(Rm.7:18-25; Ps.119:66,68,76-77,93,94; Lk.12:54-59) “Why do you not judge for yourselves what is just?” Do we not have the law of God at work in us now? Must we yet subject ourselves to the judge of this earth, who cannot but condemn us for our sin? If we cried out with our psalmist for the Lord to teach us His “commands,” His “statutes,” His “law,” and His “precepts,” His “promise” of “compassion” would be with us, His Spirit would come to us and instruct us on all matters. No longer “the priso...
Oct 26, 2023•5 min
(Rm.6:19-23; Ps.1:1-4,6,40:5; Lk.12:49-53) “The Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes.” The division is clear. The Lord Himself has stated, “I have come for division.” Far from establishing “peace on the earth,” His message makes clear the distinction between the evil and the good, the wicked and the just, drawn so well in our psalm today. He has “come to light a fire on the earth.” It shall purify the just for the kingdom of God even as it burns up all the wi...
Oct 25, 2023•5 min
(Rm.6:12-18; Ps.124:1-8; Lk.12:39-48) “Offer yourselves to God as men who have come back from the dead to life.” If we have come back from the dead to life, should we then offer ourselves up to death again? As Paul questions, “Are we free to sin?” How absurd a thought! If we are sinners, let us give ourselves freely to sin, and find the condemnation which comes from this. But if we are men of justice, let us give ourselves to “obedience” of the teaching imparted to us, and find life firmly in ou...
Oct 24, 2023•5 min
(Rm.5:12,15,17-21; Ps.40:7-10,17; Lk.12:35-38) “To do your will, O my God, is my delight, and your law is within my heart!” “May those who love your salvation say ever, ‘The Lord be glorified.’” May we who love the Lord “exult and be glad” in Him. May we who take refuge in His grace sing aloud His praise. What greater gift could we have than Jesus Christ, whose “single righteous act brought all men acquittal and life. For truly we were dead in our sin,” truly the offense of Adam had infected our...
Oct 23, 2023•5 min
(Rm.4:20-25; Lk.1:68-75; Lk.12:13-21) “We should serve Him devoutly and through all our days be holy in His sight.” For “this very night your life shall be required of you.” Always and forever our faith is required of us, if we are to draw breath. Always and forever the Lord asks us what fruit we have produced. Always and forever we must be careful not to toil in vain, but to live according to His Word, believing in His promise. Else our lives will indeed be empty vessels. Holiness befits His ho...
Oct 22, 2023•5 min
(Rm.4:13,16-18; Ps.105:6-9,42-43; Lk.12:8-12) “All depends on faith, everything is a grace.” Faith is our father; it brings us to life for it makes us children of “the God who restores the dead to life and calls into being those things which had not been.” By faith we entrust ourselves into God’s hands and become as Abraham, who is “our father in the sight of God in whom he believed.” “Hoping against hope, Abraham believed and so became the father of many nations,” and insofar as we believe, we ...
Oct 20, 2023•5 min
(Rm.4:1-8; Ps.32:1-2,5,7,11; Lk.12:1-7) “Happy is the man to whom the Lord imputes not guilt, in whose spirit there is no guile.” All our sins shall be taken away by the Lord who watches over us and loves us, if we but believe. We must lay bare our souls, brothers and sisters. We cannot hide from the eternal, piercing light of God. His hand is upon us at all times; His heart is open always for our entering in. It cannot be otherwise with the Lord of the universe, in whose sight “even the hairs o...
Oct 19, 2023•5 min
(Rm.3:21-30; Ps.130:1-7; Lk.11:47-54) “This generation will have to account for the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world.” And so shall it be with Christ’s own blood, the fulfillment of all the martyrs’ sacrifice; for these same scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus proclaims guilty of the prophets’ murders will indeed devise the murder of the Son of God. And they prove the truth of His words immediately by their manifestation of “fierce hostility to Him” and their thus gi...
Oct 18, 2023•5 min
(Rm.1:16-25; Ps.19:2-5; Lk.11:37-41) “They stultified themselves through speculating to no purpose, and their senseless hearts were darkened.” If these words do not refer to modern man most poignantly, then I imagine nothing can be said of anything. In ancient times, “they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images representing mortal man, birds, beasts, and snakes” and bowed down to statues as if they were gods. The images man worships today are also the creations of his own hands, some...
Oct 16, 2023•5 min
(Rm.1:1-7; Ps.98:1-4; Lk.11:29-32) “You have a greater than Jonah here.” Greater than any prophet is He. Wiser than Solomon is the Lord who is the source of all wisdom. For it is He of whom the prophets speak; it is His promised coming “the Holy Scriptures record.” The fulfillment of prophets and kings is in our midst. Our high priest is with us offering the sacrifice of Himself. Let us thirst for Him as the Ninevites did for Jonah’s preaching and seek Him as the queen of the South for Solomon’s...
Oct 15, 2023•5 min
(Jl.4:12-21; Ps.97:1-2,5-6,11-12; Lk.11:27-28) “Near is the day of the Lord in the valley of decision.” And so, “blest are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” For though “sun and moon are darkened and the stars withhold their brightness,” though “mountains melt like wax before the Lord,” “light dawns for the just,” and for them “the mountains shall drip new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk.” Yes, “the heavens and the earth quake, but the Lord is a refuge to His people.” Are we Hi...
Oct 13, 2023•5 min
(Jl.1:13-15,2:1-2; Ps.9:2-3,6,8-9,16; Lk.11:15-26) “It is near, a day of darkness and of gloom, a day of clouds and somberness!” And we must be prepared. We must rend our hearts and not our garments. We must “spend the night in sackcloth,” repentant of our sins. We must “proclaim a fast” and “cry to the Lord,” “for near is the day of the Lord.” The prophet Joel sounds this alarm several hundred years before Christ, and in truth it proclaims the coming of Christ. For it is His coming that separat...
Oct 12, 2023•5 min
(Mal.3:13-20; Ps.1:1-4,6,40:5; Lk.11:5-13) “For you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays.” Both our psalm and first reading make clear the distinction between the blessed and the condemned: “The Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes,” our psalmist declares. The wicked are “like chaff which the wind drives away,” while the just are “like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, and whose leav...
Oct 11, 2023•5 min
(Jon.4:1-11; Ps.86:3-6,9-10,15; Lk.11:1-4) “Your kingdom come.” “You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, loathe to punish.” How beautifully Jonah speaks of God’s blessed compassion on His people. And how poorly he is able to accept and live that grace. The Lord’s forgiveness extends now to the ends of the earth; let us not be loathe to offer it unto all. In our first reading, Jonah is angry with God for His mercy in forgiving Ninevah, the pagan empire and enemy of I...
Oct 10, 2023•5 min
(Jon.3:1-10; Ps.130:1-4,7-8; Lk.10:38-42) “He repented of the evil that He had threatened to do them; He did not carry it out.” Ninevah is spared. Because “they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth,” because they repented of their sin and called “loudly to God,” He did not punish them for their iniquity but forgave them and withheld “His blazing wrath.” And so this pagan city finds God’s mercy through the preaching of Jonah. We are all called to repent. We are all...
Oct 09, 2023•5 min
(Jon.1:1-2:1,11; Jon.2:2-5,7-8; Lk.10:25-37) “A Samaritan who was journeying along came on him and was moved to pity at the sight.” First let me note that the book of Jonah is not a parable, not an imaginary story, as popular scholarship would have us believe. How do I know this? I have faith, yes, which those who would explain away any miracle of God so sorely lack; but I know it, too, by Scripture itself. For elsewhere the Lord compares Himself to Jonah, and states explicitly that the people o...
Oct 08, 2023•6 min
(Bar.4:5-12,27-29; Ps.69:33-37; Lk.10:17-24) “He who has brought disaster upon you will, in saving you, bring you back enduring joy.” That enduring joy which comes to us after this time of trial is our theme today. Not only does Baruch come to it in his exhortation for the people to “fear not” anymore but to turn to God and be glad, but it is David’s song as well: “You who seek God, may your hearts be merry!” he exclaims as he assures us that “God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah,”...
Oct 06, 2023•5 min
(Bar.1:15-22; Ps.79:1-5,8-9; Lk.10:13-16) “We have been disobedient to the Lord, our God, and only too ready to disregard His voice.” Woe is upon us for our sin. We “have sinned in the Lord’s sight and disobeyed Him,” and so “the evils and the curse which the Lord enjoined upon Moses… cling to us even today.” And if we do not recognize our sin, as Baruch does so beautifully in our first reading today, if we do not admit our failure to “heed the voice of the Lord,” realizing and repenting of our ...
Oct 05, 2023•5 min
(Neh.8:1-12; Ps.19:8-11; Lk.10:1-12) “They understood the words that had been expounded to them.” What a blessed day we hear of in our first reading. And what a blessed reception the Word of God finds in the hearing of the people! For “the whole people gathered as one man” and “listened attentively to the book of the law” of Moses as “Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the occasion” and “read out of the book from daybreak until midday.” And we know that all the peo...
Oct 04, 2023•5 min
(Neh.2:1-8; Ps.137:1-6; Lk.9:57-62) “How could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?” Our home is in heaven. “The foxes have lairs, the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head,” the Lord tells him who would follow His way in our gospel today. Our home is in heaven, and only there do we find joy. And only finding our place there should possess our hearts. We have a sign of the devotion we must have for the Lord and His Kingdom in our psalm and first rea...
Oct 03, 2023•5 min
(Zec.8:20-23; Ps.87:1-7,Zec.8:23; Lk.9:51-56) “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” God is with us, brothers and sisters. And though all upon earth turn their faces from Him now, though in ignorance they reject Him and our preaching of His Word – there shall come a day when all nations find their home in Him. In that day the Lord shall reign. As Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem and His coming death at the hands of His own people, He passes through many towns and sends...
Oct 02, 2023•5 min
(Zec.8:1-8; Ps.102:16-23,29; Lk.9:46-50) “The city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in her streets.” “Even if this should seem impossible in the eyes of the remnant of this people, shall it in those days be impossible in my eyes also, says the Lord of hosts.” Sometimes we lose sight of the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes our faith fails because of the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves. Or sometimes our pride can be the obstruction, blinding our eyes to the presence of th...
Oct 01, 2023•5 min
(Zec.2:5-9,14-15; Jer.31:10-13; Lk.9:43-45) “They shall come streaming to the Lord’s blessings.” The Kingdom is being prepared. And as bleak as things may seem upon this earth, the glory of the Lord awaits us all. This is the message of Jeremiah in our psalm and the message given Zechariah by the angel in our first reading. “I will turn their mourning into joy, I will console and gladden them after their sorrows,” is the word which sustains us. Zechariah prophesies at the time the Israelites hav...
Sep 29, 2023•5 min
(Hg.1:1-8; Ps.149:1-6,9; Lk.9:7-9) “He who earned wages earned them for a bag with holes in it.” “Bring timber, and build the house that I may take pleasure in it and receive my glory.” Rebuild the house of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit you are. Shore up the breaches in its walls and solidify its foundation, that you might “sing to the Lord a new song of praise in the assembly of the faithful,” that you might be as those who are “glad in their maker… For the Lord loves His people, and He ad...
Sep 27, 2023•5 min
(Ezra 9:5-9; Tb.13:1-4,6-8; Lk.9:1-6) “Turn back, you sinners! do the right before Him: perhaps He may look with favor upon you, and show you mercy.” As the Word of the Lord comes to our villages and enters our houses, we must treasure it and heed its warning to turn from our sins. If we harden our hearts against its grace and mercy, if we fail to recognize our sin in the blessed light it brings, the Word shall leave, shaking the dust from its feet, and we shall be left alone in despair. But if ...
Sep 26, 2023•5 min
(Ezra 6:7-8,12,14-20; Ps.122:1-5; Lk.8:19-21) “The elders of the Jews continued to make progress in the building, supported by the message of the prophets.” And so, returning from exile and with the permission and indeed the financial support of the Gentile king, Darius, the Jews completed the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem. And so, the prophecy of the return to the Lord from their sins is in a measure fulfilled here in this act and in the worship which once again transpires in “that hous...
Sep 25, 2023•4 min
(Ezra 1:1-6; Ps.126:1-6; Lk.8:16-18) “Those that sow in tears shall reap rejoicing.” The Israelites toiled in tears for four hundred years under the yoke of the Egyptians, then rejoiced to finally enter the Promised Land (after wandering forty years in the desert). For seventy years Judah had been exiled to Babylon, but rejoiced when, remarkably, the king of Persia called them to return to Jerusalem and, with his blessing, to rebuild the temple of the Lord. And now we wait in exile for our Lord ...
Sep 24, 2023•5 min
(1Tm.6:13-16; Ps.100:2-5; Lk.8:4-15) “Keep God’s command without blame or reproach until our Lord Jesus shall appear.” The Lord’s “kindness endures forever, and His faithfulness, to all generations,” and we must endure with Him, ever showing forth His kindness and faithfulness to the world, until we come to dwell with Him eternally “in inapproachable light.” When God brings His appearance “to pass at His chosen time” will we stand ready? Will we persevere in service of truth until that day of wh...
Sep 22, 2023•5 min
(1Tm.1:15-17; Ps.113:1-7; Lk.6:43-49) “Any man who desires to come to me will hear my words and put them into practice.” Our psalm today declares that God is “enthroned on high” – “High above all the nations is the Lord; above the heavens is His glory.” And why is the Lord so glorious, so worthy of our praise…? Because “He raises the lowly from the dust; from the dunghill He lifts up the poor.” And Paul tells us the same: he glorifies God as “King of the ages, the immortal, the invisible, the on...
Sep 22, 2023•5 min
(1Tm.6:2-12; Ps.49:6-10,17-20,Mt.5:3; Lk.8:1-3) “Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation, and a trap.” Today we hear Paul’s famous words: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” They are oft-quoted, but how well are they understood and practiced in the avoidance of excessive possessions and inflated bank accounts. Paul tells us, verifiably so, that men “have come to grief amid great pain” because of their passion for money. And the pain is so much the greater if they had been ...
Sep 21, 2023•5 min
