Category: QUESTIONS

REVISING OUR DREAMS (Matthew 25:14-30):  16 November 2008 (Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Today’s Readings

Today’s Gospel reading is known as the “Parable of the Talents.”  According to its usual interpretation, its moral lesson is:  “Don’t just preserve your God-given talents.  Develop them!”  To that, we can even add that we should also share our talents with others, in contrast to “burying” them and keeping them to ourselves.  But what happens if we’ve been developing a talent, and then it turns out we don’t have that talent, after all?

MANAGING OUR ANGER (John 2:13-22):  09 November 2008 (Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome)

Today’s Readings

There’s a small ethnic tribe in the southern Sierra Madre on the east side of Luzon called the Ilongot tribe. The interesting thing about their language is that it has no word for “anger.”  The closest term they have for it is “liget”—which means “energy or passion,” not exactly anger.

IMAGINING THE DEAD (John 6:37-40):  02 November 2008 (Commemoration of All Souls)

Today’s Readings

I wasn’t particularly crazy about the “Titanic,” that 1997 movie directed by James Cameron, which, by the way, not only broke box office records but also won the Oscar for Best Picture that year.  But years after seeing it, I still remember its final scene.

COMPARTMENTALIZING YOUR LIFE (Matthew 22:15-21):  19 October 2008 (Twenty-Ninth  Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Today’s Readings

In today’s Gospel reading, our Lord utters his famous line:  “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and repay to God what belongs to God.”  At first glance, he seems to be proposing a division between our usual lives and our so-called spiritual lives.  Sort of like Sunday Christianity, when people act like Christians only when they go to Sunday services.  As for the rest of the week, they act “normally”–that is, not in any particularly religious or even moral way.

STRAYING INTO THE GUEST LIST (Mt 22:1-14):  12 October 2008 (Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Today’s Readings

In his book What’s So Amazing about Grace? Philip Yancey talks about an interesting article that came out in The Boston Globe back in June 1990.  The article, which was called “A Most Unusual Wedding Party,” tells the story of a wedding—or at least what was supposed to be a wedding.  Everything had been prepared, including the expensive wedding ring.  Months before the wedding, the bride and the groom-to-be planned a great reception.  The couple had gone to the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston and painstakingly picked out the menu, the china and silver, and even the flower arrangements that they liked.  The bill came to $13,000, and for something like that, they had to leave a 50% down payment.