Category: Sunday Faith Reflections
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On being faithful in the small things
It’s amazing how people (and fictional characters) show you who they really are. It’s human nature to assume that we can let little things slide and not hold ourselves to account for them–to tell ourselves that they don’t matter. We all do this, at least from time to time. The truth is, as I’ve heard…
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Sunday Reflection: When you have a problem with someone
In this week’s Gospel passage at Mass, Jesus tells us what to do when we have a problem with someone. Now, this passage (from Matthew 18:15-20) is often used by Catholics to show that Jesus intended to create an institutional Church, and I don’t disagree with that. (I AM Catholic precisely because I understand this…
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Sunday Reflection: Take up your cross
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” It’s hard…
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Sunday Reflection: Discipleship doesn’t mean perfection here and now
The Gospel passage this Sunday at Mass involves Simon Peter receiving his new name–as we Catholics would say, Jesus names him the first Pope. Peter then, immediately, proceeds to make an idiot of himself and be rebuked by Jesus. I read a reflection once, I believe by Bishop Sheen, about the reason Jesus chose the…
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Sunday reflection: Jesus, “Desire of nations”
The readings this Sunday are all about the salvation of the Gentiles–the nations, the non-Jews. As Jesus tells the Samaritan woman in John 4, “Salvation is from the Jews.” However, salvation is not FOR the Jews alone. And I love the story of Syro-Phoenician woman in today’s Gospel at Mass. I imagine she saw the…
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Sunday Reflection: The Still, Small Voice of the Spirit
The first reading today is one of my favorites: When Elijah goes to Mt. Horeb and waits for the Lord to come. So much happens that must have been overwhelming: an earthquake, a fire, a gale. I would read that as: the latest political disaster. An economy on the brink of collapse. The latest celebrity…
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Sunday Reflection: St. Andrew and the Transfiguration
Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. I can’t think of the Transfiguration anymore without thinking of what Dr. Allen Hunt said about it as part of Dynamic Catholic’s “Best Lent Ever” campaign a few years ago. Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain to pray . . . And Andrew was left…
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The Pearl of Great Price: God, not “God and . . .”
I love today’s Gospel passage: the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price. It’s a wonderful reminder that, as I recently read in “Weeds Among the Wheat” by Thomas Green SJ, we are called to seek and to live for God alone, not to hold onto “God and . . .” Even if the “and”…
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Thankful Thursday: Grateful for my time in religious formation and the lesson of balance in life
I’ve been writing about setting this week, so that’s still on my mind. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about one of the settings that most impacted my life: the monastery where I was postulant for nine months. That’s for a couple of reasons. One of the sisters there who was a postulant with me…
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Sunday Reflection 6: Mustard Seeds, Wheat, Weeds, the “Natural Metaphor,” and Slow Growth
Today’s Gospel at Mass highlights the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the weeds and the wheat (from St. Matthew’s Gospel). The mustard seed grows into a large plant, eventually. The landowner must wait for the weeds and the wheat to grow up together before the harvest. There is a connecting theme…
Creative Writing with the Crimson League 