Send us a text

Pope Francis, who has been reading these same passages in Mark’s Gospel, had a close encounter with this Gospel during his papal audience this past Wednesday.

Send us a text

James Carroll, in his new memoir, “The Truth at the Heart of the Lie,” recalls this experience.  On his first visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, he was taken aback by the rudely jostling pilgrims fighting for the best places. When he returned a few days later, he saw it with new eyes:

“I saw for the first time what it actually meant that Jesus Christ was a human being, in the thick of human life, with all its chaos, treason and ruined dreams. The Holy Sepulcher, as I saw it now, was a sacrament of Christ’s part in our human condition.”

 [email protected]

Send us a text

The prohibitions are like the bottom of a glass. If the glass does not have a bottom, everything just spills out; it can’t hold anything.

The prohibitions create a boundary or container -the bottom in the glass -but there is nothing in it yet. To fill up the glass, then, is not merely not doing something;  it actually demands doing something positive.

[email protected]

Send us a text

The children are at the center of the three passion predictions.  Jesus is teaching us what it means to follow the Messiah and therefore, what it means to be church.

I am presiding at the 5 pm Sunday mass at St. Andrew Rochester. 

[email protected] 

Send us a text

Whenever you want to draw lines in order to mark who is outside the kingdom and who is inside, always remember: Jesus is on the other side of the line! 

[email protected]

Send us a text

Jesus calls them into a circle around him - we infer the circle from the placing of the child in the middle - and teaches by word and deed. 

Send us a text

Both narratively and geographically, today’s Gospel stands at a crossroads. It’s right in the middle of Mark, almost exactly halfway through the story. 

Send us a text

As if he could understand Hebrew, Jesus said to the man Ephphetha. "Be opened" is not addressed to the ears; it is a command to the heart. When the heart opens, immediately the ears are unplugged and the tongue is loosed.

Send us a text

Pope Francis quotes the 19th-century composer Gustav Mahler, who said, "Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."

Send us a text

I have Mass on Sunday at Church of the Holy Spirit in Highland, MI. This is revised version of the homily for the parish Mass.