Category: readings
-
Retvrn!
How can you return to your God if you’re not yourself?
-
Crazy 4 Jesus
What does it profit to gain the whole world and lose your soul? Who (or what) is dying on your cross?
-
The True Story of Sleeping Beauty
The Readings for the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary I wrote this in 2018. Reposting for the feast (which will be on Monday). LET ME TELL YOU A love story. This is a real love story, not a romance, such as we pass off today as love; nor is it a “chick flick” sort…
-
Life Just Keeps Coming
JMJ✙ The Readings for the 19th Sunday, Tempus per Annum Jesus made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side. Matthew 14:22 BY WAY OF DISCUSSING THIS GOSPEL, let me link back to the story we heard on Wednesday in the first reading from the Book of Numbers: sending the…
-
Final Cause
Readings for Memorial of St Ignatius of Loyola17th Monday After Pentecost A day late, but I keep rewriting… Only the one who has sinned against me will I blot out of my book. Exodus 32:33 WHY DID GOD MAKE ME? It’s the first thing the Baltimore Catechism offers us. God made me to know Him,…
-
Swords and Pieces
JMJ✙ The Readings for the 15th Monday, Tempus per Annum “I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” Matthew 10:34 THIS GOSPEL CAN BE Unnerving – especially if you’re used to “Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild” or if you want to imagine that. He’s not. He wasn’t. He won’t be. Nevertheless, this Gospel…
-
Seeds and Earthlings
JMJ✙ The Readings for the 15th Sunday, Tempus per Annum “My word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:11 HOW OFTEN ARE WE ASKED in homilies “what kind of dirt are you”? The seed is the word of God and it…
-
Peniel
JMJ✙ The Readings for the Memorial of St Benedict, Abbot14th Tuesday, Tempus per Annum “Because I have seen God face to face,” he said, “yet my life has been spared.” Genesis 32:30 THE AUTHOR is continually surprised at the different ways ancient stories are read by Christians as compared to Jews. The rabbinic tradition is…
-
Barren Trees Die
JMJ✙ The Readings for the 8th Friday of Ordinary Time And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. Mark 11:14 (RSVCE) SO MANY SERMONS ON this passage make it out to be about Israel, or the Temple priesthood. In fact, the footnotes on the…
-
Nothing Ordinary
JMJ✙ The Readings for the Visitation of Mary8th Wednesday of Ordinary Time The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17 (RSVCE) WHEN MARY Visits Elizabeth their…
-
Overcoming the World
JMJ✙ The Readings for 7th Monday after Easter I have overcome the world. John 16:33 JESUS SAYS HE HAS OVERCOME the world. Yet, this is before his Crucifixion, before the Agony in the Garden – just before the High Priestly prayer. How has he already overcome the world? What does this mean for us? John…
-
Something Greater.
The Readings for the Sunday of St Mary of Egypt The Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast OUR HOLY MOTHER MARY OF Egypt, as she is called in the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, is perhaps my most-favorite of female saints. Her regular feast day is 1 April which is always in Lent…
-
Of Incidents and Accidents.
The Readings for the Sunday of St Gregory Palamas The Second Sunday of the Great Fast AS THE Observance of the Great Fast evolved in the Eastern Church, each Sunday was assigned a special devotion: the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the Sundays of St Gregory, of St John, of St Mary, and the Sunday of the…
-
Of Icons & Hosts
The Readings for the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy The First Sunday of the Great Fast HEARING OF A BYZANTINE CATHOLIC podcast called What God is Not, I decided to give a listen to a ByzCath Nun, Mother Natalia, and Fr Michael O’Loughlin, a priest of the Eparchy of Phoenix. I was instantly drawn…
-
The Parable of Rabbits & Pigs
The Readings for the Sunday of the Last Judgement Meatfare HERE IS A PRECES of our parable: Jesus says at the Last Judgement God will divide us as a farmer does the sheep from the goats. The sheep will find out that they have often fed, clothed, and cared for Jesus. And they will say…
Orthoparadoxy 