The Good Word

This week school begins for many The beginning of the school year is a scramble whether you are a student or a teacher preparing to return to the classroom And no matter how old the students are or at what level the teacher instructs it often feels chaotic a little out of control and sometimes

nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp We read in the Gospel that Jesus cured a deaf and dumb man and Jesus responded by curing him nbsp The account of this healing continues Mark s intentional presentation of miracle after miracle nbsp As the powers of Jesus overwhelm the variety of evils human beings so of

There is a purity of purpose in the writing of James This Sunday rsquo s Second Reading James 2 1-5 gets to the heart of how the Christian message is meant to transform daily behavior and the always roiling issue of wealth and poverty It is worth reading in full My brothers and sisters show no

In Cardinal Sean O rsquo Malley rsquo s Blog entry On Senator Kennedy rsquo s Funeral one line stood out for me our task is to build a civilization of love This has ever been the task of the Church especially when teaching hard truths that run counter to the tenor of the culture and the politi

Years ago as a teenager I used to listen to the music of Larry Norman perhaps the first of the Jesus rockers Norman now deceased has been the source of much controversy in the Christian rock world including an unflattering portrait in a recent documentary film One thing that could not be sai

The basis of the conflict here between Jesus and his critics Pharisees and those who professionally know the Law is the set of laws known as the laws of cleanliness nbsp Many of these laws came into being because of concerns for health dirtiness could be a cause of harm for many in one s fami

A few years ago a reading group to which I belong took on the task of reading The City of God by St Augustine Every Friday we would meet to discuss the twenty pages we had set for ourselves that week the next week we would move on to the next twenty pages By the time the academic year was windi

If I were preaching on these readings my main objective would be to avoid re-enforcing the idea strongly if sometime subliminally held by Christians that Jews are almost unavoidably legalistic and hypocritical about their arcane law nbsp It can sound as if Jesus is saying that which I would al

nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp With this Gospel reading John closes his long discourse about the bread of life a discourse occasioned by Jesus feeding bread to thousands nbsp Here John repeats old themes doubts and inability to believe even betrayal nbsp Also here John repeats his claim that in

I consider myself a rather conservative scholar on matters of interpretation though honestly I do not think labels such as conservative or liberal ought to be applied to interpretation of the Scriptures The real issue in interpreting the Scriptures the major dividing line is whether one