Category Archives: Musings

Veteran’s Day Quiz

Posted on by
Reply

Today is Veterans Day as well as the anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the solemn landmark at Arlington National Cemetery honoring military personnel killed in action who have never been identified. Since 1999, a vacant crypt on the grounds has honored missing service members from the Vietnam War. The quiz below, from the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in Ohio, provides an opportunity for you to test your knowledge of Veterans Day and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Continue reading →

The Small Things

Posted on by
Reply

The gospel for today is the story of the “Dishonest Steward” (Luke 16:1-8). These verses are the parable itself but it is good to note that the application of the parable continues in vv.9-13.  The additional verses are:

I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

Our reading (plus the extra verses) can be divided into four sayings:

  • the shrewd manager (16:1-8a)
  • worldly wisdom (16:8b-9)
  • trust in trivial matters (16:10-12)
  • serving two masters (16:13-14)

Our reading brings about many different perspectives, including but not limited to:

  1. The point of the parable is not the servant’s dishonesty, but his wise decision-making in the time of crisis.
  2. The servant is a man of the world, who works and thinks with diligence to protect his interest.
  3. The parable may be an irony
  4. There are suggestions that the steward was acting within his legal rights in reducing the debts as he did.
  5. The parable can be about the right and wrong use of money.
  6. The parable might center on the word for “squander” (diaskorpizo). The same word is used concerning the “prodigal son” (15:13)
  7. The parable is about securing our future.

A longer, detailed commentary is needed to unpack all those thoughts. But I will leave you with Craddock’s (Luke, Interpretation Commentaries) concludes his comments with:

The life of a disciple is one of faithful attention to the frequent and familiar tasks of each day, however small and insignificant they may seem. The one faithful in today’s nickels and dimes is the one to be trusted with the big account, but it is easy to be indifferent toward small obligations while quite sincerely believing oneself fully trustworthy in major matters. The realism of these sayings is simply that life consists of a series of seemingly small opportunities. Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. More likely the week will present no more than chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat. [pp. 191-192]

The steward should have been attentive to the small things. Later in this same chapter, a similar lesson is found in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.  The Rich Man surely should have paid more attention to the “small things” like Lazarus.

Perhaps today’s gospel message can be as simple as “Keep in mind the big picture and work on the small things.”

Image Credit: Parable of the Unjust Steward(A.N. Mironov), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Living Waters

Posted on by
Reply

While we celebrate the dedication of the “mother church” of Western Christianity today, I think the image of the prophet Ezekiel goes to the heart of the matter. An Angel of the Lord comes to Ezekiel and describes to the prophet a temple from which rivers of living waters flow to all the corners of the earth.  Everywhere the river flows there is not just life, but abundant life – urbis et orbis – to all the cities and into the world. The living waters turn saltwater to fresh, gives all living creatures the chance to thrive and multiply, and all manner of game, fish, and produce are plentiful. Continue reading →

After the Banquet

Posted on by
Reply

In this day and age, we receive all manner of evites: to meetings, parties, events and more. Upon receiving the evite are we excited? Were we just hoping for a day or evening off? Does this seem more obligatory than interesting? Do we have to rearrange schedules? Are hoping something more exciting comes along? We have choices – delete, never open, don’t answer, answer with regrets, or accept. And then come all the consequences of all those choices we make, intended or not. Does all this seem like a phenomenon of the internet age? Not really. It is as old as time and part of the gospel. Continue reading →

The Parade

Posted on by
Reply

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. The Gospel is the section of the Sermon on the Mount known as the Beatitudes: “Blessed are …” The Beatitudes are like a job description of the one who, operating out of faith in Christ, becomes one of the hagios, the holy ones we honor on this day. In the lives of the Saints, the Church holds up a life as an inspiration to what is possible with God’s grace. Continue reading →

saints and Saints

Posted on by
Reply

During the first 300 year of the Christian church, the people of God endured periods of peace, but also extended periods of persecution. Especially in the local churches, each generation remembered the martyrs and the leaders who exemplified the faith. By the fourth century these women and men were honored in liturgies that commemorated their passing into God’s bright glory. In time, churches were named to honor their memory, sometimes even built on their tombs. And in time relics were collected and honored. Continue reading →

Suffering and Glory

Posted on by
Reply

The first reading for today begins as St. Paul tells us: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” (Rom 8:18) I suspect that when we hear that, we are able to solemnly nod, hoping that once we are in Heaven, all our sufferings will be done away with. And glory? Unimaginable and mysterious – and we are OK with that. We want the world fixed, but at the same time are ready to move on to Heaven – maybe not today, but eventually. Continue reading →

Into the Presence of God

Posted on by
Reply

In tomorrow’s first reading from The Letter to the Romans, St. Paul tells us that you, me and all creation is suffering in this world that is as imperfect and incomplete as we are. God created the world and proclaimed it to be good. Then God created humanity and proclaimed it to be very good.  It was all good until humanity opened a portal for sin to enter the world. Sin that in last Friday’s first reading was personified and an entity seeking to corrupt the good of the world and people, seeking to reign over all, and rob us of glory God intended for us. It is as St. Peter (1 Peter 5:8), evil is on the prowl and means to devour you.

All this leaves us and creation corrupted and unable to be fully in the presence of God as the children and heirs that St. Paul proclaims us to be. Being in the presence of God is a big deal, as big as it comes. Being in God’s presence was lost in Eden and perhaps the rest of Scripture can be thought of as God’s efforts to restore us to that intimate presence afforded to the family of God.

What could keep us from that presence? In the language of the Old Testament it is because something has rendered us “impure” in that we have come in contact with Death. Death that entered the world through the sin of one man. The Book of Leviticus has two whole sections on ritual and moral purity. Leviticus provides rituals of thanksgiving and atonement with one purpose in mind: that we be mindful that we worship the God of Life – Life that is meant to be whole, complete, and without the corruption of decay. Life that is meant to be lived in the presence of God. Life that is Holy as God is Holy.

In the Old Testament, there were regulations to keep the faithful from contact with that which would make them impure and not ready to enter into the presence of God. These regulations were designed so the impurity of forbidden things (e.g., a corpse) would not “infect” the person. The rituals were to restore the person.

In the New Testament, Jesus reaches across those regulations to touch the ritually impure. The lepers, the blind, and in today’s gospel, the woman who was “crippled by a spirit” and as a result was so “bent over” that she was “completely incapable of standing erect.”

Jesus reached out to touch her. Jesus was made corrupted and rendered impure. No, his holiness “infected” the woman, removing that which was never desired or intended by God. Now she stands upright, a child of God, an heir to the glory of God.

Now she may draw near into the presence of God.

Image credit: Healing of the Crippled Woman. By Theophylact, Byzantine Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria. 1055 AD | PD USA

Feast of Saints Simon and Jude

Posted on by
Reply

Today marks the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, both apostles and early missionaries of the Church. Of the two, St. Jude, the patron of lost causes, the namesake of a notable children’s hospital, is the better known of the two. Jude, also known as Judas Thaddaeus was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is generally identified with Thaddeus, and is also variously called Jude of James, Jude Thaddaeus, Judas Thaddaeus or Lebbaeus. He is sometimes identified with Jude, the brother of Jesus, but is clearly distinguished from Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus prior to his crucifixion. Catholic writer Michal Hunt suggests that Judas Thaddaeus became known as Jude after early translators of the New Testament from Greek into English sought to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot and subsequently abbreviated his forename. Most versions of the New Testament in languages other than English and French refer to Judas and Jude by the same name. Continue reading →

Reading the signs

Posted on by
Reply

“Red sky in morning, sailor take warning. Red sky at night, a sailor’s delight” So goes the adage. The saying is most reliable when weather systems predominantly come from the west as they do in the United States. A red sky appears when dust and small particles are trapped in the atmosphere by high pressure. This scatters blue light leaving only red light to give the sky its notable appearance. A red sky at sunset means high pressure is moving in from the west, so therefore the next day will usually be dry and pleasant. Red sky in the morning appears due to the high-pressure weather system having already moved east meaning the good weather has passed, most likely making way for a wet and windy low-pressure system. Hence “sailor take warning.” Continue reading →