Take a moment and look back over the last 10 weekdays (or so) and consider the first reading for daily Mass. (If you look at today’s readings, you can use the calendar feature to quickly located the previous readings of the day). The readings are from the Acts of the Apostles. The readings tells the story of the early Christian Church growing out from the fear behind the doors of the Upper Room moving out to the world with a divine mission. The salvation promised to Israel in the Old Testament and accomplished by Jesus is now under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and is extending to include the Gentiles. And it is motley cast of characters that are being send, divinely chosen representatives: “witnesses chosen by God in advance” (Acts 10:41). Continue reading
Walking Grace
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This weekend I was in the back of the church and saw that the Lenten Giving Tree was still up, with unclaimed tags dangling on the barren branches. Apparently, it has been weeks since I have been in the back of the church. My world has gotten so much smaller. I wondered what else was back there as a reminder of a time before pandemic. There were copies of the bulletin for the Fourth Sunday of Lent. And here we are now at the Fourth Sunday of Easter. Things change. It is inevitable. It is the way of things. 
The daily Mass gospels for this week (
Today is the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena – Doctor of the Church, along with St. Francis of Assisi, patron of Italy, mystic, activist, and author – and the list goes on. There is lots of online articles about her life, her writings and more, but through the auspices of Bishop Barron and his Word-on-Fire ministry, today only (April 29, 2020) you can watch his video on 
This is a wonderful article by Ms. Jennifer Manning, mom, teacher, scholar and gifted writer. Jennifer’s mom works with me in the parish and passed her daughter’s “musings” along. And with Jennifer’s permission, I pass this along for your enjoyment.
I would guess many of you are doing special projects, taking up hobbies, or just “spring cleaning” – part of life under “safer-at-home” protocols. The other day I was starting to “spring clean” my room in the parish office. The problem with such endeavors is that you open something, get fascinated by the contents, show the object to someone else, begin to tell stories, and the next thing you know a whole lot of time has passed by. Hopefully, it was not the first box you opened as it might completely derail the larger cleaning project. In my case, it was not the first box, but it was the second. And look what was inside! 
“Something wicked this way comes.” I have always thought that this phrase is elegant – alarming and scary for sure, but elegant nonetheless. Compare it to “Here comes something wicked” or any other more mundane turn of the phrase. The line is original to Macbeth: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”, spoken by by the witches (Act 4, Scene 1). The line is a very striking piece of verse, not only because of it phrasing, but also because of its ominous announcement of an approaching evil, some monster coming into the moment. In its hearing Macbeth has no idea that he is the monster that is coming, or rather becoming. 
The gospel for 
friarmusings 