Anticipation. Those readers of a certain age will remember a popular TV commercial for Heinz ketchup that featured a tipped bottle made of glass, of course, and the contents pouring out with agonizing slowness onto a juicy hamburger, with Carly Simon’s pop hit “Anticipation” playing in the background. If you’ve ever used a glass ketchup or mustard bottle, you can easily...
Yesterday, we examined our covenant relationship with God. We find ourselves two chapters later in today’s Gospel text. The arguments that the Jewish leaders have turned into a plot, a whispered conspiracy which will culminate a week from today in the execution of Jesus on a day we have been taught to think of as “good” – Good Friday.
Throughout each day of our...
Today’s mindfulness trigger is “God’s Covenant.” If you wish, you can expand it to “God’s Covenant with me.”
The Priestly source of the Hebrew Scriptures gathers the major motifs of the story of Genesis so far and sets them firmly within a covenant context; the word “covenant” occurs thirteen times within the first twenty-seven verses of...
“The Lord is with you.”
These words spoken by the angel Gabriel are the most remarkable in this frequently proclaimed Gospel text. The Lord, the Mighty One, the God of your Ancestors, the Creator of the Universe is with Mary as she is told about God’s plan to rescue all humankind from the curse of Original Sin.
Sitting with these words makes it very clear that anyone...
In today’s Gospel text, we hear Jesus say to the Pharisees: “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.”
However, in the reading from the Book of Numbers, we learn that those Israelites who look at the bronze serpent will be spared. Both of these references to looking remind me of a poem that I have always...