Suffering is never the end in the Christian worldview and, more importantly, the Christian experience.
Scripture
Posted inFaith, The Good Word
Easter Sunday: What a flower can teach us about Jesus’ death (and resurrection)
Louise Glück’s poem, “Wild Iris,” begins with a description of death, the sort of death something made of earth and growing there might recount if it could speak.
Posted inFaith, The Good Word
Is the Last Supper history’s most paradoxical lie?
The early Christian record is not what we should expect from the human weakness to exploit the truth to serve one’s own ends.
Posted inFaith, The Good Word
Good Friday homily: Did God the Father demand the death of his Son?
While God the Father did not will the death of the Son, we can still ask why the Father permitted it. The answer lies in the act of our creation.
Posted inFaith, Lent Reflections
Reflection: Don’t place a price on other people’s lives. That’s what Judas did.
The Crucifixion is not just an image of God’s love, but a mirror reflecting our sin back to us, saying, this is the evil you’re capable of.
Posted inFaith, Lent Reflections
Reflection: God lives in our traditions. Keeping them is a form of prayer.
Remember the jar of expensive, perfumed oil that Mary pours on Jesus’ feet. We know Mary, Martha and Lazarus weren’t rich, and this oil was expensive. They would have been saving it for a special occasion.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
I’ve been a priest for 50 years and still struggle with the problem of evil
The dispossession Christ experienced in his crucifixion is an act of solidarity with the dispossessed of the world.
Posted inFaith, Vatican Dispatch
Pope Francis on Palm Sunday: ‘In drawing close to those ill-treated by life, we are loving Jesus.’
In Palm Sunday services at the Vatican, Pope Francis said that to admire Jesus “is not enough. We have to follow in his footsteps.”
Posted inFaith, The Good Word
St. Mark’s Gospel: A Murder Mystery?
At the beginning of his Passion, Jesus bears witness to the truth as he allows himself to be proclaimed the messiah.
Posted inFaith, Lent Reflections
Reflection: Women were oppressed in Jesus’ time, too. How much longer will we stand by?
Jesus does not condemn the woman caught in adultery, and he does not condemn us. But he challenges her, and he challenges us, to sin no more.