The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

Cue the dramatic music. Jeremiah feels the heat all around him. Jesus faces an angry crowd with rocks. How do you face persecution? Readings for today.

Cue the beginning of the dramatic music

It is pretty remarkable to see. If you have ever seen an innocent video clip played with different background music, you can see how much music influences what is going on and how you feel. And the scenes in the readings today certainly call for dramatic, suspenseful music.

In some ways, Jeremiah should have been ready for what occurs, since this reaction has been the story of his entire life. Called to be a prophet at a time when he was concerned about being too young, and throughout his life, Jeremiah has struggled. 

How much? Well, there is the time that he describes trying not to be a prophet, only to have the words of God well up in him like a spring. Yet despite his fidelity, Jeremiah never sees to convince many people of God's message.

But does this mean he is not successful? Perhaps. But the goal of the spiritual life is not success. It is fidelity. Fidelity to God and his message. Fidelity to acting from that relationship with God to love God more and to love our neighbor more. And if success is defined by what the world expects, Jeremiah was not successful.

But if success is measured by God's standards, he was quite successful. Because by all accounts he did what God wanted until the very end. And he remained loyal to the people who rejected him because of God's will.

In the gospel, Jesus faces an angry crowd with rocks. They were going to kill them. As an aside, this gospel, with Jewish leaders with rocks, demonstrates something quite important to keep in mind. The Romans played a heavy part in the killing of Jesus, since Jesus was executed by crucifixion and not stoned with rocks.

The charge against Jesus was blasphemy. But it is based upon a faulty understanding of blasphemy. The Jewish people were not told they could never say the name of Yahweh. They were told they could not blaspheme the name of Yahweh.

We see and hear many today who do in fact blaspheme. The name of Jesus is often used in a way that is not respectful to the power of the Holy Name. Even by Christians! But of course if we speak the truth about God, use God's name in prayer, appreciate its saving and holy power, that is not blasphemy.

But Jesus always speaks the truth. About himself. About his Father. About the Holy Spirit. And about us. It is Jesus who is speaking the truth about things. And perhaps most importantly, Jesus speaks the truth about us too. 

We are loved. We are loved more than we can ever understand. But we have to accept this relationship with Jesus. We have to agree to love Jesus and to love our neighbor. We have to agree to acknowledge our sinfulness, and to turn away from this sinfulness. 

What is interesting about the whole thing is that Jesus is raising our dignity. When we turn away from sin, we become who we are. Jesus is making us more human. Jesus is making us better. Infinitely better if we accept his salvation.

"If I do not perform my Father's works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father."

Jesus provides for us, in the works he does, the proof for his testimony. We can be sure of Jesus' love for us. We can be certain his invitation is true. We can be sure, that despite all of the brokenness in the world, we can, by his grace, be saved.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

Quite successful. Quite sad. Abraham had great highs in life, and some real lows too. But through it all, he kept his faith in God, who makes a covenant with him. And Jesus is the fulfillment.

Abraham had a very, shall we say, circuitous life. An early period of his life, or much of his life, where he became quite successful, financially and really probably in prestige. So financially successful that it got to the point where his herds and flocks were so large that they were getting in the way of lots herds and flocks, his relative. 

On the other hand, for much of his life, there was a sadness in Abraham. He had no children. And especially in that culture, that would have been seen as a terrible disgrace. But somehow God had not blessed Abraham. 

Today, we get the result of Abraham's life. His gratitude for his success and the removal of his disgrace. Through it all, Abraham was a man of faith. Whether it was in the good things that happened in his life and the blessings, where he was grateful to God for all that he had received, or in the challenges and his ability to pray. 

And today, his faith comes to its natural conclusion for him. This great promise that he who had been disgraced was in fact going to have descendants more numerous than the stars. That from Abraham's covenant is going to be the first kind of vision of what God has in store. I should say the second. 

Jesus, of course, is the fulfillment of that vision. Unlike Noah, David, Moses, Abraham, Jesus is not one more covenant in a long list of covenants. Jesus is the covenant. He is both the covenant maker and the covenant itself. 

But, just as Abraham had moments where he was challenged, the biggest challenge in Jesus' day was that he was not like what they expected. How often can we miss the presence of God because we expect something else? We don't see it clearly. 

And Jesus has a hard time explaining who he is, and it's not accepted. There's great challenge. In many ways, this week has been the week of accusations. We had Susanna, we had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 

And in these Gospels, we've really had Jesus being accused of not being authentic by what he is saying. What do we look for in the covenant of God? What do we expect during this season of Lent? Where do we look for God? As we are on the end of Lent and the beginning of Holy Week, how do we need to sharpen our vision to see the ways in which God is present? Today, let us redouble our efforts through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to understand more fully and to see more clearly the Lord Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of the promises of God.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

When I hear about the stories of the great saints, I often have a hard time believing that I could do those things, even with God's grace. Being cast into a white hot furnace? Facing people who are determined to kill me?

The three young men who King Nebuchadnezzar wanted to kill have consistently in the Book of Daniel shown their absolute trust in God. From not wanting to be made to eat food given to them that would violate the Law, to today's dramatic scene where even being thrown into a white hot furnace that even killed the men throwing them into the furnace, even this did not harm them.

Why? Because they trusted completely in God. Consider the absolute power of faith in their attitude, and in their actions. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego throw themselves completely upon God and God's mercy. Consider their powerful statement of faith.

"There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up."

Wow! Their faith is so strong that even if things do not turn out in such a way that they do not need to die, even then they love God so much they can accept whatever happens. And it has to be the case that this powerful witness and complete trust caused King Nebuchadnezzar to praise the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

And in today's gospel, Jesus is continuing to try to help those who want to kill him to see who he clearly is. We heard yesterday that what would seem to be the height of Jesus' failure is indeed the moment of his triumph. "When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM."

And when we know this truth we can become truly free. Free from our sins, those actions that enslave us. And we can know this not because we are smart enough to figure this out on our own, but because Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And when we surrender to the Truth that is Jesus, we know a freedom that is greater than anything we could imagine.

What we have to understand is that this will not always occur in the way we imagine it. We might think that if we follow God everything will work out wonderfully. But the total trust of the three young men in the first readings is only surpassed by the full trust of Jesus at Gethsemane.

Jesus works so hard to help those who wanted to kill him to realize that he wasn't the scandalous Messiah, the one who would be killed, but rather the fulfillment of all the promises made to the prophets. He is the very fulfillment of the Law they think they are trying to uphold.

This Lent ideally is a time where through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving we become able to accept God's grace more fully. This grace enables us to give our lives completely to God because our total self-gift of faith to God is only possible because of God's grace.

And so if we are ever asked, "Is it true you will only worship Jesus Christ?" let us be sure to say yes because we can accept God's grace to do so.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

Don't Complain

I have a friend who loves the Song of Bernadette. His favorite part of the movie is when Bernadette is sick, and the doctor asked, "Did she ever complain?" He wants me to be the one who says, when he dies, "Did he ever complain?" That is so the doctor can give the answer about him that he gave to Bernadette.

The family asks why the doctor asks, and he says, "Because the pain must have been excruciating." I tell him I will ask, "Did he ever complain?" But my answer will be one of emphasis. Not as a question, but as a statement. "Did he evercomplain." 

Truth be told, however, I complain. I try not to do it often, and I think I have gotten a little better, but still I complain. And I often wonder why. Why is it that when things don't go well I am prone to complain. 

I bet Moses asked why the people complained so often as well. After all, he has led the Hebrew people from slavery in the desert, has been the vehicle for God's great and miraculous acts, and still the people complain.

I know for me my complaining comes from a lack of patience. I want things to happen my way, and quickly. Ironically, I also try to sit in silent prayer waiting on God. Go figure. I know God is infinite, but I am still tempted to think I know better.

If you have never been in a desert, you might not realize the wide variety of extremes. It can be blistering hot during the day, but quite frigid at night. That is because the sand reflects the heat back during the day, and because it does not absorb the heat, has nothing to reflect back to at night.

So on one level, it can be easy to see why the people complained. We forget they were bringing with them into the desert their entire livelihood. They had their families to be sure, but also their livestock.

Still, "with their patience worn out by the journey" they reached a breaking point. The problem is that they turn their focus away from God, and turn it to only seeing themselves. As a result, the journey brings about in them a lack of patience, leading to anger, and grumbling at both Moses and God.

And when they turn away from God, they forget all he has done for them. They want to go back to Egypt, but they really didn't like it there either. They hold on to the past. They forget and lose sight of the hope of the promised land given them by God.

Don't we do the same with sin sometimes? Aren't there times when we would rather hold onto our sinfulness, failing to keep our focus on God and the hope he offers us. And when we turn all of our attention inward, we take the perceived good of our sinfulness over the hope we need to have in faith. 

This is what the season of Lent is all about. We are to leave behind those things that enslave us (like how Egypt was a place of slavery), and accept the new life God offers us. During Lent, through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we turn away from sin, to become more faithful to the gospel.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

The story of Susanna in the first readings is a compelling story that tells us that things are not always as they seem. And sometimes life can get pretty dark. But Jesus is the Light of the world. Readings for Today.

Hopefully at Mass today you heard the long form of the daily Mass reading. Even though it is quite long, the story is captivating. A woman is almost killed because people believed the lie about her. Daniel's faithfulness reminds us that God is never outdone if faithfulness.

So much of the story follows a familiar pattern. First, Susanna's husband, Joakim is a very upright man, very well off and deeply respected. In marrying Susanna, Joakim marries a woman who was raised in a good family, and follows the Law of Moses. 

In the Old Testament, the type of wealth enjoyed by Joakim and his wife Susanna was a sign of God's blessings. Another example of this is the story of Job who was also very upright, yet experienced great suffering. Such will be the case in this story as well. 

The experiences recounted serve as a reminder that material wealth is not the sign of righteousness and fidelity. For wealth alone does not guarantee freedom from bad events in life. Susanna will certainly soon discover this. 

Unfortunately not everyone in the world is just and upright. In come those who will create the conflict in the story. Two nameless judges (political leaders) give into their base natures. And they believe in their lust that that can or should have Susanna because they want to have her.

But such is not the way. Most of us learned as little kids that we could not always have what we wanted simply because we wanted it. Our parents used a word with us that was not always popular. Sometimes they said "no."

And this was good for us. It taught us, as I used to say to my students, "The earth revolves around the sun, it does not revolve around you." And to become mature adults we needed to learn this. 

But in the life of faith, recognizing the primacy of God and his grace to help us live the way he wishes us to live is even more important. Because it is more essential that we pay careful attention to what type of person God wants us to be. In fact, that is the key aspect of Lent. Lent is not so much about what we do, but who we become.

The two lustful judges serve as a good reminder as to what happens when we do not look to God to help us to resist temptation. "They suppressed their consciences; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments."

Isn't this the case? Little by little in sin we can convince ourselves that bad is good and good is bad. In their failure to form and to listen to their consciences, they ultimately risk not only their physical safety, but far more importantly they risk losing their spiritual safety.

In treating Susanna as an object, the two men lose their way. In a bad way. Susanna is victimized. We don't know the reaction of her husband, but this had to be something quite difficult to face. And the sadness of her family adds to the problem. 

But Susanna outlines us a good way to make a decision. “I am completely trapped,” Susanna groaned. “If I yield, it will be my death; if I refuse, I cannot escape your power. Yet it is better for me to fall into your power without guilt than to sin before the Lord.”

It can be easy to fall under the spell of those in power. This is what the people did. But God stirs the heart of young Daniel. And through him we learn that God is dependable and trustworthy. Even though it may not appear so at the time, our real hope is in heaven, and that gift comes to us through God's gracious and most generous grace.

God saves those who hope in him. Let us, today, pray that we may trust in God's salvation, and become the persons he wants us to be.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

Looking ahead. The readings for this week heighten the fact that Jesus is heading toward his death. Here is a preview of what we will focus on with the daily Mass readings.

Looking Ahead

In a simple summary, this week is about those who have been accused. But it is even more than that. It is about those who have been accused of something they did not do. Imagine how difficult a place that must be for those accused.

We live in a culture that loves to accuse. It is almost the case that we seem to revel in the failings of others. Ironically, we also are a culture that tends to make excuses for the failings of those people who are famous, that we like, or that do things that our like our own failings.

The theme is easy to understand, as we enter the last week before Holy Week. And if one theme this week is the accused, the second, and more important theme is the constant presence of God reaching out to save us.

Monday, April 7. Susanna is falsely accused, the people assume her guilt, and Daniel, as a faithful servant of God shows the truth.

Today's first reading is one of those that, despite its length, should be heard in the long form. The story is powerful. The scene dramatic. There is suspense, and the demonstration of faithful commitment to God. It serves as a reminder to us of the faithfulness of God.

Tuesday, April 8. Complaining when the path of God is difficult.

If I were Moses, I would have certainly had it by now. How many great deeds can be worked by God through him? And how can all these deeds be done without the people understanding the power of God and the faithful leadership of Moses?

And yet, in my own life, I can see that I simply fail to trust God, despite all I have witnessed, and all I know about the faith. Lord, help me to believe. Increase my faith.

Wednesday, April 9. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are falsely accused, brutally tortured, and saved by God.

King Nebuchadnezzar was not a nice guy. In fact he was mean, unkind, vindictive, and evil. He did not like to be defied. Yet time and again Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego show forth the power of the God of Israel.

Thursday, April 10. Abraham is the man of faith, a man of the covenant, the covenant that leads to Jesus.

Dionne Warwick sang a song called Promises, Promises. The title could be a summary of today's readings. The promise made to Abraham is the focus of the first reading. And the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham is the focus of the gospel.

Friday, April 11. Jeremiah is denounced for doing the works of God and speaking his message.

Poor Jeremiah. He is a prophet who does exactly what God wants, speaks his message most clearly, and his "reward" is his rejection by the very people he was trying to save. It is not hard, then, to see the parallels between Jeremiah and Jesus.

Saturday, April 12. What should we do?

This is the question of the Pharisees. What should we do? But it is not a question that arises from faith, but rather one that arises from the attempt to escape faith. How often do we focus on what we should do. The prophet Ezekiel in the first reading reminds us the question is always about what God will do.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

The Law is clear. “If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” (Lev. 20:10) 

“If a man is discovered lying with a woman who is married to another, they both shall die, the man who was lying with the woman as well as the woman.” (Deut. 22:22)

And yet, Jesus himself does not participate in stoning the woman, or more accurately imposing the death penalty. In fact it seems it could be said that Jesus remains far removed from the whole scene.

This passage is one of the most well-known stories in the gospels. From ancient times until now this story of Jesus has been written about extensively. And according to Gail Day, basically three interpretations about the text have emerged over the centuries. 

The first comes from the Reformer John Calvin. Calvin interprets the story as having Jesus reject the entire Jewish Law, since with faith in Christ we would naturally do what is right. No need for morals or Law per se, because we would almost spontaneously do what is right.

The second comes from Saint Augustine, who emphasizes the wisdom of Jesus in neither condemning the woman nor ignoring her sin. 

Saint Augustine’s position is this: “You have heard then, Let the law be fulfilled, let the adulteress be stoned. But is it by punishing her that the law is to be fulfilled by those that ought to be punished?”

In his view, the important aspect of the story is the conversation that Jesus has with the woman. He neither condemns her nor does he excuse the sin.

And this encounter between the woman and Jesus is powerful indeed. Rather than being forced into being too harsh or too gentle, Jesus threads the needle. 

“Hence, either let this woman go, or together with her receive ye the penalty of the law. Had He said, Let not the adulteress be stoned, He would be proved unjust: had He said, Let her be stoned, He would not appear gentle: let Him say what it became Him to say, both the gentle and the just, Whoever is without sin of you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

The action of Jesus is powerful. It is, according to Saint Augustine the voice of Justice. He writes, “This certainly is the voice of justice: by which justice, those men pierced through as if by a dart, looking into themselves and finding themselves guilty, one after another all withdrew.”

And so, this important lesson we can draw from the text is that we need to be most careful in judging others. It is often the case that when we judge others, we are seeking to avoid judging ourselves. In this way we seek to minimize our sinfulness. 

But neither Calvin nor Saint Augustine focus on the conversation with the scribes and the Pharisees. There are really two conversations of Jesus in this gospel: the conversation first with the scribes and the Pharisees and the conversation with the woman.

Both are challenged to a new way of life without sin. In helping the scribes and the Pharisees to see their own sinfulness, they are calling them to conversion. But telling the woman not to sin again, Jesus is calling her to lasting conversion.

For both comes the encouragement to a life of true freedom. This is the point that Saint Paul makes. The Law only can lead to recognizing sin. Faith in Jesus leads to the true freedom of salvation, a gift we can embrace even now.

Read more . . .

Have you ever been in an argument and just cannot accept you are wrong? Despite an increasing amount of evidence, you won't give in. Will you give Jesus the opportunity to change your heart? Even if doing so causes you to change the way you see the world?. Readings for Today.

Just cannot accept it

It is not always unusual to become involved in an argument that is petty where we continue to argue knowing two things. First, it is not always important. Second, we know that it doesn't matter, because the most important thing is winning.

Despite the works of Jesus, the miraculous cures, the Pharisees simply cannot open their hearts even a little. The just cannot accept that Jesus is the Messiah. To be sure, Jesus is presenting a challenging message. He is providing a new focus of God's presence in life.

We live in a time where we see so many people insisting on their being right that we can understand the Pharisees. We dismiss each other. We insult people who are opposed to our views. At our worst, we might even seek to destroy the other person so that they can no longer bother us.

We see this in the Pharisees with Jesus. We also see this in the first reading in the life of Jeremiah, the prophet who speaks the truth but faces a lot of opposition. We can become stubborn with people like Jeremiah and Jesus because they tell us what we do not want to hear.

Why do we do this? I think behind this inside this attitude is insecurity. We do not want to accept the complexity of the world. We do not want to be challenged. We don't like change, because often it can produce anxiety.

The heart of the spiritual life is the recognition that we are not God. We have to seek to see that in the world, we need to submit to Jesus, not because we are afraid of God's power, but rather because we know God's love for us is unconditional.

Sometimes our life of faith can be simply checking boxes. The Pharisees were often doing this, not because they are bad people, but rather because they saw in the Law the need to follow it perfectly.

But checking boxes, be it with prayer, or good deeds is not enough. It is not the primary goal. The primary goal is to engage in prayer because we love to be in God's presence. We do good deeds because in doing them for others, we see that we are serving Jesus in what we do.

Will you give Jesus the opportunity to change your heart? Even if doing so causes you to change the way you see the world? The gospel shows us that one hangup for the Pharisees is that they think Jesus is from Galilee, since he grew up in Nazareth. This belief about Galilee prevents them from seeing anything else. 

In today's world there can be similar blind spots that keep us from seeing what it is that Jesus is doing. We can struggle with recognizing that faith is an important component to knowledge. Some can only accept reason alone. 

St. Thomas Aquinas thought that theology was faith seeking understanding. It can be the case for some that reason can be thing very thing that leads a person to accept the faith. But it seems that once we accept Jesus in faith, we see reason as the faculty that enables us to accept those things we simply cannot prove using only our reason.

In the end, the season of Lent is about our trying to imitate Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Not my will, but your will be done.

Readings for Today. 

This is an interesting conversation that we get between Moses and God. It, in some ways, could be seen, perhaps, as a conversation between equals. God has finally seen how stiff-necked the people are. God wants to destroy the people, but it's Moses who intervenes to prevent this destruction. So what's going on? 

It certainly cannot be the case that God did not know before this statement that the people were stiff-necked. It certainly cannot be the case that God changed His mind, and at one time thought about bringing the people to the Promised Land, and at the next minute changed His mind and wanted to destroy them all. So what's happening? 

I think God is like a good parent. He's helping Moses to believe. He's helping Moses to see clearly who God is, by letting Moses really stand in defense of the people. It's not that God is going to destroy them. In fact, He's going to help Moses to be the type of leader that is necessary to carry out God's plan. 

We know that just as God threatened to destroy the people, Moses comes down from the mountain pretty angry. And we can understand why. The people have not listened. They've turned away from the way that God wanted them to follow. 

I think in a lot of ways, what the people wanted was something tangible. Moses was delayed from coming down the mountain. We know that these encounters that Moses had with God changed him, and it caused the people to be somewhat afraid. And so, when he's delayed in coming down the mountain, they begin to question, "Well, maybe he's gone. Maybe he's not still around." They're afraid of God. They won't even go to the base of the mountain, because they're afraid. 

And we can understand it. I mean, God is God. He's infinite. He's all-loving. He's all-good, all-knowing. They wanted something they could see and touch. But that's not faith. Faith is about a relationship. Faith is about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is about recognizing that even when we don't understand, we admit that God is God and we are not. 

We live in an age, I think, where too often we want to do things our own way. We want to be in charge. We want to be in control. If we can't see God, then it must mean that God does not exist. We are going to trust those things where there are tangible proofs that things are the way they should be. 

I remember when I was in the seminary, there was a seminary classmate, my ordination classmate, in fact. We had the option of doing a group project. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I hate group projects. I've said before that even as a teacher I assigned them, but as a student I hated them. I didn't like to rely on someone else. 

And so when he asked if I would consider doing a group project with him, at first I said no. But he was persistent and I said, "Okay. Here are some ground rules that we need if this is going to be successful and I'm not going to go to jail for homicide. 

First, you know that you and I have different ways of meeting deadlines. I always meet deadlines, but they're closer to the due date. You'd like to meet the deadline by finishing the project yesterday. I do not work under pressure, that kind of pressure, very well. It does not bring out the best in me." 

But I agreed. And our friendship survived. Although there were moments I wasn't sure it was going to. Now I mention this example because aren't we sometimes like that with God too? Not wanting to do a group project with God. We want to do what we want to do. We want to know with certitude how things are going to work out. We want to do our own thing in our own way. 

But Lent is not about that. It's about fine-tuning our desire to please God. Fine-tuning our desire to accept God through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We belong to the ultimate group project, the church. And God will never abandon this church. And so let us ask the Lord what the disciples asked the Lord. Lord, increase our faith.

Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.

Who can you count on?

I have to say that I'm not terribly excited about the next five months. That's how far away we are from the election. Because it's not going to be pretty, it's going to be ugly, we're going to yell at each other, we're going to be angry, we're going to be frustrated. All of those things are going to happen.

It's interesting that in life we tend to look for someone on this earth to save us, sometimes even from ourselves. We want someone who's going to take care of everything for us and make things better and good and right. But the first reading today tells us something very important, that it matters to whom we look for salvation. It matters.

And Peter is trying in the first reading to remind people about the fidelity of God even when we are not faithful. That we have to be aware that God is always with us, always loves us, and is always faithful, even when we are not. And this great insight comes from the quote that's made from the book of Deuteronomy, the great Shema of Israel. The most important thing, it's what they actually put on a piece of paper or whatever and put it on an article of jewelry and wore it around their foreheads or on their wrist or, and it was on the doorposts of their home.

Their whole lives were supposed to be ordered around these two great commandments. The Lord our God is Lord alone and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Of course, saying those two commandments, touching them, thinking about them is one thing. Doing them, on the other hand, can sometimes be quite another.

It's not always easy to love God, especially if we're concerned that God might ask something of us that we do not want to do. Moreover, it can be easy, as Jesus tells us in the gospel, to love those who love us. But the real test of loving our neighbor is to love those who are not terribly easy to love.

Jesus then rewards this scribe in the gospel for an insight. He asks what the two greatest commandments are. And the answer he's given recognizes a deeper insight that loving God and loving neighbor is worth more than any number of sacrifices. Now today, our sacrifice is, in fact, priceless. It's not like the Old Testament where they sacrificed the blood of bulls and goats and lambs. Our sacrifice is the Lord himself. It is Jesus Christ, the one who died for our sins so that we could live forever. If we're looking to attach ourselves to anyone, let us make sure that that person is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.