In the Mediterranean world in which Jesus lived, children held a different kind of status than they do in our world today. This past week we have all been reminded of the precious gift of life that God gives us through our children as we watched in horror as a tornado destroyed several elementary schools and killed several children. We expect our children to grow into adults and to engage in...
Today's reading from the Book of Sirach reminds me of the speech that Polonius gives to his son, Laertes, in the first pages of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." It speaks of friendship and the care one must exercise in making friends. These words are obviously written from personal experience. I am sure that there are more than a few who have had the experience of a fair-weather friend and can...
The passage from St. Mark's Gospel which we read at Eucharist today presents us with the difficult words about chopping off hands and feet or plucking out eyes if these bodily parts lead us to sin. Because the words are difficult, I suspect that there are some who simply ignore these words. How are they to be read?
We have to consider the audience which first heard these words. We find...
Judaism and Christianity share a common appreciation for and reliance upon memory. The refrain to a popular hymn states it thus: "We remember, we celebrate, we believe." Our liturgy is based upon memory. We remember what Jesus did for us. As I once read about the Jewish Feast of Passover, the Jews gather each year to remember what God did for them in rescuing them from the oppression of...
The Book of Sirach, from which we will be reading for the next two weeks at our celebration of the Eucharist, was written approximately 200 years before Christ. It was written by a scribe in Jerusalem in Hebrew. However, it was translated into Greek shortly thereafter. Because the Hebrew manuscript was not available when the Jewish canon was formed, this book was omitted from the Hebrew...