Reflections on the Sunday Readings

In the gospel today Peter asks Jesus how many times he must forgive his brother when he sins against him? This is a difficult question particularly if the “brother” is repeatedly testing us.    We can become very angry, and emotionally paralyzed when we have been wronged many times, and we are unable to forgive.   We can feel we are justified in wanting revenge and incapable of forgiving the other person.    As it says in the first reading this Sunday, “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” (Sirach 27:30).   Some actions done to us may be small things and we can forgive them easily.   Like when a friend bumps into us while we're carrying a cup of coffee and we spill the coffee over our clothes. Clothes can be washed and dried and cleaned easily. But when someone seriously wrongs us, repeatedly, our capacity for forgiving may be tested to its limit.     We might be tempted to say, “enough is enough.”   I...

Twenty-Third Sunday, Ordinary Time “More than five hundred years ago, two powerful Irish families discovered just how dangerous going first could be. In 1492, the Butlers of Ormonde and the Fitzgerald’s of Kildare were locked in a bitter feud. When fighting broke out near Dublin and the Butlers found themselves losing, they fled into St. Patrick’s Cathedral and barricaded themselves inside the Chapter House.                                                   Gerald FitzGerald wanted to make peace, but the Butlers feared that if they opened the door, the Fitzgeralds would kill them. And so there they remained: two families, two sides, one heavy wooden door between them.                                                        ...

                                                                                 From our Gospel this week we see that Peter and the other apostles must have been equally shocked as Jesus described in vivid detail what was going to happen to him when they reached Jerusalem.   To them,  savior’s and healers like Jesus are honored not destroyed.   They could not conceive of world  where people like Jesus would be tortured in such a way as he described.       Last week, Jesus took his disciples and led them to a place called Caesarea Philipp where he and they could be at peace and not have to contend with the constant barrages of antagonistic remarks from the scribes and Pharisees about what Jesus was saying or doing.  There he asks the di...

                                                                              In last week ‘s gospel, we saw Jesus leading his disciples into the pagan territories of Sidon and Tyra to teach a lesson.  Last week, it was to teach them that God‘s house, is a house of prayer for everybody, Jew, and non-Jew alike.  This week he leads them into an area known as Caesarea Philippi.   This was a gentile area North of Israel, where people worshiped all sorts of different gods Roman, Greek, et al.   In this area away far from the Jewish authorities and the criticisms of the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus wants his disciples to see him in a new light.   So, first he asks them “Who do others say that I am.”   It is interesting that in their answers they...

  As we look at the gospel for this Sunday there's a lot of similarity with  the gospel from last Sunday.   In fact, we might call both gospels agricultural gospels, since they deal with the growing of foods for the service of people.                                                                                                                                     Last week we talked about the condition of the soil and how the seed responds to that so...