REFLECTIONS TODAY Like in any normal family, adult Jews love to have children around them. Children are the source of joy and laughter, and they embody the hopes of the family for a better future. But children are put in their proper place. They cannot join adults, especially males, in their...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The movie “The Pope’s Exorcist,” based on the book of Fr. Gabriele Amorth and starring Russel Crowe, has brought once again people’s attention to the existence and devices of the devil. Fr. Amorth says that many people, even in the Church, do not believe in the...
REFLECTIONS TODAY First Reading • 1 Sm 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23 In those days, Saul went down to the wilderness of Ziph with three thousand picked men of Israel, to search for David in the desert of Ziph. So David and Abishai went among Saul’s soldiers by night, and found Saul lying...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The main church in a diocese is the cathedral, and every cathedral has a cathedra, a bishop’s seat or chair, which symbolizes his authority as teacher and leader of the Christian community. In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of the Pharisees who have taken their seat on the “chair of...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Chancellor of King Henry VIII, once held the highest ecclesiastical and political position in England. However, his failure to persuade Pope Clement VII to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon caused his fall from...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Pope Benedict XVI begins his first encyclical with a lapidary statement, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Deus Caritas Est, 1). It...
REFLECTIONS TODAY When one has a problem with his sight, one does not see clearly, only shadows of people and objects moving. The blind man who sees only partially after Jesus has put spittle in his eyes sees people looking like trees and walking. Only when Jesus lays his hands on his eyes is...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The miracles that Jesus performed do not suffice for the Pharisees, and so they ask Jesus for a sign from heaven, which is God’s confirmation of Jesus’ authority and claims. Jesus sees this as their “leaven” of unbelief, hardness of heart, and hostility towards him. Now,...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Jesus finds himself in the district of Tyre and then in the district of the Decapolis, both Gentile territories. The cure of the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman and the deaf man with speech impediment are favors bestowed on those considered lo-ammi, those who are “not...
REFLECTIONS TODAY In the 2021 movie CODA (“child of deaf adults”), Ruby, the only hearing member of her family, helps her family’s struggling fishing business while pursuing her own aspirations of being a singer. When she decides to forgo college and join the business full-time,...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The kosher laws of the Jews that mark what is “clean” and “unclean” did not just cover food; the Jews also had nothing to do with “unclean people”—the pagans around them and the schismatic Samaritans whom they looked down as only half-Jews. These people were not...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Various religions forbid the consumption of certain types of food. For example, most Hindus do not eat beef, and some Hindus apply the concept of ahimsa (nonviolence) to their diet and consider vegetarianism as ideal. Islam divides foods into haram (forbidden) and halal...
