Very frequently, St. Paul includes a hymn at the beginning of his letters. This is the case in the Letter to the Colossians, and it is that hymn that we proclaim as the first reading for today's liturgy.
This particular hymn sings of the preeminence of Jesus Christ, who, St. Paul declares, came or comes before all others. St. Paul calls him "the firstborn of all creation."...
In yesterday's blog entry, I wrote of Jesus' ability to expel demons and how it said something about who he was. Having power over the spirit world placed him on a higher rung on the ladder of the created universe. Although the people who witnessed his ability to cast out the evil spirit did not verbally acknowledge Jesus' identity, the evil spirit said it: You are the Holy One of God...
I know who you are—the Holy One of God! (Luke 4:34c)
The "spirit" world was (is?) very real to the people of the Middle East. The people of Jesus' time believed that the world was inhabited by five different levels of beings. At the head of the order was God who was surrounded by the "sons of God," the beings we call angels. Directly below them on the ladder were the good and evil...
On this Labor Day, September 2, we begin our continuous reading of the Gospel of St. Luke. For me it is always a signal that we have entered the last few months of the liturgical year.
St. Luke's Gospel could be called the Gospel of the Outsiders as he himself was an outsider. A Gentile by birth, St. Luke was the only one of the four evangelists who did not experience Jesus...