Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 15, 2026: I was blind and now I see...

I was blind and now I see…
Are we aware of the Lord working in our lives? 

    When, in the First Book of Samuel, the Lord sends Samuel to Jesse of Bethlehem to anoint David, the Lord’s chosen one, the Lord can work through Samuel because Samuel is open to the Lord’s presence in his life. As instructed, Samuel scrutinizes each of Jesse’s sons in turn, but the scrutiny of God sees only David: There – anoint him, for this is the one! God tells Samuel. David too will need to be open to the Lord’s revelation as it unfolds in his life. When he is open to the spirit of God, that spirit will fill him with grace. And, as Psalm 23 reveals, David is aware of God’s presence in his life: The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want, the psalmist David sings. The Lord never ceases to accompany David, giving David confidence and comfort in all that he must do. 

    Jesus’ healing of the man blind from birth in John’s Gospel is yet another opportunity for the revelation of God’s light at work. The blind man does not ask for healing, yet he becomes a witness to Jesus, the light of the world, come to do the works of the one who sent him, God’s vessel through which light shines in the world. Yet, even as the man is healed, the Pharisees’ blindness becomes more acute, and they ridicule the man’s faith in Jesus. However, the man continues to live in faith, actively aware of and witnessing to God’s presence in his life: I do believe, Lord, he says to Jesus, and he worships him. 

   Like the man blind from birth, we were once in darkness, but now are light in the Lord, as Paul tells the Ephesians. We are to live as children of the light, stepping into the light of faith which reveals to us the path on which we walk with the Lord. Because of our own fear or desire for control, we can become blind to the light of Christ. But our awareness of Christ’s presence in our lives brings us from darkness to light. In every situation there is always grace, grace and the light that is of the Lord. God asks us to be ever aware of his presence, to enjoy a growing appreciation of the light that never leaves us, and to give joyful witness to his light… for our world. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 30, 2025: But now we must celebrate and rejoice!

But now we must celebrate and rejoice!
How often do we celebrate God’s love and mercy? 

   When, having circumcised all of the men and thus removing the reproach of Egypt from them all, Joshua leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land, the people celebrate! Covenant has been restored between the Lord and his people through this clear transition in identity, and God’s goodness and love are revealed in the bountiful produce of the land, which the people eat in the form of unleavened cakes and parched grain. They can now, as Psalm 34 suggests, taste and see the goodness of the Lord! The psalmist himself knows that he has been redeemed by God’s goodness and proclaims his faithfulness to God by glorying in the Lord and inviting all others to join him: Glorify the Lord with me, let us together extol his name, he sings. The psalmist celebrates God’s care and grace, radiant with joy! 

   In Luke’s Gospel, when the father of the prodigal son has his servants bring the finest robe, a ring for his son’s finger, and sandals for his feet, he is in essence reinstating his son in the family, restoring him to relationship through forgiveness and mercy. Notice that the father doesn’t even let his son finish the statement he has prepared, Father, I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers. Rather, filled with compassion, the father forgives the son the moment he catches sight of him; he does not wait for him to grovel and be penitent. In spite of all of his son’s transgressions, he father celebrates and rejoices, because this son was lost and has been found! 

   Like the compassion of the father for his son, God’s forgiveness reaches out to us when we turn in his direction; as soon as we begin to move back towards him, God’s compassion can reach us. Jesus, through his death and rising, came to reveal a love greater than any we can imagine. Jesus wants God’s love to be accessible to us. He wants all of us to know how much God loves us. We are therefore, as Paul tells the Corinthians, called to be a new creation through our baptism in Christ. Whatever we have been, we can leave behind, that we might be reconciled to God, for God reconciled the world to himself in Christ, that we might be the Body of Christ in the world. Behold, new things have come! Let us rejoice! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 10, 2024: Everyone who believes in him may have eternal life...

Everyone who believes in him may have eternal life…

Do we believe in the promise of salvation? 

    The last chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles contains an abbreviated history of the last four kings of Judah, a time during which the people turn toward the gods of other nations, adding infidelity to infidelity, violating their covenant with God. The Lord sends his messengers to them, for he has compassion on his people, but his dwelling place, the temple, is ultimately destroyed when the people are carried captive to Babylon. There, they pray Psalm 137, Let my tongue be silenced, if ever I forget you, fearing that they cannot sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land. Their memory of Jerusalem, Zion, is all they have while in exile. And yet the Lord is ultimately merciful, allowing Cyrus, King of Persia, to send the people home: Whoever belongs to any part of the Lord’s people, let him go up, and may his God be with him! Saved by the Lord, the people of Israel embrace the opportunity to rebuild the temple and worship once again in Jerusalem. 

    This episode is not unique in Jewish history; time and again, the people of Israel were unfaithful to covenant, and yet the Lord was ultimately merciful, each and every time. When, in John's Gospel, the Pharisee Nicodemus visits Jesus in the night, Jesus reminds him of the story of Moses who lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert so that all who looked upon it might be saved, healed from the bites of the seraph serpents. Their salvation involved an act of faith; Jesus, too, must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life; those who look upon him in faith and believe will live the truth and come to the light. 

    God is rich in mercy, Paul tells the Ephesians: by grace you have been saved. Ultimately, God is defined by mercy, compassion, care, and by the great love he has for us – so much so that, even in our sin, God showers us with the immeasurable riches of his grace. Unlike Nicodemus, who visits Jesus in the dead of night, not wanting to be seen, we must come toward the light of Christ and allow his grace to fill us with faith. For God sent his Son that the world might be saved through him. We have but to believe. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 19, 2023: Everything exposed by the light becomes visible...

Everything exposed by the light becomes visible…

How can we see and recognize truth?

    When God sends the priest and prophet Samuel to anoint a successor to King Saul, Saul is actually still the reigning monarch! But God knows that it will be important to get Saul’s successor established in the hearts of the people before that transition is to take place, and so Samuel is sent to Jesse of Bethlehem, for one of Jesse’s sons is to be anointed future King of Israel. Once Samuel arrives, God tells him not to judge according to physical appearance; it is not the sons of lofty stature whom God chooses, but the ruddy youth David. Not as man sees does God see, God tells Samuel, for man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart. Once he is named King, David will rely upon God’s vision and wisdom to get him through dark days and keep him on right paths: The Lord is David’s shepherd, Psalm 23 reminds us. There is no better reason to see clearly than to recognize God as the source of all help in our lives. 

    Although it is ostensibly the man born blind who is healed when Jesus anoints him with mud in John’s Gospel, in fact, the story is about the possibility of recovering vision on the part of each person who enters into Jesus’ orbit. The blind man does not seek out Jesus; Jesus’ disciples ask simply, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents? and that question is enough to prompt Jesus to intervene to heal him. The parents of the man come to know the truth: we know that this is our son and that he was born blind, they admit. Jesus will later tell the formerly blind man, I came into this world so that those who do not see might see. But the Pharisees refuse to see with God’s vision; they remain blind in their sin, judging by appearances rather than seeing as God sees. They refuse to see the truth that stands right before them. 

    If we accept new life in Christ, then we must and will, as St. Paul tells the Ephesians, live as children of the light, enlightened by the truth of Christ’s death and rising, and revealing that truth to our world. God often works to reveal the truth to us in new and challenging ways. How willing are we to see beyond what we know for certain? How open are we to the truth of our sacramental life in Christ? And once we see that truth, how can we do anything but reveal it in love to all we encounter, that we might build up the Body of Christ, the community that, since the pandemic, has become so precious to us all? 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s first Scripture class via Zoom, March 19, 2020.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, December 18, 2022: Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him...

Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him…

Are we ready to trust in the Lord’s promise?

    In the eighth century before Christ, king Ahaz had a hard time trusting in the Lord. When God tells Ahaz to ask for a sign from the Lord, your God, Ahaz resists: I will not ask! I will not tempt the Lord! Ahaz is only willing to put his faith into what he can immediately see before him. But God’s promise does not rely on Ahaz’s willingness to ask for a sign, and the prophet Isaiah makes it clear that the Lord himself will give Ahaz a sign: the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. For Ahaz, this son will be the righteous king Hezekiah who will, as Psalm 24 exhorts, seek the face of the God of Jacob, and desire to be in right relationship with God. Of course, Christian readers of Isaiah (including the evangelist Matthew) read God’s promise to send his Son back into the story told in Isaiah, Jesus, the king of glory referred to in the psalm, God-with-us, Emmanuel. 

    Joseph might have been tempted to quietly divorce his betrothed, Mary, when he learned that she was with child, and indeed Matthew tells us that that is his intention, but the angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream and explains that it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. The child is to be named Jesus or Yeshua, which means God saves. We never hear Joseph speak aloud in the gospels, but he does speak profoundly by his actions: Joseph is willing to violate the law for the sake of this woman because he trusts in the Lord’s promise that this child is the Messiah who will save his people from their sins. Joseph is a model for all who come after him, including St. Paul who, in the Letter to the Romans, speaks of the obedience of faith, for the sake of Jesus’ name, a faith brought about by the grace of apostleship to all those called to be holy. 

    When Jesus walked the earth, most could not conceive of God sending his Son as Messiah; this truth comes to be understood only much later, following his death and rising. But they trusted, as we are to trust, and were obedient to the Lord, as we too are called to be, embracing that obedience of faith shared by so many who have come before us. The Incarnation is near – let us trust in Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us, to save us all, his people, and rejoice in his coming birth! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class. 

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 14, 2021: By grace you have been saved...

By grace you have been saved… 

Our relationship with God is key to our salvation! 

   The Second Book of Chronicles tells of the problems that arise when a people is unfaithful to God, and of the leaders who must take responsibility for adding infidelity to infidelity. The people of Judah once strayed far from the relationship to which God has called them, even though God sent God’s messengers to warn them, and they are carried captive to Babylon as a result. Not until they retrieve their lost sabbaths – 70 years worth, an enormous number – are they redeemed. Cyrus then sends them back to their land, so that God may once more dwell among them, in a house in Jerusalem God has charged Cyrus to build for him. Yet Psalm 137 reminds us that God was never far from the people’s thoughts during their exile in Babylon: Let my tongue be silenced, the psalmist sings, if ever I forget you. In the end, God has compassion on God’s people who return both to Jerusalem and to relationship with God. 

   When, in John’s Gospel, Nicodemus goes to see Jesus in the night, Jesus explains to him that the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. We can choose to believe, we can trust and surrender to him, or we can have trust only in our limited human selves. The crucified Christ epitomizes all we hope for, for God’s love is greater than death and raises Jesus from the dead. God loves God’s creation and desires that we come together as one, so that we can participate in God’s life – if only we honor our relationship with God. The marvelous vision revealed to Nicodemus about salvation is that the more we live in God’s truth, the more we step into God’s light, into God’s activity, in the world.

   Paul tells the Ephesians that God, who is rich in mercy, loved us even when we were buried in our transgressions, and brought us to life with Christ. Salvation comes through God’s grace, through God’s action, not our own. Grace is the lived experience of God in our lives; to know him, he reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ and it is in Jesus, God’s light, that we find each other. We come together as a community to be one in Christ and then to go out to the world a little differently, changed, altered, that we might embrace that world and touch each other’s lives. The good works that flow from us are God’s work in us – we are his handiwork -- born of relationship with God, as members of Christ’s body. All we need do is open to that relationship, and allow God’s light to shine in and through us. By grace we have been saved! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 22, 2020: Not as man sees does God see...

Not as man sees does God see…

Why is it so difficult to embrace God’s vision?

  Try as we might, it is hard to see the world as God sees it.  When, in the First Book of Samuel, God sends Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse of Bethlehem as king to replace Saul, Jesse presents seven sons before Samuel, omitting his youngest son David, who is tending the sheep.  When David finally appears, the Lord orders Samuel to anoint him on the spot.  Where the family sees only an insignificant shepherd, an outward appearance, God looks into the heart and chooses David as king over all of Israel.

  Jesus will likewise address the Pharisees inability to see clearly when he heals the man blind from birth in John's Gospel.  The man’s blindness is an opportunity for the Pharisees’ own eye-opening conversion experience:  the blind man must be healed, Jesus says, so that the works of God might be made visible through him.  But the Pharisees remain blind:  This man is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath, they say of Jesus.  Whereas the blind man is healed not only physically but spiritually, ultimately recognizing Jesus and worshiping him, the Pharisees’ hearts remain closed.  Because they believe that they see, yet do not see with God’s vision, their sin remains; they are unable to turn toward the light. 

  For Jesus is, as he tells the disciples, the light of the world; he came as light so that people might see clearly, might see as God sees.  You were once darkness, Paul tells the Ephesians, but now you are light in the Lord.  Live as children of the light.  Baptism is meant to bring us to see as God sees, to see with the heart, through the eyes and understanding of the one who created all things.  We need only awaken and arise, that Christ might give us light. For Jesus is the shepherd described in Psalm 23 who guides us in right paths if our hearts are open.  And when Jesus is leading us, we can always see clearly, always see with God’s vision, and there is nothing thereafter that we shall want.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 31, 2019: Your brother was dead and has come to life again...

Your brother was dead and has come to life again…

How do we realign ourselves with God?

  During the quest to take possession of the land of Canaan, Joshua is instructed by God at Gilgal to circumcise the male children born during their journey from Egypt.  Once Joshua has done so, God says to him, Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you. This act realigns the people of Israel with their God; they are no longer slaves, dependent on Egypt, but can now eat of the produce of the land. It is God who brings about their reconciliation, allowing the people to reclaim their identity and to live in right relationship with God.  No longer will their faces blush with shame, as Psalm 34 notes, for God has answered the prayers of the people.  Their sojourn in Gilgal allows them to taste and see the goodness of the Lord, redeemed by God’s action on their behalf.

  In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus recounts the parable of the prodigal son; his audience consists of Pharisees and scribes who complain that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them.  But Jesus’ story is meant to teach them that reconciliation is God’s action and that forgiveness is for all – even the Pharisees and scribes themselves. Like the father in the parable, who loves his sinner son as completely as he loves his older, responsible son, God loves all, sinners and the upright alike.  God gives recklessly, foolishly; God forgives where no one asks for forgiveness.  How?  Paul tells the Corinthians that God has reconciled us to himself through Christ.  It is Christ’s redemptive sacrifice that allows us – all of us – to be a new creation, realigned with the Father, that we might, in turn, carry his message of reconciliation as ambassadors for Christ.  Salvation is our goal, not only for ourselves, but for the world.  And once we are in Christ, the celebration can begin!

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com