Reflections on the Sunday Readings

                                                             In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are given a fruitful and beautiful garden. All they have to do is not eat of the fruit of a certain tree.  However, they are tempted by the devil.  The devil tempts them with promises that they can be as God is, if they but choose to eat of the forbidden fruit.  However, once they eat this fruit, the result is not one of fulfillment and power but rather is of a sense of vulnerableness symbolized by their awareness of nakedness.    Instead of seeing themselves as “Gods” they see themselves as naked and as vulnerable creatures. Frightened by this new appearance, they become anxious.  That sense of anxiety will eventually lead them to guilt, and finally to a sense of being shameful.  That in term le...

        26 Sunday of Ordinary Time    9-26-26 Our gospel this weekend refers to a very human characteristic that often many people find themselves doing.   They promise one thing but do the opposite.   Or they promise one thing, but then never go and do it. Such person can be said to have good intentions, but there is little action on those intentions.                                                                                                         Often with repentance it can remain only an intention until it is put into action. For example, a person keeps a letter of apology in a drawer for months, continually revising it, but never sending it (i.e., there is so action...

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.                                                        ...