REFLECTIONS TODAY The heart is the measure of true service. True honesty is having a heart that is willing to be taught. And who should be teaching us? Only Jesus! We are all his students, disciples who learn every day from the example he left behind—his words and deeds. But where...
REFLECTIONS TODAY First Reading • Sir 27:4-7 When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when one speaks. As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace, so in tribulation is the test of the just. The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does one’s...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Gospel • Mark 10:13-16 Our readings today speak of receiving God’s grace with an open heart. In the First Reading, receiving God’s command with an open heart is also like praying. In order for our prayers to be fruitful, we speak to God with our hearts and minds open to what...
REFLECTIONS TODAY In modern times, one of the traditional values under severest attack is the unitive and permanent character of marriage. One can hardly count by fingers countries where divorce has not yet been legalized. And marriage can be dissolved for flimsiest of reasons, often under the...
REFLECTIONS TODAY While we hear of people who try to kill themselves and even succeed in doing so for one reason or another, there are others who cling to dear life in spite of severe physical impairments that deprive them of a “meaningful” life. For them, it is better to go through life...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The Catholic Church is a bureaucracy populated by leaders who may be goodhearted but are less-than perfect souls. Pope Francis, in his intention to reform the Roman Curia, has warned its leaders of the diseases of leadership that might make them insular, imperious, and...
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...
