The Good Word

Acts of the Apostles is our only canonical version of the early growth of the Jesus-believing community cf the Gospels where we have four accounts and so it is immensely formative in the tradition of what we assume happened That we count on the reliability of these events does not preclude our

There is a ldquo seam rdquo in the first reading Acts of the Apostles 5 12-16 for the Second Sunday of Easter nbsp 12 Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles And they were all together in Solomon s Portico 13 None of the rest dared to join them but the peo

Over the past two days the story of the healing at the Beautiful Gate of a man ldquo lame from birth rdquo has been read Acts 3 1-26 Peter and John encounter him at this Temple gate where he asks for alms Peter responds that he has no silver or gold but that he can offer something much bette

While they were talking and discussing Jesus himself came near and went with them but their eyes were kept from recognizing him And he said to them What are you discussing with each other while you walk along They stood still looking sad Then one of them whose name was Cleopas answered h

In 1998 I started to run sexual abuse survivor groups at Klinic Community Health Centre in Winnipeg for men who had been abused as children I ran these groups until 2001 when I returned to the academic world on a full-time basis When I started these groups many people told me that they would not

John s Gospel tells of the exorbitant use of myrrh at a banquet Lazarus Mary and Martha put on for Jesus nbsp In the course of this celebration Mary anointed Jesus feet with precious myrrh then wiped his feet clean with her feet nbsp This gesture was criticized by Judas for its cost could n

To Luke we owe the story of the criminal who was crucified with Jesus and who asked Jesus to remember him when he entered his Jesus kingdom nbsp The import of this story is found not only its moment in the Passion Narrative but in its joining many other stories of the same nature that very muc

Last Palm Sunday I wrote Christ began his preparation for Palm Sunday and for Easter by taking on human being and then humbling himself becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross as Paul tells us in Philippians 2 8 a part of Palm Sunday rsquo s Second Reading The second

nbsp Today is the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord only nine months from Christmas This is an interesting time-out in the midst of Lent as we prepare for Easter to concentrate on the coming of the Lord as an infant I used to wonder about all this talk of Jesus coming to earth as a l

Here and unusually in all three readings we can find a common crucial focus How Jesus mdash or the Isaian servant or any of us mdash will meet and engage suffering whether it is imposed by others directly or comes more remotely from human ill-will nbsp Also of course we are challenged to th