The Good Word

The gospel this week dwells on the theme of hospitality — that which we offer both to one another and to God and that which God offers to us The intimacy and in a sense extravagance with which the sinful woman welcomes Jesus is sharply contrasted with that of Peter the Pharisee who neither welc

The late Bishop Untener warns homilists not to tell stories just for laughs I suppose we ve all done it We hear a good joke and feel the need to pass it on to others The Sunday congregation fits that bill nicely Even if the story somehow dovetails with the readings it s probably too colourf

Throughout his letters Paul s statements display the enormity of his conversion experience One of the starkest statements he makes occurs in Galatians 2 20 I have been crucified with Christ yet I live no longer I but Christ lives in me insofar as I now live in the flesh I live by faith in

This Sunday is the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time and Father s Day It s strange but true Because of when Easter fell there was no 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time either in 2001 or 2004 As a result neither John Donahue nor Dianne Bergant ever wrote about this Sunday s set of readings for A

According to popular interpretation Barnabas means a person who consoles and encourages this name was given to a certain Joseph from Crete who some weeks each year served in the liturgical functions of the Jerusalem Temple We meet him first in the Acts of the Apostles where he is praised fo

Well is it for many or for all Even here on the Southern tip of Africa where the number of Catholic mother tongue English speakers is minuscule it s also a hot topic Our local Catholic paper has been running a muscular correspondence between prelates liturgists and pew-sitters H

This Sunday is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ For Daniel Harrington s comments on the readings click here For Dianne Bergant s 2004 comments on the readings click here For John Donahue s 2001 comments on the readings click here Jim McDermott SJ

Blessed Ordinary Time when everything in the Divine Office is simple and simply in one place A time when we are relieved of that maddening fiddling and flipping back and forth which a confrere of mine calls an occasion of sin Blessed is this time when there are no liturgical extravaganzas to

Wading into the deep waters of Trinitarian reflection is always risky especially for folks like me who don t know how to swim The problem of course is not God s it is our inability to take it all in But the Feast of the Holy Trinity invites us consider how much God desires that we rec

One of the many proofs that God has a sense of humor and a wicked one is that Jesuit ordinations and first masses in the United States often fall on the weekend of Trinity Sunday In my experience for the newly ordained Jesuit the Trinity is the theological equivalent of Charlie Brown s friend