” I wonder – did Jesus go through the terrible twos? If so, how did Mary handle it? Whether he was naturally a good child, taught well by Mary, or representing God authentically, he left us lessons to follow and to apply to our daily lives, showing others the love that God and Jesus wanted us to demonstrate to one another.”
“As children, many of us learned this prayer to our Guardian Angel: ‘Angel of God, my Guardian dear,/To whom God’s love commits me here,/Ever this day be at my side,/ To light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.’”
“Making Jesus our cornerstone as his disciples means literal alignment with the values of the kingdom of God. How do we respond to God’s claims upon our lives? Do we line ourselves up according to God’s values of justice, mercy, and integrity? Do we give our share of the glory to God by working for the betterment of this society that we, in our freedom, have built? Do we seek to make the building and walls stronger?”
“We are witnesses to that ending, sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, to trees and to those whom we love and admire, and to those we never knew but who affected our lives in some way, be they Supreme Court Justices or the great-grandmother who wrestled with death from COVID-19. We see the exterior strength. We mourn the weakening at the core.”
“Stay here, mama.”
I flick the switch bringing darkness into the room. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”
“We forget to watch Peter. How many times have we preached, written, taught, and heard about bumbling Peter? But Peter is Everyman. He is us. Every foible, every blind spot, every dumb question. He is us. Perhaps the greatest miracle is that the four Gospels (plus Luke, Volume II, aka Acts) lay out lesson after lesson about Peter. We are given the guidebook to discernment, growth, sin, repentance, and forgiveness, all bound up in Peter. Bumbling, stupid Peter. “Feed my sheep.” Of course, we look to Jesus, our Saviour, the one whom we work so hard to pattern our lives on, and so we miss Peter.”
“As a teacher for many years I learned that you cannot progress the class along based upon the needs of those who are at the very head of the class, it is always necessary to make sure that those who are the furthest behind get what they need to catch up. And often the very best thing that those who are far ahead in the class can do, is stop, turn around, and offer help and assistance to those who are lagging.”
“Undoubtedly Jesus knew of the illness by this time and very probably offered to help. Immediately after he rebuked the fever (which people associated with possession of evil in those days), the mother-in-law immediately got out of bed and headed for the kitchen to cook for the whole group as if she’d never been ill.”
“Sergius of Radonezh was born with the given name of Bartholomew sometime around 1314. (We really only know the date of his death, and he reportedly died at the age of 78. His older brother Stefan had chosen the monastic life, and Sergei followed suit, being given the name of Sergius (Sergei). Yet almost from the get-go he started persuading Stefan that the two of them should move to a more secluded spot to practice their vocation, and eventually the two of them settled in the woods.”
“Last week we saw God provide them with meat and bread, manna and quail that fell from the sky, and all the Israelites had to do was go and pick it up. Today, it’s water—or, specifically, the perceived lack of it. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Complain, complain, complain.”