How good to sing praise to our God; how pleasant to give fitting praise. The LORD rebuilds Jerusalem, and gathers the dispersed of Israel, healing the brokenhearted, and binding up their wounds. (Psalm 147:1-3)
This is one of my favorite verses from the psalms; so when it turned up in Morning Prayer today, I was immediately struck by it once again. Once again, we find, as we did...
It may be hard for us to fathom, but tradition tells us that St. Paul was not a very good public speaker. I suspect that we have come to believe that because he wrote skillfully that he must also have been a skillful preacher. Supposedly that was not the case.
So when St. Paul tells the Church of Corinth that he is not concerned about how others judge him, he is probably addressing...
We stand on the brink of Lent, but we still have one more Sunday in Ordinary Time to celebrate. This means that we will continue to hear from the Gospel of St. Matthew and the so-called "Sermon on the Mount." After two weeks of speaking about and explaining the commandments, Jesus turns his attention to the subject of "worrying about the future." Just as the sections on the commandments...
Yesterday's Scripture readings emphasized the "love of neighbor" that forms the second great commandment found in the Book of Leviticus. The Gospel expanded that notion to emphasize that it is not simply enough to love those who love us, but that we must love our enemies, doing good to those who hate us. In the last section of the Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis reflects on the Gospel...
While this Sunday's Gospel passage simply continues with the same kind of dissertation as we heard last Sunday, the accompanying readings help us to shift our focus just a bit. The reading from the Book of Leviticus charges the people of Israel with the imperative to be "holy." St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians reminds us that our holiness is a result of being God's dwelling...