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The Christmas season can sometimes seem to be just one joyful feast after another. We are scarcely past the glow from the Holy Family and Mary, Mother of God, when Epiphany is already upon us. The word “Epiphany” comes from two Greek words: epi, “on, upon”; and phaino, “to appear, to shine.” Therefore, the “Epiphany” refers to the divinity of Jesus “shining upon” the earth, in other words, the manifestation of his divine nature. The use of the word “epiphany” for the revelation of divinity predates Christianity. The Syrian (Seleucid) emperor Antiochus IV (175-164 BC), the villainous tyrant of 1-2...

January 1 is the Solemnity (Holy Day) of Mary, Mother of God. To call Mary the “Mother of God” must not be understood as a claim for Mary’s motherhood of divinity itself, but in the sense that Mary was mother of Jesus, who is truly God. The Council of Ephesus in 431 proclaimed “Mother of God” a theologically correct title for Mary. So far from being a cause of division, the common confession of Mary as “Mother of God” should unite all Christians, and distinguish Christian orthodoxy from various confusions of it, such as Arianism (the denial that Jesus was...

The Christmas Solemnity has distinct readings for four separate masses: Vigil, Midnight, Dawn, and Day. They stay the same from year to year, so below are my annual comments, only lightly revised. Merry Christmas! Christmas Vigil Mass1. Reading 1: Isaiah 62:1-5: For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her vindication shines forth like the dawn and her victory like a burning torch. Nations shall behold your vindication, and all the kings your glory; you shall be called by a new name pronounced by the mouth of the LORD. You shall...

As 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 that? In this...

Once 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 and starting to...

Every 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 this liturgy, the...

Happy New Year, everyone! The Church Year begins this week with the First Sunday of Advent, and we are back to reading cycle A in 2022. 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 Hours,...

The 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 them back. And the...

Some 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 Protestant. I suggested he probably was a Protestant. 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 effective means of evangelism. Billboards...

We are advancing in the “unofficial liturgical season” of November, and the Mass Readings turn toward meditation on the Last Things. This Sunday we are directed especially to the consideration of the resurrection of the dead. The resurrection of the dead is controversial. It is a traditional belief in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but Eastern religions have no necessary commitment to it. Indeed, bodily resurrection makes no sense in Buddhism. Likewise, ancient Greek philosophy had little use for the body in general, and it was often regarded as a prison for the soul. Western secularism espouses materialism; therefore, there is...

Happy November, everyone! This month constitutes its own unofficial liturgical season, focused on the Last Things. We begin the month with All Saints and round it out with the Feast of Christ the King. This Sunday’s Readings introduce themes that will be developed throughout the month: repentance, the Kingdom of God, and final judgment. In particular, the Gospel Reading urges us not merely to repent while we still have time, but also to make right the wrongs we have done to others, that is, to make reparation. Some non-Catholic theologies deny the need for reparation, but it is a biblical...

Several 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 difficult, but they...

Usually 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 Amalek in battle....

The 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 the word of...

Our 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 at misery? Destruction and...

Does 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 from the...

As 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 wheat? We will...

This upcoming Sunday marks one of only two times in the main Lectionary cycle that we hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son proclaimed (the other being the 4thSunday of Lent [C]). The Readings are marked by the theme of repentance and forgiveness. 1. Our First Reading is Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14: The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing...

One 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 without church discipline,...

In 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 about who they...