Free Republic

John 15:1-8 Friends, in our Gospel passage today, Jesus declares that he is the vine and we are the branches, adding that“anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither.”It’s odd that we accept this sort of language very easily when it comes to our bodily health,while we balk at it when it comes to spiritual or supernatural health. Doctors and health specialists can say, with a clarity and matter-of-factness, that certain practices and behaviors are absolutely essential if one wants to maintain physical well-being. Unless you eat a balanced, nutritious diet, you...

John 14:27-31a Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us an antidote for fear. Who or what are you afraid of? That is a very important spiritual question. One way to understand our lives is to look at those things that we seek: wealth, power, privilege, honor, pleasure, friendship. But another way is to turn that question around and determine what or who it is that we fear.We might fear the loss of material things, the loss of a job, the loss of physical health, the loss of the esteem of others, the loss of personal intimacy, or ultimately, the loss...

John 14:1-6 Friends, in today’s familiar and majestic passage, Jesus exhorts us to trust him: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.”So much depends on the spiritual meaning of the little word “trust.” Jeremiah the prophet laid it out as starkly and simply as possible: “Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” And conversely, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, the Lord will be their trust.”What does it mean to trust, to turn one’s...

Mark 16:15-20Friends, today’s Gospel gives us Mark’s very laconic account of the Ascension:“Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.”We should think of it as Jesus’ going to his heavenly place in order to reign over the earth.Now, don’t literalize this language—there aren’t chairs in heaven—but take it very seriously indeed. What Mark is suggesting is that Jesus is now reigning; he’s in the attitude of a king on his throne. This means that he is directing the things of earth from his place...

John 6:22–29Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the crowd, which he just fed, to believe in him and relate to him personally. Why is this so hard? Well, it is intellectually counterintuitive. Why would this one figure, this Jesus, be the one and only? Why should I choose to relate to him and not the numerous other religious leaders and philosophers? Are all other religious people just lost or misguided? Wouldn’t it just be easier to relate to Jesus’ ideas and principles, to imitate his style of life? Yes, indeed it would, but that’s not what he says. Perhaps we...

John 3:31-61 Friends, today’s Gospel declares that the Son of God does not ration his gift of the Spirit. At the cathedral in Chartres, the figure of Jesus is surrounded by seven doves, symbolizing these seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. The Messiah will be filled up with all of the powers and energies of God’s Spirit.These seven gifts have played a prominent role in our tradition, appearing in theologians as diverse as Gregory the Great, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. These gifts are signs that the Christian is participating...

John 3:16-21 Friends, our Gospel passage today includes one of Scripture’s best-known and best-loved lines. The Lord is speaking to Nicodemus, and we read, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”Why does the Son come? Because God is angry? Because God wants to lord it over us? Because God needs something? No, he comes purely out of love, out of God’s desire that we flourish: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that...

Luke 1:26-38 Friends, in today’s Gospel from Luke, we find the Annunciation to Mary. Here is what Gabriel said to the Virgin: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. . . . The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.”No first-century Israelite would have missed the meaning here: this child shall be the fulfillment of the promise made to King David.And this means that the child is, in...

Luke 24:13-35 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus enlightens the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Have you ever tried to solve a puzzle and then were surprised when the various pieces suddenly fell into place? Well, this is what happens to these disciples as Jesus begins to speak: “How slow of heart [you are] to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”The whole of Christianity is hanging here in the balance.The disciples didn’t get it at first. They didn’t get the secret, the mystery, the...

John 18:1-40, John 19:1-42 Friends, today’s Gospel is John’s wonderful narrative of Christ’s Passion.On the cross, Jesus entered into close quarters with sin (because that’s where we sinners are found) and allowed the heat and fury of sin to destroy him, even as he protected us.We can see, with special clarity, why the first Christians associated the crucified Jesus with the suffering servant of Isaiah. By enduring the pain of the cross, Jesus did indeed bear our sins; by his stripes we were indeed healed.And this is why the sacrificial death of Jesus is pleasing to the Father. The Father...

John 13:1-15 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. He is giving them a visual proclamation of his new commandment:“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”When we accept this commandment, we walk the path of joy. When we internalize this law, we become happy. And so the paradox: happiness is never a function of filling oneself up; it is a wonderful function of giving oneself away.When the divine grace enters one’s life (and everything we have is the result of divine grace), the task is to contrive a way to...

John 13:21-33, John 13:36-38Friends, today’s Gospel is from John’s account of the Last Supper, where Jesus acknowledges Judas as his betrayer and tells him to get on with it.God’s desires have been, from the beginning, opposed.Consistently, human beings have preferred the isolation of sin to the festivity of the sacred meal. Theologians have called this anomalous tendency the mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of iniquity), for there is no rational ground for it, no reason for it to exist.But there it stubbornly is, always shadowing the good, parasitic upon that which it tries to destroy. Therefore, we should not be too...

John 10:31-42 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.”Charles Williams stated that the master idea of Christianity is “coinherence,” mutual indwelling. If you want to see this idea concretely displayed, look to the pages of the Book of Kells, that masterpiece of early Christian illumination. Lines interwoven, designs turning in and around on each other, plays of plants, animals, planets, human beings, angels, and saints. The Germans call it Ineinander (one in the other).How do we identify ourselves? Almost exclusively through the naming of relationships: we are sons, brothers, daughters,...

John 8:31-42 Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord tells some Jewish listeners that they are enslaved to sin and that the truth will set them free.Jesus was distinguishing between sin and sins, between the underlying disease and its many symptoms. When the Curé d’Ars was asked what wisdom he had gained about human nature from his many years of hearing confessions, he responded, “People are much sadder than they seem.” Blaise Pascal rests his apologetic for Christianity on the simple fact that all people are unhappy. This universal, enduring, and stubborn sadness is sin.Now, this does not mean that sin...

Todays sermon, while rather shockingly titled... explores OT Covenantal theology.. summed up in Jeremiah's prophesy. To even begin to understand this nature of the Sacrificial Blood throughout Scripture... includes following this Sermon perspective completely. 14 min. YouTube video clip below: Drinking The Blood Of Christ

John 5:31-47 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus establishes his authority for his words and actions.You will recall that when at the outset of his ministry the Lord spoke in the synagogue at Capernaum, what first got the attention of the crowd was not what he said but the manner in which he said it. What did they notice? “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”We might miss this, but the relevant point is that rabbis and scribes taught through appeal to authorities beyond themselves, ultimately to the...

Matthew 23:1-12 Friends, today’s Gospel exposes the pride of the Pharisees and concludes with the prescription of humility. I want to reflect on this virtue.St. Augustine said that all of us, made from nothing, tend toward nothing. We can see this in our frailty and sin and mortality. St. Paul said,“What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it?”To believe in God is to know these truths. To live them out is to live in the attitude of humility. Thomas Aquinas said humilitas...

Very contemplative message to start off the Lenten journey with...Picking up on Jesus' 40 days of Temptation, the sermon analyzes body and soul, intertwined, and how they are in constant struggle. And that one purpose of the Lenten season is to learn how to discipline the right relationship between them. That sin enters us to "disentregrate" that union of Body and Soul.13 min. YouTube Video Link below:Are Your Soul and Body At War?

Matthew 25:31-46 Friends, in our Gospel today, Jesus tells the crowd that the Son of Man will welcome the righteous into the kingdom, saying, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” Puzzled, the righteous will ask when they did this, and he will reply,“Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”This is a powerful evocation of Jesus’ teaching about the...

Matthew 9:14-15Friends, in today’s Gospel, people ask Jesus why his disciples do not fast. He says that as wedding guests, they will not fast while he, the Bridegroom, is with them. But “the days will come,” he says, “when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”Why do we fast?Because we have a hunger for God, which is the deepest hunger. We’re meant to get access to that hunger. We’re meant to feel it so that it can direct us toward God. Every spiritual master recognizes the danger that if we allow the superficial hunger of...