On Palm Sunday (like Good Friday) we read the story of the passion and death of Christ. Passion, or Palm, Sunday is the only Mass we open with a Gospel reading (Matthew 21:1 – 11, Mark 11:1 – 10, John 12:12 – 16). This highlights Christ entry into Jerusalem and …
As a preview to Easter week and a timely parallel to the COVID-19 events we are currently facing, all of today’s readings tell us of death yielding to a new way of life. In the first reading [EZ 37:12-14], the prophet Ezekiel urges the exiled Israelite people in Babylon to …
Christ uses parables as an important teaching tool. We have some difficulty engaging their impact because we have grown up hearing them. We tend to think of parables as touchy-feely stories of God’s love. Actually, parables always have an unusual twist. Christ’s original audience would have been puzzled or disturbed …
In recent years, society has changed its thinking about conditions like blindness, deafness and autism. Once considered defects or maladies, they are now understood as aspects of human variation—or, as a Catholic might say, ways that God brings certain of His children into the world. Our own parishioner Kierstyn Kuehnle, …
Our eyesight is important to us. Human beings tend to physically navigate through life mostly by sight and less by hearing and smell. However, eyesight is useless without light. Throughout the bible light is used as a metaphor for God’s revelation. Psalm 119 is a good example telling us that …
We have all heard the story of Christ’s encounter with the woman at the well many times. Christ comes into the town of Sychar in Samaria (northern Israel) hungry, tired and thirsty. He meets a Samaritan woman who, as we would say today, has “relationship issues.” This is a story …
