“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Boy, it’s so easy to carry a grudge. It’s so easy to be upset about that little thing that someone did to you 4 years ago and never apologized for, but still gets to…
Death is never an easy reality to face. It is often unexpected, but some of the most challenging situations arise when a group knows that a beloved member of their community will die. Such a dynamic is depicted in Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, in which the family goes to great lengths to hide a terminal…
Old Turtle and the Broken Truth is written by Douglas Wood and illustrated by Jon J Muth. Permission was given by Scholastic to read the book in its entirety and to livestream the reading.
Good old Doubting Thomas returns today – as I predicted he would. And today Jesus challenges the disciples in a new way. He says, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves” (Jn 14:11). To believe…
Today is traditionally called Good Shepherd Sunday. We’ve got a slew of shepherd, sheep, and gate metaphors in our readings today. And I think most of them are lost on the majority of us, as we tend to value innovation, technology, and industry more than sheep. We don’t learn much about sheep or shepherding in…
“My Lord and my God!” I’ve always loved this story about Thomas – particularly because truth be told, I think I’d be the one right with Thomas asking to see proof. Having started my post-high school education with a degree in electrical engineering, my brain is wired to want to see the proof, the results,…
We’re here in this uncertain time and place, searching for signs of hope, as people of hope, together. Alleluia! Easter isn’t just a day. It is a whole season. It is 50 days of practicing hope. But often our lives and communities and world don’t reflect the same Easter joy. We can relate more to…
This week’s theme from the Lenten Study is “Blessed are those who mourn” and next week’s for Holy Week is “Blessed are those who are rejected.” Holy Week is a slow and steady march toward the cross. Because we know the end of the story (Easter! Resurrection! Hope! New Life!), it can be tempting to…
This week’s theme from the Lenten Study is “Blessed are those who feel alone.” As Jesus teaches us in Matthew 5:4, “blessed are those who mourn.” Yet who would choose that kind of blessing? There are so many ways that we might mourn. Dreams that may never become a reality. Children we will never have….
On Friday, I presided over the funeral for a man who had many friends when he was younger, but most of his family and friends had predeceased him. While there were only 11 of us in church, it felt like those who were present were just who needed to be there. Have you ever been…
The biggest question that I receive as a priest is how our loving God could let bad things happen to us. The grand mystery is that a life of faith is not free of pain and suffering. Because joy, peace, and love are present too. Our problems don’t mean that we are outside of God’s…
As children, we are naturally curious and poke or bite everything we can get our hands on in order to learn more about the things we do not understand. But something about adulthood—its certainty, knowledge, experience, or maybe even access to Google at our fingertips—seems to stifle our curiosity. What is lost when we lose…
