Doesn’t repentance sound like a great idea – for all the people who have wronged me? I’m less inclined to be excited about my own repentance! When John lives out his vocation to prepare his contemporaries for Jesus’ first coming, he starts by telling them to repent. Perhaps there is a reason he lived in […]
So often we hear about the Gospel reading, but it may be worth starting Advent with a reflection on the reading from Isaiah. This text is roughly 2700 years old and the message is that the time is coming when there will be peace on earth, and that God is working to bring it about. […]
Our King is a king of surrender; his great act of salvation was giving Himself away for our sake. When it talks about kingship, the world is obsessed with power. Christ, our King, lives and breathes vulnerability. The man on the cross beside Him is the first to understand what Jesus is doing, and instead […]
In the chaos of thinking about the end of times, both in the prophecy from Malachi and the teaching from Jesus, the instruction is clear. Know whose you are and go about living justly. The second reading echoes this sentiment, giving us really practical advice: Do your work, imitate Jesus and His followers, and mind […]
The first reading and the Gospel are challenging texts about martyrdom and the absence of marriage in heaven. They point us to the world to come, which we reflect on at the end of each liturgical year. Our temptation when we think about heaven is to downplay the significance of this life. But it is […]