Over on my Twitter account (@GeorgeOFM) I have been experimenting with tweeting a commentary on the daily gospel. It has been fun, interesting, and often challenging. 140 characters only goes so far. Here is a sample.
So… “what are you giving up for Lent?” Isn’t that always the question? As if that is the reason for the season. Growing up, everything I remember about Lent circled around the acts of self-denial – what food, entertainment, or habit one would give up and how hard it was to deny oneself of that thing. It was not always made clear that the denial was meant to help one think about God and Christ’s sacrifice. Continue reading
I am grateful for the parishioner who sent me the link and for these thoughts so nicely expressed.
I was on the phone with a good friend the other day. After covering important topics, like disparaging each other’s mothers and retelling semi-factual tales from our college days, our conversation turned to the mundane.
“So, how’s work going?” he asked.
For those of you who don’t know, I make money by teaching leadership skills and…
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God provides the basics This theme is important to the passage (vv. 25-26, 28-30). Jesus twice uses a standard type of Jewish argument traditionally called qal wahomer – “how much more?” (vv. 26, 30). If God cares for birds and for perishable flowers, how much more for his own beloved children?
The objects of our anxiety, food and drink, are to be seen as less important than the life and the body which they supply, and subsequent verses will draw out the moral that, since God provides the latter, he can be trusted for the former. If God sustains life and protects the bodies of those who serve him, they should not complain if he provides for those things without giving a nod to the symbols of status that the culture ordains. If God provides for the birds and flowers, how much more will he provide for his children? Continue reading
There is a picture in my office. It is in a place only I can see it. I didn’t plan it that way, it was just the only place to hang it when I moved in. It has been there almost seven years. I should probably move it, but I kinda’ like it there. I just have to glance up – and it is there.
It is a picture taken during the final stage of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysees. Not the one shown here – that is just a stock photo. It could have been taken in almost any year. The one of my wall is of one person; of one moment in time. Continue reading
Someone asked me why I get up most mornings for 5:30 swim practice – wouldn’t I like an extra hour or so of sleep, or maybe be able to stay up a little later the evening before? Extra sleep – sure. Stay up a little later – maybe. But the basic reason I get up so early is because I am intentional about having some semblance of a balanced life and that includes physical exercise. Once I am back at the parish, the course of the day may go as planned…or not, but I am free to respond without wondering if I can squeeze in a workout later in the day. It is liberating, even if a little bleary-eyed. Continue reading
After Francis’ withdrawal from active ministerial leadership of the friars, he witnessed an inevitable evolution of the religious order, which had grown to over 5,000 brothers in 1223 from the humble beginnings in 1209 of Francis and four companions. The evolution of the Order, necessary on a number of levels, also began to change the life of the fraternity. Francis worried that the Spirit of prayer was being compromised and that the necessities of ministry were leading the brothers to increasing ties to material possessions. He lived and suffered in a “Time of Doubt,” as described in the previous article. Continue reading
There is folk wisdom which says never argue with a fool because a third person will not be able to tell the difference. Myself, I am partial to the wisdom from the West of Kenya which says, if you are bathing in the stream and someone steals your clothes don’t chase them. I had to think about that one at first – but in thinking about what the third person sees – it then became clear. Continue reading
I don’t often reblog things, but I thought this apropos on the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes
In the short span of 12 years (1209-1221), the Franciscans had grown from a small, Assisi-based fraternity consisting of Francis and four other brothers, to a large, “multi-national,” religious order with an approved Rule of Life, a Cardinal Protector (who would soon become Pope), and more than 5,000 brothers. There was nothing in Francis’ life that prepared him for leadership of such a far-flung fraternity, which was already spanning the European continent and parts of the Middle East and North Africa. He had been a spoiled dilatant, a would-be knight, a wounded warrior, a solitary figure, living a quasi-hermetical life, and now he was the “leader” of a growing, international community of brothers. In the beginning, things just seemed to unfold, signs appeared along the way, and Francis followed the path in faith. And people followed Francis. Now most Franciscans had never met Francis and Francis’ model of leadership by example, which worked in 1209, but was not the one needed in 1221. And so he stepped down as leader, leaving the Order in the care of the Church – at least as far as discipline and administration. Yet it was also clear that he hoped to preserve a superior authority, of a spiritual type, demonstrated in the way in which he lived the Rule of Life. Continue reading
