2017

Life is full of choices from the moment we wake up until we hit the sack. Some of the choices we make are trivial while others impact our lives and define who we are. In his poem, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost observes, “Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both.” Acknowledging that a choice has to be made, Frost ends his poem by saying, “I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence/ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–/ I took the one less traveled by/ and that has made all the difference.”

Some choices we make impact our relationship with God. Our faith is shaped by our attitude toward God. The wise and the learned, whom Jesus alludes to, are those who feel comfortable with their own wisdom, satisfied with themselves and their achievements. Feeling adequate in life, they focus on practical questions and earthly matters rather than the spiritual. Thus they feel no need for God or religion in their lives so God’s wisdom remains hidden from them.

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14th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

I have heard many times people say, “I love my father and mother or I love my spouse more than I can say.” Is this temperate love? What I mean is do we love God more than anything or anyone?

I remember back on my first love. Do any of you remember yours? I was in 7th grade at St. Pius X Parish in Mountlake Terrace just this side of Seattle. Her name was Sheila. I will not give her last name in order to protect the innocent. Anyway, she had pitch black hair and the greenest eyes you would ever have the pleasure of looking into.

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13th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

The closing line of today’s gospel brings to mind a conversation I had with a childhood friend years ago. At the time she was working as a bartender in a coastal town in Oregon and I visited her while driving home from California. She no longer considered herself a Catholic, yet she expected to see God in heaven. However, she didn’t believe in the existence of the devil and went on to dispute certain other teachings of our faith. Time did not allow me the opportunity to explore her many reasons but as I drove north, I had to wonder how many of us delude ourselves into thinking that heaven is ours even if we choose to ignore the truths that Jesus shares in this gospel passage.

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12th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

Every year on the second Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, traditionally known as Corpus Christi. Like the Trinity, this is a mystery of our faith that has survived the test of time. Using human concepts and words, we still struggle to fully understand the mystery of this awesome sacrament.

Remember, at the Last Supper, Jesus shared bread with his disciples, telling them that this bread is his body and that they were to eat this in remembrance of him. As we heard in the gospel, he had told them that he was “the living bread that came down from heaven.” He then assured them that “whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

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Corpus ChristiRead More »

Every year on the Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity. Using human concepts and words, we describe God as a Trinity in order to better understand who God is. Ultimately, while these words and concepts do the best job they can, they are far from being perfect. To explore this mystery, I want to begin with a story that I suspect many husbands and wives can relate to.

On the night of their anniversary, one husband, determined to show his wife how much he loved her, took her to an elegant restaurant for an intimate candlelight dinner. As she sipped champagne, he recited romantic verses, telling her he would climb the highest mountains, swim the deepest oceans, even cross burning deserts for her; how he would slay dragons to protect her; how he longed to sit under her window and sing beautiful love songs to her in the moonlight.

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TrinityRead More »