(2Cor.9:6-10; Ps.112:1-2,5-9; Jn.12:24-26) “The just man shall be in everlasting remembrance.” The servant of the Lord lays down his life in His name. Today we celebrate St. Lawrence, deacon, servant, and martyr, who gave his life and his death generously to God. His life must be that of every Christian; his witness is one we are called to follow. “The man who hates his life in this world preserves it to life eternal,” the Lord tells His disciples in today’s gospel. As “the grain of wheat falls ...
Aug 09, 2024•5 min
(Ex.16:2-4,12-15; Ps.78:3-4,23-25,54; Eph.4:17,20-24; Jn.6:24-35) “Do not work for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” Their bellies rumbling in the desert, “the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron,” calling out for food to satiate their hunger. How they long to be beside their “flesh pots” in Egypt, where they “ate [their] fill of bread” – even if they should die there. Their great concern is for the food whi...
Aug 03, 2024•5 min
(2Kgs.4:42-44; Ps.145:10-11,15-18; Eph.4:1-6; Jn.6:1-15) “They shall eat and there shall be some left over.” O Lord, “the eyes of all look hopefully to you, and you give them their food in due season; you open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” You are He who is “just in all His ways and holy in all His works,” and eating the food you offer, we become holy as well. Brothers and sisters, if we “live in a manner worthy of the call [we] have received, with all humility and gen...
Jul 27, 2024•6 min
(Jer.23:1-6; Ps.23:1-6; Eph.2:13-18; Mk.6:30-34) “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow.” “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures He gives me repose.” How true to Isaiah’s prophecy are King David’s words; and how true is Jesus as the “righteous shoot to David” who “shall reign and govern wisely,” who shepherds the people of God. And how blessed “the house of the Lord” in which we dwe...
Jul 20, 2024•6 min
(Amos 7:12-15; Ps.85:8-14; Eph.1:3-14; Mk.6:7-13) “Justice shall walk before Him, and prepare the way of His steps.” And so when the disciples are sent out, the Lord “instruct[s] them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick.” The walking stick signifies that the carrier is on an itinerant mission, and the walking stick serves to support the traveler along his way. The walking stick is the cross of Christ, which does both these things and brings all the grace and guidance we need on o...
Jul 13, 2024•5 min
(Ez.2:2-5; Ps.123:1-4; 2Cor.12:7-10; Mk.6:1-6) “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” And so Ezekial, though he is being sent to those “who have rebelled against [God],” to those who are “hard of face” and “obstinate of heart,” yet must declare, “Thus says the Lord,” yet must call to their rebellious hearts “whether they heed or resist.” Likely they will resist him; likely they will persecute him, as they have all the prophets, but still he must “lift up [his] e...
Jul 06, 2024•6 min
(Ws.1:13-15,2:23-24; Ps.30:2,4-6,11-13; 2Cor.8:7,9,13-15; Mk.5:21-43) “God formed man to be imperishable; the image of His own nature He made him.” “God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living.” “By the envy of the devil death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it,” but God has nothing to do with death: He is but Life, and would have us be with Him where He is. It is the Lord’s will that all live, that all are rescued from death and ...
Jun 29, 2024•6 min
(Jb.38:1,8-11; Ps.107:23-26,28-31; 2Cor.5:14-17; Mk.4:35-41) “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” Need you ask? If you must, I will tell you: this is He who “shut within the doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb”; He who “set limits for it and fastened the bars of its door” – He who speaks to Job: “Here shall your proud waves be stilled!” This is the Lord, the great I AM! When the Lord “raised up a storm wind” against those “trading on the deep waters… which tossed its wave...
Jun 22, 2024•5 min
(Ez.17:22-24; Ps.92:2-3,13-16; 2Cor.5:6-10; Mk.4:26-34) “They that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.” The imagery today is of trees and plants and the growth and strength of the kingdom of God. “The just one shall flourish like a palm tree, like a cedar of Lebanon shall he grow,” our psalmist rejoices, and adds, “They shall bear fruit even in old age; vigorous and sturdy shall they be.” In our gospel Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is like the s...
Jun 15, 2024•5 min
(Gn.3:9-15; Ps.130:1-8; 2Cor.4:13-5:1; Mk.3:20-35) “With the Lord is kindness and with Him is plenteous redemption.” We hear today recounted in our first reading our first parents’ tragic fall from the grace of God into the boundaries of hell – for now they tend to hide themselves from His glorious face. Oh such disobedience that has caused such painful separation of the crown of creation from the Creator’s hand! And what greater punishment than this can we know: not to be eternally in His prese...
Jun 08, 2024•6 min
(Hos.11:1,3-4,8-9; Is.12:2-6; Eph.3:8-12,14-19; Jn.19:31-37) “With joy you will draw water at the fountain of salvation.” “Shout with exultation, O city of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel!” From His pierced heart flow forth the waters of salvation; in Jesus’ blood we find our life. Oh how wonderful to have a God whose “heart is overwhelmed,” whose “pity is stirred,” who bleeds and dies for us upon the cross to reveal the limitless nature of His love. Here is “God’s manifo...
Jun 06, 2024•6 min
(Ex.24:3-8; Ps.116:12-13,15-18; Heb.9:11-15; Mt.14:12-16,22-26) “The cup of salvation I will take up, and I will call upon the name of the Lord.” The blood of sacrifice, the blood that seals all covenants with God, is upon all our readings today. In our first reading, on the altar Moses has “erected at the foot of the mountain” where he received the commandments of the Lord – an altar surrounded by “twelve pillars for the twelve tribes” – “young men of the Israelites… offer holocausts and sacrif...
Jun 01, 2024•6 min
(Dt.4:32-34,39-40; Ps.33:4-6,9,12,18-20,22; Rom.8:14-17; Mt.28:16-20) “You must know now, and fix in your heart, that ‘the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.’” “Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?” Moses asks the Israelite nation. “Did any god venture to go and take a nation for Himself” with the great “signs and wonders” that accompanied Israel’s release from Egyptian bondage? No. For the Go...
May 25, 2024•6 min
(Acts 2:1-11; Ps.104:1,24,29-31,34; Gal.5:16-25; Jn.15:26-27,16:12-15) “The time for Pentecost was fulfilled.” A driving wind comes from the sky. It fills the house. Tongues of fire come to rest on the disciples, and they speak in tongues of every nation. The gathered crowd of “Jews from every nation under heaven” ask in wonder, “How does each of us hear them in his native language?” How is such perfect communication possible? How could such light fall upon mankind? How can we be made one? “The ...
May 18, 2024•5 min
(Acts1:15-17,20a,20c-26; Ps.103:1-2,11-12,19-20; 1Jn.4:11-16; Jn.17:11b-19) “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” Jesus sent the apostles forth, and “none of them was lost except the son of destruction”; and Judas was lost only “that the Scripture might be fulfilled,” that the betrayal of the Christ might be accomplished. Otherwise, those whom He sent He also protected, He also guarded well from the evil one, that what must be accomplished in them should likewise be bro...
May 11, 2024•5 min
(Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48; Ps.98:1-4; 1Jn.4:7-10; Jn.15:9-17) “This I command you: love one another.” And so we hear the Lord’s essential instruction: love. If we keep His commandments we will love, and if we love we will keep His commandments. His commandment is to love. But what is love? John gives us the simple answer, of course: “God is love,” but also indicates further the nature of love, corroborated by the Lord Himself. It is “not that we have loved God, but that He loved us.” Love comes...
May 04, 2024•5 min
(Acts 9:26-31; Ps.22:26-28,30-32; 1Jn.3:18-24; Jn.15:1-8) “Let the coming generation be told of the Lord...” Let the vine that is Christ continue to grow; let its branches extend to the ends of the world. Anointed by the Spirit, let all His children proclaim the name of Jesus, that “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord,” that in our midst the call upon the Church of God shall be fulfilled. Brothers and sisters, we should all be like Paul, who “spoke out boldly in the nam...
Apr 27, 2024•5 min
(Acts 4:8-12; Ps.118:1,8-9,21-23,26,28-29; 1Jn.3:1-2; Jn.10:11-18) “There is no salvation through anyone else.” Do not “trust in princes” or in any man; it is by Jesus alone “we are to be saved.” Though “the builders rejected” Him, though the princes of this age saw fit to crucify the Lord – yet “God raised [Him] from the dead” and exalted Him above every power on earth and in heaven. And so He is indeed now the foundation of our salvation, the only shepherd who will lead us to the Father… the o...
Apr 20, 2024•6 min
(Acts 3:13-15,17-19; Ps.4:2,4,7-9; 1Jn.2:1-5a; Lk.24:35-48) “He is expiation for our sins.” Brothers and sisters, “we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one.” For us this Savior has come; for our sins He has died on the cross. Even as it is written of Him in Scripture, so all has been accomplished in His Name. And so we need fear no more. We need not be “startled and terrified” at the sight of Him in our midst. He has come to us and has taken His place among us, even as...
Apr 13, 2024•5 min
(Acts 4:32-35; Ps.118:1-4,16-18,22-24; 1Jn.5:1-6; Jn.20:19-31) “His mercy endures forever.” Our psalmist “was hard pressed and was falling, but the Lord helped” him. The disciples were locked in their rooms for fear, but “Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” Thomas was hardened in unbelief, but His God appeared to him and said, “Bring your hand and put it into my side.” We are all sinners, but to us each, Christ offers mercy. From that side into which Thoma...
Apr 06, 2024•6 min
(Jer.31:31-34; Ps.51:3-4,12-15; Heb.5:7-9; Jn.12:20-33) “Father, glorify your name.” Jesus cries out in supplication to Him who is “able to save Him from death,” but He prays not to be saved from death, not to be saved from the sacrifice He must make, but only that in His death the Father might glorify His name. His “hour has come,” He knows. He hears from His apostles of the Greeks who seek Him, and He knows it is now time for Him to return to the Father and for His apostles to take over the wo...
Mar 16, 2024•6 min
(2Chr.36:14-16,19-23; Ps.137:1-6; Eph.2:4-10; Jn.3:14-21) “By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept.” For “practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the Lord’s temple,” the people of God “were carried captive to Babylon.” For all their “infidelity” they were forced to watch as “their enemies burnt the house of God [and] tore down the walls of Jerusalem.” And so did their “tongue[s] cleave to [their] palate[s]” in a foreign land; so they “hung up [their] harps”; so their “righ...
Mar 09, 2024•6 min
(Ex.20:1-17; Ps.19:8-11; 1Cor.1:22-25; Jn.2:13-25) “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.” Is it not fear of the Lord, Jesus would instill in the people as He makes “a whip out of cords” and drives those who buy and sell out of the temple? Is His great zeal not to purify His Father’s House of all corruption? And will the Temple He will raise up not endure forever? David tells us that “the law of the Lord is perfect,” and it is so; and so our worship of the Lord should be perfect as wel...
Mar 02, 2024•6 min
(Gn.22:1-2,9-13,15-18; Ps.116:10,15-19; Rom.8:31-34; Mk.9:2-10) “You shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.” “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,” the Lord instructs Abraham, calling him to sacrifice even as an animal his beloved child, upon whom God’s promise rests. To a mountain he is led, with his son carrying wood in tow. And arriving at the place God had told him to go, “Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it… and took th...
Feb 24, 2024•6 min
(Gn.9:8-15; Ps.25:4-9; 1Pt.3:18-22; Mk.1:12-15) “I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” In times past God made a covenant with Noah and his sons once they had come from the ark “that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings,” that they and those who would descend from them, indeed all races of men, should experience such devastation no more. And the sign of the rainbow He has given “for all ages to come,” that His ...
Feb 17, 2024•6 min
(Lv.13:1-2,44-46; Ps.32:1-2,5,7,11; 1Cor.10:31-11:1; Mk.1:40-45) “I said, ‘I confess my faults to the Lord,’ and you took away the guilt of my sin.” The leper in our gospel confesses his faults to the Lord when he says, “If you wish, you can make me clean,” for by these words he recognizes that “he is in fact unclean” – that he is a sick man in need of a physician. And Jesus takes away the guilt of his sin when He responds, “I do will it. Be made clean.” For by a mere word from His mouth we are ...
Feb 10, 2024•7 min
(Jb.7:1-4,6-7; Ps.147:1-6; 1Cor.9:16-19,22-23; Mk.1:29-39) “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” In our first reading, Job is about as brokenhearted as a man could be, beset entirely by the devil’s trials as he is. “Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle” his complete loss of goods and family and his own health has come upon him. And so he seems to see his days “come to an end without hope.” More miserable a creature there could not be. In our gospel we are told that “Simon’s mother-i...
Feb 03, 2024•5 min
(Dt.18:15-20; Ps.95:1-2,6-9; 1Cor.7:32-35; Mk.1:21-28) “A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin.” Thus does Moses speak to the people as he prepares to leave them, and they prepare to enter the Promised Land. He prophesies most immediately the anointing of Joshua, who will take his place as leader of the Israelite nation and guide them into the holy land, as well as all the prophets who shall follow… but most especially, of course, he hereby prophesies...
Jan 27, 2024•6 min
(1Sm.3:3b-10,19; Ps.40:2,4,7-10; 1Cor.6:13c-15a,17-20; Jn.1:35-42) “The Lord came and revealed His presence, calling out as before, ‘Samuel, Samuel!’” The call of Samuel, the call of Peter and his brother(s), and the call of us all to “glorify God in [our] body.” As “Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the Lord” when the Lord called to him, so we must all have the Holy Spirit within ourselves, we must each “know that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” if we are to hear and answer the cal...
Jan 20, 2024•5 min
(1Sm.3:3b-10,19; Ps.40:2,4,7-10; 1Cor.6:13c-15a,17-20; Jn.1:35-42) “The Lord came and revealed His presence, calling out as before, ‘Samuel, Samuel!’” The call of Samuel, the call of Peter and his brother(s), and the call of us all to “glorify God in [our] body.” As “Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the Lord” when the Lord called to him, so we must all have the Holy Spirit within ourselves, we must each “know that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” if we are to hear and answer the cal...
Jan 13, 2024•6 min
