Category Archives: Musings

Something Extravagant

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Today’s gospel for the Monday of Holy Week is the well-known story of Mary of Bethany, anointing the feet of Jesus with “a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard.”  In Jesus’ time, the washing on someone’s feet carried with it meaning. While a host would offer water to a visitor for the visitor to wash their own feet, otherwise, only a servant or slave would wash someone’s feet. The same applied to anointing of the feet, considered a soothing treatment after a long day or journey. Because of these connotations, those who voluntarily washed someone else’s feet showed they were devoted enough to act as that person’s slave. The act of anointing Jesus’ feet, when taken in its literary and cultural context, displays Mary’s utter devotion to Jesus. Continue reading →

Words for Holy Week

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Entry_Into_Jerusalem1From the good folks at Merriam Webster – the “Word of the Day” – diffident. Probably not a word that is part of my everyday usage, but one that curiously arrived on the Monday of Holy Week. In modern usage, the word “diffident” means: (1) hesitant in acting or speaking through lack of self-confidence or (2) reserved, unassertive. But it is the now-archaic meaning of the word that also interests me: distrustful. Continue reading →

Endgame of Holy Week

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avengers-endgameWords, catch phrases, and other strings of words, in the right context, can tell entire stories. In the United States, say the words “Oh say can you see….” and a whole story of this country’s struggle for freedom from European powers comes to mind. Such are the power of words and stories. If the title of this post made sense to you, then you are clearly a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – and especially of the movies Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Not to worry, I won’t attempt to explain the MCU, all its characters, and the many threads and storylines. But if you are interested in an overview, start here and then “click” your way to more than you ever wanted to know…but don’t blame me for going down that rabbit hole (an expression brought to us by Lewis Carroll who introduced the term in 1865 in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland). Continue reading →

The Son of God

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JesusIconNazarethThe gospel reading for today has a rather odd phrase: Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, I said, ‘You are gods’”?  I think there is a tendency to be mystified and at the same simply think, “OK, Jesus said it…. That’s enough for me.”  And then move on. But there is a lot going on in John 10, of which this gospel selection is just a portion.

The context for this chapter of the fourth gospel is the feast of Hanukkah (sometimes known as the feast of Dedication), a commemoration of the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE. This feast celebrated the reconsecration of the temple by Judas the Maccabean (164 B.C.) after its profanation three years earlier by the Syrian Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1 Macc 4:36–59; 2 Macc 10:1–8; who had sacrificed a sow to Jupiter on the altar of the Temple). This yearly celebration lasted nine days, was a “lights” ceremony like the feast of Tabernacles (John 7:2), and was celebrated in mid-December Continue reading →

The Annunciation

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TheAnnunciationAt first blush it does seem odd that the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord falls in the midst of Lent. It is an event in the life of Christ that we associate with Advent. That scene in which the Angel Gabriele comes to Mary to announce she will be the mother of Emmanuel, “God with us.”

My friend, Fr. Bill McConville OFM, notes that part of the church’s art tradition is that the scene of the Annunciation often portrays Mary, not empty-handed, but holding a book or a scroll, her reading and reflecting on Scripture being interrupted by the angel’s pronouncement. The tradition is that she is meditating on Isaiah 7 (today’s first reading) in which there is the promise that a virgin will bear a child. Continue reading →

The Crux of things

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Everyone has their own habits as regards the consumption of news. I often scour CNN, the NY Times, CBS and Fox News – a way of seeing what is being said about the topic of the day – or even one network is even covering something. It is all revealing.

Once I week I check on Crux News, “Taking the Catholic Pulse.” Crux was founded by the Boston Globe, but is now independently owned. It dedicated focus concerns Catholicism in the United States Crux features deep coverage of the Holy See by the long-time Vatican watcher and reporter John L. Allen Jr. – a “go-to” interview by the national networks when things Catholic are headline news. Crux also employs Inés San Martín, as Rome Bureau Chief. San Martin is also a veteran of Vatican and European Catholic reporting.

This week’s article by Allen is interesting and worth the read. It is a reminder the American Catholic view is just one view in global, culturally diverse Catholic Church of more than 1.3 billion members: “Each Catholic culture brews a controversy made to order”  Take a moment and have a read.

Can you see it (part 2)

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In today’s gospel we listen into the ongoing conversation of Jesus with the Pharisees. In yesterday’s reflection I asked, “what will you see?” Today we see part of the answer on the part of Pharisees. And buried in that reply is one small phrase that point to the fact that they heard and inferred clearly what Jesus was claiming: that he was God. They rejected that saying, “We have one Father, God.”

It is often said that “the good” becomes the enemy when it keeps you from “the best.” Continue reading →

Can you see it?

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In today’s gospel we see Jesus in an encounter with the Pharisees as time rapidly approaches the events we know as Holy Week. One of the basic threads of this narrative is about the ability to see, to intuit, to recognize the swirl of events that are around you. At first glance they might seem random, chaotic, or singularly isolated. At second glance there might not be any greater clarity, but something edges up to the corner of consciousness – maybe only to be dismissed, to be misconstrued, lost, or attach itself in that nagging way some thoughts do. The thoughts that just won’t be on their way.

Continue reading →

A new life

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The scene in today’ gospel (a woman caught in adultery) is a mixture of zealous righteousness that seeks to enact the law without pardon or quarter, the leadership who want to trap Jesus between mercy and the Law, and a woman caught in sin, fearing for her life.  The Law commands a stoning to death as punishment for her transgressions. More precisely the law speaks of the death of both the man and the woman involved (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22-24). The law makes it clear that stoning could only take place after a careful trial, which included the chance for the condemned to confess his or her wrong (m. Sanhedrin 6:1-4). Continue reading →

Saturday morning cartoons

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Irina Bock is a Silicon Valley-based designer known for creating the Google Android logo. During this pandemic period she started drawing cartoons that highlight how our lives have changed during the pandemic and shared them on Instagram.  For those of us who don’t have that social channel, you can find a collection of some of her cartoons here. Here is a sample of one of the cartoon. Take a morning break and enjoy her insights and creativity.