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By Dr. John BergsmaAs Christians, we tend to assume that the idea of God coming into ones’ life is always an attractive concept. However, that’s a bit naïve. Having the almighty creator of the universe come into one’s reality could also be an upsetting prospect. When doing evangelism, I have encountered people who understood the concept of “letting Jesus into your life” very well, but didn’t want that to happen, because it might upset the apple cart, so to speak. A God living within you might want to change things. He might want to take over. Are we ready for...

By Dr. John BergsmaOnce when I was a grade school kid, my mother and I camped in Shenandoah National Park for a week in the fall. One morning we got up to go hiking, but the weather was bad. It was starting to rain. I was bummed. My mom said to go back in the tent and pray that the weather would clear. So I did go and pray. But the weather didn’t clear, it only got worse. The rain got heavier, and the wind began to pick up—slowly and first, but soon so strong that the tent was shaking...

By Dr, John BergsmaEvery year on this, the Second Sunday of Advent and thus the second Sunday of the new liturgical year, the brash and burly figure of the Baptist bursts onto the liturgical stage, bellowing his characteristic charge, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” As we know, the First Sunday of Advent is always given to reflection on the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world whereas the Second and Third Sundays always focuses on John the Baptist, one of the most pivotal yet underappreciated figures in salvation history. In the context of...

By Dr. John BergsmaHappy New Year, everyone! The Church Year begins this week with the First Sunday of Advent, and we are back to reading cycle A. There is a very ancient tradition in the Church of reading the Book of Isaiah during Advent. In antiquity, both Jews and Christians considered the Book of Isaiah to be one extended prophesy of the “age to come,” the “latter days” when the Anointed One (Heb. “Meshiach,” =” Messiah”) would arrive. The First Readings for Sunday Mass and for weekday Masses, as well as the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the...

By Dr. John BergsmaThe Church year comes to an end this Sunday with the Solemnity of Christ the King, one of my favorite feast days. The Readings focus heavily on the theme of the kingdom of Christ, which was typified or foreshadowed by the Kingdom of David in the Old Testament. 1. The First Reading is 2 Samuel 5:1-3: In those days, all the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron and said: "Here we are, your bone and your flesh. In days past, when Saul was our king, it was you who led the Israelites out and brought...

By Dr. John BergsmaSome years ago I was driving through the back hills of Ohio with my son, and we passed a billboard in a farmer’s field that read: “God has a Judgment Day coming!” My son asked me if the farmer who had placed the billboard in his field was Catholic or a non-Catholic. I suggested he probably was a non-Catholic Christian. My son asked why Catholics didn’t put up billboards like that. I theorized that perhaps fewer Catholics owned farms close to the highway, or maybe they were less convinced that announcing the coming judgment was really an...

By Dr. John BergsmaThis year we have a special treat in the month of November, in that the Feast of the Lateran Basilica, the Cathedral of the City of Rome and Mother Church of Christianity, falls on a Sunday. Usually only week-day mass goers get exposed to this wonderful feast and its Lectionary readings. The Feast of St. John Lateran is unusual in the Church’s calendar, because it is a feast for a building rather than a saint or an event in salvation history. The Lateran Basilica—dedicated to Christ the Savior in honor of both John the Baptist and John...

By Dr. John BergsmaThe Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, or more popularly, All Souls Day, is entirely unique in the Church's liturgical calendar. Although it is a very significant liturgical observance that attracts substantial Mass attendance (in regions where piety is healthy) on par with solemnities and other major feasts, it is neither a solemnity nor even a feast, and the spirit of the day has a unique mix of penitence, consolation, and intercession. The challenge for the homilist on All Souls is to offer consolation to those who grieve for lost loved ones without implying the canonization of...

By Dr. John BergsmaSeveral years ago, an experiment was done in which three American families were taken to a remote part of the Midwest and left to survive with few belongings and 19th century technology (horse-drawn plows, etc.) for a year. As I recall, two families were able to persevere through the year without being rescued, and at the end of it, they returned to their twentieth-century lives, with video games, TV, etc. When interviewed a year after the end of the experiment, almost to a person the family members agreed that the year "in the past" had been very...

By Dr. John BergsmaUsually we think of men of prayer and men of war as complete opposites. A monk in a habit—such as St. Francis—is a man dedicated to peace, a total contrast to one clad in armor brandishing weapons. Yet the Readings for this Sunday combine the imagery of war and prayer in interesting ways that provoke our thoughts about the nature and reality of supplicating God. 1. Our First Reading is Exodus 17:8-13: In those days, Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses, therefore, said to Joshua, "Pick out certain men, and tomorrow go out and engage...

By Dr. John BergsmaThe themes of the Readings for this Sunday focus on the gratitude for God’s salvation. Gratitude is an important psychological and spiritual disposition. Dr. Daniel G. Amen, the popular brain researcher and public health spokesman, identifies gratitude as a key character quality of persons with physiologically healthy brains. That’s right: gratitude affects your physical health, including the shape and functioning of your brain. This Sunday’s Readings focus particularly on gratitude to God, and how it should be expressed. 1. Our First Reading is 2 Kings 5:14-17: Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at...

By Dr. John BergsmaOur readings this week take up the theme of faith, both Israel’s faith under the old covenant and the faith to which we are called in the new. Jesus urges us not to despair even if we feel our faith is pitiful. God can work wonders using small material. 1. Our First Reading is a famous passage from Habakkuk: Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4: How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look...

By Dr. John BergsmaDoes it matter how we treat others? What does my neighbor’s suffering have to do with me? Can I continue living in comfort while bypassing those around me who are in misery? These are questions that the Readings for this Sunday raise, and to which they provide uncomfortable answers. Let’s read and let the Holy Spirit move us outside our comfort zone. 1. The First Reading is Amos 6:1a, 4-7:Thus says the LORD the God of hosts: Woe to the complacent in Zion! Lying upon beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on their couches, they eat lambs taken...

By Dr. John BergsmaAs Jesus continues his “death march” to Jerusalem in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 9–19), he challenges us this Sunday to choose, in a clear and conscious way, our goal in life: God or money. The First Reading reminds us that wealth was a seductive trap for the people of God throughout salvation history. 1. The First Reading is Amos 8:4-7: Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land! “When will the new moon be over,” you ask, “that we may sell our grain, and the sabbath, that we may display the...

By Dr. John BergsmaA paradox is an apparent contradiction or counterintuitive statement that, upon further examination, may, in fact, be true. Some famous paradoxes include Socrate’s statement: “I know one thing: that I know nothing.” There are paradoxes in psychology, like the fact that when one pursues happiness itself, one is miserable; but when one pursues something else, one achieves happiness. There are paradoxes in mathematics, like the fact that most people’s friends have more friends than they do (it’s true!). Or in physics: light particles act like bullets if you watch them but waves if you don’t (it’s true)....

By Dr. John BergsmaOne of the most famous German opponents of Adolf Hitler and Nazism was the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom the Nazis executed by hanging in April 1945 for his involvement in a plot against Hitler himself. Bonhoeffer’s most famous work was a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount entitled (in English) The Cost of Discipleship. In it, Bonhoeffer parted ways with a Protestantism that understood “salvation by faith alone” as some kind of easy road to heaven. Bonhoeffer criticized “easy-believism” as “cheap grace”: Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism...

By Dr. John BergsmaIn 2005, a quasi-remake of the famous 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner” was released. Entitled “Guess Who?” it starred Bernie Mac as an African-American father who struggled to deal with his daughter’s Caucasian fiancé (played by Ashton Kutcher). Much of the comedy of the film revolved around the clash of cultures at the dinner table. Usually we only share meals with people like us, family members or friends from our own “circle.” When someone from “outside” comes in, it upsets the balance. If anything, Jews of Jesus day were even more careful than contemporary Americans...

By Dr. John BergsmaIf Jesus was walking through your town and you had ten seconds as he passed to ask any question you wished, what would it be? “Why is there evil in the world?” “How can I be saved?” “What is heaven like?” In this Sunday’s Gospel, an anonymous bystander gets his chance to ask Jesus one of the “big questions”: “Will only a few people be saved?” Jesus’ answer is complex, indirect, and very well worth examining! The Readings leading up to the Gospel help prepare us to understand Jesus’ response. 1. The First Reading is Isaiah 66:18-21:...

By Dr. John BergsmaIn recent decades, the term “family values” has almost become a code word for “Christian culture” in American society. Influential Christian organizations have adopted names like “Focus on the Family” and the “Family Research Council,” and on the Catholic side of things we have “Catholic Family Land” or The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, better known as “C-FAM.” The natural family unit—based on a husband and wife who have made an exclusive, permanent, public commitment to share a common life and raise children together—has been under such political and social pressure that at times we almost...

By Dr. John BergsmaMy father once served as the chaplain for the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. (U.S. Navy chaplains also serve the Marines and the Coast Guard). I have fond memories of that beautiful seaside city. In any event, perhaps the only bit of Coast Guard culture that I absorbed during my dad’s tour of duty was the motto: Semper Paratus, “Always Prepared,” which seems an appropriate summation of the theme of this Sunday’s Readings, which stress vigilance in the Christian life. In fact, these Readings feel like something we might get in November, closer to...