This coming Sunday marks our journey in Ordinary Time, the 31st Sunday in Year C. You can read a complete commentary on the Sunday Gospel here.
1 He came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. 2 Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, 3 was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. 5 When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” 6 And he came down quickly and received him with joy. 7 When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” 8 But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” 9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:1-10) Continue reading
Today marks the 
In our gospel story, the tax collector went home justified. Sure, he has been extorting people, shaking them down for the Roman overlords and some profit for himself. Sure, he is considered a traitor and an outcast from Jewish life – someone whose life is “breaking bad.” But he has reached a moment of conversion, right? He is about to get right with God; get justified. Here is the one moment, a moment when all the trappings of life are torn away, he finally sees himself in humble relationship to God: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” And the tax collector went home justified. 
Back in the day when I was a parishioner at a small country parish in Northern Virginia, once a year the chairperson of the parish council would speak during the Masses about parish finances. There were several handouts about assets, cash flow, expenses and revenues. All true and necessary things. Even though a parish is meant to be a center of worship, ministry, faith, and life – there are still budgets to make, bills to pay and plans to make. 
This week the first readings for Mass are taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. He lays out stark choices for us and does not hesitate to reference our condition to one of slavery. It paints the picture of an individual facing a world a world of pernicious and pervasive temptation. St Paul spent a lot of time in Corinth, which like any “navy town” is not short on all manner of opportunities to make bad choices. I think that he just observed people, the choices they made, the habits that became ingrained in their lives, and simply wrote: “For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity” (Romans 6:19) from 
From the 
“Quid pro quo” – it has certainly made the news lately. I suspect (or at least hope most people know it is Latin). It is just one of the many expressions and word rooted in Latin that are part of the lexicon of modern English. Here’s a modest guide to some of the major Latin words and expressions, with special attention to those that are sometimes most misunderstood or misused by modern American speakers. 
This coming Sunday marks our journey in Ordinary Time, the 
In the epic novel The Lord of the Rings, the elves of Lothlorien admit that they are losing their forest lands. But they battle on. The describe their struggle as “fighting the long defeat.” This is source of the comment made by Paul Farmer, who has fought a “losing battle” for health care for the poor. In Tracy Kidder’s biography of Farmer called Mountains Beyond Mountains, Farmer says, “I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing… I actually think sometimes we may win… So, you fight the long defeat.”
