Friends, the parable at the heart of our Gospel today from Matthew 20 is one of those passages in the New Testament that really bothers people. It proves that this parable is not just conveying correct information about God; it is reaching into our souls and doing spiritual work, shining light up...

Friends, today in our second reading, St. Paul says, “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.” In many ways, the whole Bible, the whole of revelation, i...

Friends, they say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Well, today I’m going to rush in to some stormy waters by looking at the central issue of the Protestant Reformation: this issue of faith and works, or faith and the law. Martin Luther famously said that what he discovered in Paul i...

Friends, our first reading for this weekend is from the twentieth chapter of Jeremiah. There is so much spiritual wisdom in Jeremiah, but more than any of the other prophets, we come to know his personality and his life. And in this passage, all the texture of being a prophet is on display: both ...

Friends, I do a lot of debating and dialoguing with agnostics and atheists, and very often, when they attack the faith, it's along the lines of: How could an all-knowing and all-good God allow (fill in the blank)? Why does he allow childhood leukemia, or natural catastrophes, or animal suffering?...

Friends, our Gospel today from Matthew 15, the famous story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, is one of those Gospels that bothers and unnerves people. How should we read it? It is not that Jesus was grouchy after a tough day of ministry, and this plucky woman speaks truth to power to get wh...

Friends, our Gospel for today is Matthew’s account of the calming of the storm and the walking on the water. This is an event that reached very deeply into the hearts and minds of the first Christians. And the iconic representation in the Gospels shows us the theological and spiritual implication...

Friends, it’s a wonderful grace that the Feast of the Transfiguration this year falls on Sunday. The first reading the Church gives us from the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel might strike you as curious, but it’s very apropos. Daniel has a vision of four beasts rising from the sea, symboli...

Friends, our first reading is from the First Book of Kings, and it's one of my favorite passages in the entire Old Testament. If you're going on a retreat, spending a Holy Hour, or just wanting to get in touch with the Lord at the end of the day, it's a wonderful little passage to focus on. The s...

Friends, we are reading during these weeks of summer from the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, which contains many of the great parables of Jesus. But I want to focus just on one today because it’s so rich both theologically and spiritually: the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Jesus’ s...

Friends, our first reading and our Gospel today are about the word of God, both from God’s side as he speaks, and then from our side as we receive. God has spoken through creation, the prophets, the Scriptures—and, in the fullness of time, the very Word of God. If you open your mind and heart to ...

Friends, the Gospel for this weekend from the eleventh chapter of Matthew contains a passage that has been called “Matthew’s most precious pearl.” “No one knows the Son except the Father,” Jesus exclaims, “and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him....

Friends, there is no religious figure anywhere in the religions or philosophies of the world who is stranger, more demanding, more relentless, and more unnerving than Jesus. And therefore the religion attached to Jesus is the strangest of them all. Exhibit A is our Gospel from Matthew 10. What Je...

Friends, the readings for today are really magnificent, and they are all about something central to the spiritual life—namely, fear. Years ago, I was on a retreat, and the retreat director said that there are two basic questions always to ask. First; Deep down, what do you want? Second: Ultimatel...

Friends, as we resume Ordinary Time, I want to talk to you about vocations—specifically, vocations to the priesthood. Our Gospel for today from Matthew shows us the call of the priest: to be a shepherd of lost sheep, a warrior against unclean spirits, and a healer of sin-sick souls—one that teach...

Friends, we come now to the marvelous Feast of Corpus Christi, of the Body and Blood of Christ. What has been on my mind a lot recently is the famous story of the feeding of the five thousand—the only miracle, with the exception of the Resurrection, recounted in all four Gospels. Jesus multiplyin...

Friends, today we come to Trinity Sunday, which has been called “the preacher’s nightmare.” But as you probably know from previous sermons of mine, I don’t agree with that at all. I think every Sunday is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity names what is most fundamental and basic in our whole theology an...

Friends, we come to the great Feast of Pentecost—the feast, par excellence, of the Holy Spirit. A critique of the Western Church is that we don’t speak sufficiently of the third person of the Trinity, and there might be some truth to that. I’d like to follow Vatican II in trying to bring the Holy...

Friends, right at the end of the Easter season and in anticipation of Pentecost, we come to the great Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. We should do a theological reflection on this feast—how we should and shouldn’t understand the Ascension, and what it means for Christ’s work in the world—beca...

Friends, on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, the Church gives us a kind of foretaste of Pentecost. In all three readings, we hear descriptions of the work of the Holy Spirit—the animating principle of the Mystical Body. What are the signs that the Holy Spirit is at work? Let’s look at five of them.

Friends, there is an enormously important line in our first reading today that we might just pass over: “The number of the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly; even a large group of priests were becoming obedient to the faith.” Priests were so important in Jewish religious life, and these pr...

Friends, for this fourth Sunday of Easter, we have a magnificent first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. It’s one of Peter's great kerygmatic speeches—the kerygma means the basic proclamation of the faith—and a master class in evangelization. Christianity has become so commonplace for so man...

Friends, we come to this Third Sunday of Easter, and our Gospel is Luke’s account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This masterpiece is a summation of the spiritual life, and it starts with two disciples of Jesus walking the wrong way.

Friends, we continue our celebration of the Easter season on this Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. Mercy, St. Thomas Aquinas says, is compassion in regard to someone else’s suffering; thus, God’s mercy is his compassion reaching out to us precisely in our suffering. Keep that in mind...