In the First Reading, we heard of God’s promise to Moses that He would raise up for us a prophet. This is only one of God’s many promises that were made and are found in the Old Testament, each of them having been fulfilled through Jesus Christ as revealed in...
During today’s First Reading from the Book of Jonah, we heard how Jonah answered God’s calling. Jonah was called by God and told to get up and to go to Nineveh, that great city, where he was to proclaim the message of the Lord. In obedience to the Lord God,...
The theme of the readings this week and this weekend is crystal clear: God calls us. If we had ears we would hear God calling all day long. He calls adults, children, sick people, people at work, people on holidays, sinful people, holy people. God never stops calling – all...
Today is the true Christmas for Eastern Catholics – those from the Byzantine and Maronite rites, among others. For them, this feast is about Christ’s birth, baptism and presentation to the world. The Western church uses this feast to continue the story from the announcement of Christ’s birth, first to...
The feast of the Holy Family we celebrate today is actually a part of the celebration of the Incarnation of Jesus. The Savior took flesh of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit and even though this miracle bypassed natural means of conception it could not bypass...
Some close friends of mine are a happily married couple who told me one day their marriage was nothing like they had planned. They listed all the ways in which their plans had failed to materialize and I remember well how we all laughed. Then they listed the ways God...
This 4th Sunday of Advent is symbolic. Today’s liturgy looks toward the coming of Christ at Christmas. We see the fulfillment of God’s unfolding plan of redemption in the events leading up to the Incarnation, the birth of the Messiah King. Today we celebrate the new era of salvation which begins...
Today is Gaudete Sunday; Joy Sunday! It is a day for considering all that we as Christians can rejoice about and, of course, when all is said and done our greatest joy, our only final joy, is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What will bring you joy and happiness?...
The message from today’s readings tells us to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus. With the approaching of Christmas, the day when we will be celebrating the incarnation of God on earth, we are reminded how the people of the Old Testament waited for the arrival...
Around the world today, we open a new liturgical year. We move from Cycle A where we have listened to the Gospel of Matthew for the past year and now we move to the Gospel of Mark and Cycle B. The cycle of a liturgical year is the cycle of...