Fr Dino VaninAfter listening to the readings for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, it is hard to say: “thanks be to God” or “praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” For each deals with pain and anguish: death, fire, baptism in the sense of a plunging into the...
The readings for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48) are all about genuine, factual faith; they are about tested faith, faith in action, faith for the long haul. Because of their faith in God’s...
Woody Allen once said: “It is not that I’m afraid of death. It is that I would rather not be there when it happens.” On this 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, our three readings deal with death and dying: For what profit comes to man from all the toil...
From time to time we are blessed with experiences of extreme beauty that leave us breathless. Think, if you will, of certain sunsets or of a mountain ridge emerging from the hazy fog below, lit up by the morning sun. We realize, then, that we are...
Hopefully, we all remember last Sunday’s final words of Jesus in the passage from the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37): “Go and do likewise.” To attain eternal life we ought to draw close, to become neighbor to anyone in need. On the...
After the first couple of lines of our Gospel passage for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Luke 10:25-37), our spontaneous reaction might be: “Oh, yes! I know this story very well.” This unwise reaction would keep these familiar words of life...
This past week we honored the birth of our nation, as One Nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We have reasons to celebrate, but also reasons to be deeply concerned about. Anyone who is not a fool or lives as a hermit...
The Bible offers to us believers a very accurate and rich list of the components that make up a human being. To the traditional dual components of body and soul, (the body being physical and the soul spiritual), the Bible adds mind and heart, spirit...
As St. Luke reports, originally, Jesus gave his first followers sustenance and nourishment when they found themselves in a deserted, out-of-the-way place outside the town of Bethsaida. He ministered to all their needs, bringing order, healing and...
On the feast of the Holy Trinity, we should pause to find out if all our energies and efforts are directed towards the only thing that really matters for us: ETERNAL LIFE, life in God, life in the Holy Trinity. St. Paul spells out in his Letter to...