This reflection is based on Luke 3:10-18.
One thing that immediately struck me reading today’s Gospel is how different kinds of people approach John the Baptist and ask him the same question. The crowds, having heard his call for repentance, ask John, “What should we do?” The tax collectors and the soldiers are also so moved by John’s preaching that they too ask the same question: “What is it that we should do?”
This reflection is based on Luke 3:1-6 for the Second Sunday of Advent.
Today John the Baptist uncharacteristically takes center stage. As we hear from today’s Gospel, he is but “a voice crying out in the desert,” whose life work is to “prepare the way of the Lord.” At the proper time later on, when Jesus begins his Public Ministry, the Baptist will opt to decrease as his cousin increases, fading disceetly to the periphery. But today, he steps into the limelight and quotes the bold promise that God has made through the prophet Isaiah:
This reflection is based on Luke 21:25-36 for the First Sunday of Advent.
The words that our Lord speaks to his disciples in today’s Gospel reading are chilling; they are disturbingly applicable to our world. This talk about “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars” may well have been a long-issued warning about the vengeance of nature that we are already beginning to experience in the form of climate change. We know what the Lord means when he speaks of the “dismay of nations,” for what can better describe our shock and helplessness at the escalation of meaningless violence all over the world?
This reflection is based on John 18:33-37 on the Solemnity of Christ the King.
The conversation between Pilate and Jesus that we hear about in today’s Gospel reading is significant. It is one of the very few occasions in the life of our Lord that he admits to being king. The Lord Jesus is usually quite reticent about this matter–not only out of humility, but also out of caution: Then as in today, kingship is easily stereotyped into the worldly type of kingship, where power is wielded and coercion employed.
This reflection is based on Mark 13:24-32.
I received my very first catechesis from an especially religious elder sister, who–rumors in the family had it–was a frustrated nun. For starters, she kept her own private altar in her bedroom–an elaborate traditional altar peopled with enough santos to give your regular fundamentalist a Catholic nightmare.
Because she was particularly devoted to Our Lady of Fatima, my sister made it a point to remind us constantly of the messages that had been relayed to its three visionaries, Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco. These messages included the direst warnings about the end of the world, especially as described in the so-called “secrets of Fatima,” the third and last of which, at that time, remained chillingly undisclosed.