They were the people that everyone hated. They were the Samaritans. The Romans and Greeks and other gentiles hated them because they saw them as just another group of Jews, only ones who could not benefit the empire much. The Jews hated them because...
I was driving to Mass on a recent Sunday morning. There was one car ahead of me on the residential street. The speed limit was 25 mph, but he was crawling along between 10 and 15 mph. I was annoyed and concerned about being late. He eventually...
Let’s begin by talking about the Gospel of Matthew. This is the gospel that we will hear proclaimed the most this liturgical year. Matthew’s gospel was written primarily for Christians who had first been Jews. These were Christians who were...
A woman named Jeanette was so stressed and overworked one Christmas she didn’t have time to reflect on the true meaning of the feast. She later explained, “We were so busy with the children, trying to make special clothes for them for the holidays...
A junior-high teacher used to have fun introducing the idea of decision-making to his students by asking a simple question: “If there were three frogs on a log, and one decided to jump, how many would be left?” The children would invariably answer...
In 1940 a black woman in Nashville, Tennessee gave birth prematurely to a baby girl, whom she and her husband named Wilma. The little girl seemed destined to a very hard and disappointing life, for everything was stacked against her. She was the...
The readings for the First Sunday of Lent go back nearly one thousand, seven hundred years. In the Fourth Century, the first Sunday of Lent was also the First Sunday of the Liturgical Year, so it is no surprise that they used these particular...
Once upon a time, there was a wise and saintly hermit who lived out in the wilderness. A young man seeking to follow the path of wisdom and holiness came to him as a disciple, and the monk served as his master and mentor. Finally he told the young...
