he

When you write on the Bible one of the things that you should avoid if you can is flippancy People tend to get riled up when you are flippant about Scripture because flippancy gone bad comes off more as ldquo disrespectful rdquo than ldquo light and airy rdquo As a result the flippant wr

As I return from a summer hiatus to write for The Good Word it occurs to me that one of the questions that nbsp we should consider this year is ldquo what is the Bible rdquo Most of us think we know what we are talking about but it can be amazing as to how different our presuppositions actually

Do you ever wish nbsp that you were done learning That instead of being tested life was easy leisurely Years ago when still a teenager I wanted to start a religion called ldquo Incidental Meditation rdquo or ldquo I M rdquo for short At the heart of the religion was that the teachings wo

How to read to preach on these familiar stories related to each other at the thematic level as the Lectionary is wont to do The synoptic gospels draw heavily on the Elijah Elisha stories sometimes to characterize John the Baptist and Jesus and more often Jesus and his disciples It appears in th

At first glance these first and Gospel readings seem well-matched even easy David and Simon have mis-stepped seriously in terms of what they supposed sincerely or not was acceptable behavior specifically here in the treatment of women Each is admonished strongly by a powerful prophet-like spe