Today’s Gospel (Luke 2:22-40) says: “… they brought [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord.” The actual ritual is not …

Faith is the key theme for today’s readings.  Paul (Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19) reminds the Hebrews (and us) of the great faith that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob possessed.  Their faith sustained them during the times when they did not “receive what had been promised” …

Today, Paul repeats his exhortation to the Hebrew Christians not to give up on the faith to which they gave such strong witness in the past (Hebrews 10:32-29).  He asks them to remember the days when they first heard and “had been enlightened”.  At …

We pick up today (Hebrews 10:19-25) where we left off yesterday, with a call to persevere in our following of Christ and our living out of the Gospel message.  We are reminded that, through Jesus, we have special access to God.  The symbols used …

Today’s parable (Mark 4:1-20) is a familiar one – sowing the seed of the word and seeing the seed fall in different places with different results.  I have always visualized this parable in my own gardening – results are sometimes spotty, no matter what …

 In a final reflection, today’s first reading (Hebrews 10:1-10) concludes Paul’s argument that the Law is inadequate to take away people’s sins. The old dispensation was only a shadow of, and a prefiguration for, what was to come.  It could not, through sacrifices repeated …

 The readings of today present to us several paired terms that are completely opposites: sin and goodness, repeated sacrifices and a single sacrifice, the Jewish high priests and Christ our high priest, the power of Satan and the power of God, and the confusion …

 1. “He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).  This was one of the final acts of the risen Lord before his Ascension.  Jesus appeared to the assembled disciples, broke bread with them and opened their minds to the understanding of the …

No one is more aware of a turning point in time than a convert. There is a clear before and a clear after, whose threshold is a life-changing encounter with Christ.  Saint Augustine said it well when he exclaimed: “Too late have I loved Thee!” In more recent …

A large part of today’s first reading (Hebrews 8:6-13) is taken up with a passage from the prophet Jeremiah, as confirmation of the writer’s argument about the superiority of the new covenant made through Jesus Christ.  The reading opens by stating that Jesus has …