REFLECTIONS TODAY Jesus uses the symbol of drinking his cup in accepting his suffering in obedience to the Father’s will. At the Last Supper, he tells his disciples to drink from the cup of his blood, shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins (Mt 26:27-28). In Gethsemane, he prays, “My...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Jesus uses the phrase “the chair of Moses” to signify the place of authority that the scribes and the Pharisees have in interpreting the Law. The allusion is not to the chairs in which the Sanhedrin sit in trying and determining cases, but to those on which “doctors of the...
REFLECTIONS TODAY God is never outdone in generosity. Human conduct is measured mainly by reciprocity of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others what you want others to do unto you”). But God rewards by a hundredfold, here described by Jesus as “good measure, packed together, shaken down, and...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The Second Sunday of Lent features the transfiguration of Jesus on a high mountain. The feast of the Transfiguration itself is celebrated on Aug. 6 “Transfiguration” renders the Greek metamorphosis which describes the change in the appearance of Jesus. This is also the origin...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The Jews are enjoined by the Mosaic Law to love their neighbors—their fellow Jews—as they love themselves (Lv 19:18). With regard a “stranger”—one who is not a member of a tribe or a non-Israelite—the Jews would exhibit a paradoxical combination of hostility and...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Commenting on the Decalogue in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus focuses on the Fifth Commandment: “You shall not kill” (Ex 20:13). Murder, first committed by Cain against his brother Abel, makes the victim’s blood cry out to God from the ground (Gn 4:10). Jesus says that evil...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Reflections today Jesus teaches His disciples, “Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven” (Mt 23:9). Common sense tells us that Jesus is not forbidding children to use the word “father.” What He means to say is that only God has the perfection of...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Seemingly, some people in the crowd are not satisfied with the mighty acts of Jesus and so, to test him, they ask for a more spectacular miracle. Jesus refuses their demand and refers only to the sign of Jonah. The “sign” could not be the miraculous saving of Jonah in the...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Without doubt, the Lord’s Prayer is one of the most precious inheritance Jesus has left us. Like the great commandment of Love, it points to two directions: The way of ascent to God, and the way of descent to the horizon of the world and of human beings. The first three...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Lk 4:1-13 Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God,...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The tax collector Levi is identified with, and often referred to, as Matthew, the name given in the Gospel of Matthew (9:9). At the time Jesus calls him, Levi is at the customs post, his place of work. As tax collector, he is regarded as a public sinner, despised among the Jews as...
REFLECTIONS TODAY In predicting his passion, Jesus did not exactly say that he would be killed by crucifixion, but he referred to his would-be follower as carrying a cross. Was this invitation an afterthought on the part of Christians after Jesus had died on the cross? The mention of taking the...
