Scripture Readings for April 1, 2025

Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12; Psalm 46:2-3,5-6,8-9, John 5:1-16

Every time I read this passage from Ezekiel I love the image. The water that flows from the temple gets deeper and deeper, wider and wider and transforms the desert into a place of abundance even changing the salt water in the sea into fresh. It suggests to me the abundance that comes from God. It says abundance is what God wants for us. A place where there is new fresh fruit every month.

I believe the challenge for us to recognize the gift and appreciate the source. Clearly according to the Gospel not everyone is willing to rejoice over good things. A man who has been lame for 38 years is cured but Pharisees are angered because he picks up his mat on the Sabbath. It makes me wonder if there are good things that we miss because we’re too focused on something else. Are there things we decide are wrong, over react to, while good stuff escapes our notice? I know my personal issue is poor driving behavior. I can become obsessed with other drivers for not following the rules of the road. This includes when people stop the flow of traffic to let others in or let other cars turn into traffic before making their left turn off the road. They are probably trying to be nice. Sometimes I can let it go but other times I find myself upset that they are making up their own rules. So this is a very odd little example but I want to suggest that we all have things that we think of as right. We would say this is the way it’s supposed to be and that righteous attitude blocks our ability to actually experience the fullness of what is happening at the time. I suspect we all have some attitudes like that. The question is, if we can box ourselves in with petty little concerns like that, could we also be missing the big picture? When do our pre-conceptions interfere with what else might be happening. More simply, are we too quick to judge. Do we need to be more open?

I know of only one way to go after this kind of thing. Prayer. Praying to God about all of our life and its experiences. Talking to God and then listening to God’s response. We’re in Lent so this is a great time to put aside some additional time to spend in prayer. Maybe a kind of prayer we haven’t tried before. If you are a rosary person try praying with scripture. If you are great with scripture start examining your everyday experiences and talking to God about them. If you do lots of conversational prayer try the rosary as a meditation. In the end, it is about spending time with God so we can see the world in which we live as a person who has a deep trust in God’s involvement in our life and the lives of everyone around us.

If we’re going to get better at recognizing this world in all its aspects as something God gives us every day we have to spend more time deepening our relationship with God. Because on our own we’ll just reinforce our own prejudices. We’re like the lame man by the pool for 38 years, until Jesus comes along he can’t make it to the healing water in time. Jesus is the one who can heal us. Time spent in prayer is the flowing water that will wash us, heal us and quench our thirst.

Scripture Reading for Thursday March 27, 2025

Jeremiah 7:23-28, Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9, Luke 11:14-23

            Today’s readings are amazing examples of the deeply personal relationship God wants to have with us. I think too often we believe that life on this earth is some test God has given us so we can earn our reward in heaven. Today’s readings say otherwise.

            First, we hear God complaining to Jeremiah that his people aren’t listening to what God is saying. It sounds a bit like whining to me. Can you imagine? God whining? Well, at least complaining. Notice this section, “From the day, your ancestors left Egypt until today I have sent you all my servants, the prophets, persistently sending them day after day. But they have not listened to me, have not paid attention; they have deliberately resisted, behaving worse than their ancestors.”  This is somebody who is seriously frustrated with another’s behavior. What does God want? “My one command to them was this … Listen to my voice. … But they did not listen…” Sounds a little like a parent frustrated with their child, doesn’t it?

            But as with any loving parent there’s a good reason to be worried about what will happen if people won’t listen. That’s what Luke’s Gospel is about. Jesus is driving out the devil who has held a person captive as dumb.  But once the man can speak the Pharisees fail to recognize the power of God in their midst. Just like the ancestors from Jeremiah’s time they aren’t listening or in this case seeing what’s right in front of them. God is here, present, rescuing God’s people, freeing a person from the evil that had held him captive.

            That’s what God is trying to tell us all. There is evil in this world that can take us where we don’t want to go. Evil can be like a strong man who guards his home, bad things can be very powerful and destroy who we were meant to be. God wants only to keep us from what will lead to our destruction. God says listen to me and what I say because otherwise you risk your very life. It’s why Jesus draws the line so sharply, “Anyone who is not with me is against me; and anyone who does not gather with me scatters.” This is meant to be black and white. God wants us to live a life of love and happiness. It’s not a test. It’s an opportunity freely given and God has been worried from the beginning that we won’t listen or see what is offered and instead end up a captive to everything that harms us.

            That’s why the response to today’s Psalm is, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts,” that is, listen, really listen!

Scripture Readings for March 21, 2025

Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a, Psalm 105:16-21, Matthew 21:33-46

            Let’s begin with the story in Matthew’s Gospel. This parable is an allegory of salvation history. God is the landowner who builds a vineyard. The tenants are the Hebrew people who are given charge of the vineyard in order to produce a good crop of grapes for the owner. The servants are the prophets God sends to collect the produce at the harvest. The son is Jesus who finally comes to get what the tenants have refused to hand over. The death of the son leads to God taking away the care of the vineyard from the original tenants and handing the vineyard over to new tenants who will respect the owner and the responsibility he has given them. For Matthew this was a story to explain how the Jewish leadership had failed to do what was expected of the chosen people.

            The question I have is what value does this story have for us today? The simplest approach would be to say that we are to be those new tenants of God’s vineyard. We are to bring about good fruit and at the proper time be able to give this produce, our lives on earth, to God as a product of our fidelity for God’s gifts. Gifts frankly that are supposed to be our salvation both here and in the eternal future. I think that’s a good understanding of this parable.

            However, that approach leaves out any consideration for the first reading from Genesis.  The Isaiah quote in the middle of the Gospel allegory caught my attention, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone …” What’s with this stone? The rejected stone is a theme that relates to salvation, the rebuilding of the temple, and the chosen people entering heaven or whatever form of final happiness you want to imagine. It’s the rejected stone that made me think.

So now consider that Joseph was Israel’s favorite son. His brothers want to do away with him. They sell him to traveling merchants who take him to Egypt. The brothers are rejecting Joseph. The same brother who years later will save his family from starvation by welcoming them to Egypt and the abundance he helped create.

            In the same way Jesus is rejected by the Jewish leadership of his time. In the Gospel the tenants say explicitly “This is the heir. Come on, let us kill him and take over his inheritance.” Jesus is the rejected heir who is killed for his inheritance.

            We have parallel rejections. Both Joseph’s brothers and the tenants of the vineyard can’t see the good that is right in front of them. Joseph’s brothers are jealous of this dreamer, the tenants want more than they have a right to. They’re both willing to throw away what they have so they can get something they think will be more or better. The brother’s want their father’s favor and the tenants want all the profits or even the vineyard itself. I think together, today’s readings are about the failure to recognize the good we have right now in our own lives. Nurturing, loving and appreciating those gifts, the life we have. Let’s not let the very life we are leading become its own stumbling stone to happiness. A happiness now that could well be the path to eternal happiness. Happiness that may all be part of the same larger reality.

Scripture Readings for March 18, 2025

Isaiah 1:10, 16-20, Psalm 50:8-9, 16-17, 21, 23, Matthew 23:1-12

When I first read today’s readings my reaction was, boy this is really heavy Lenten stuff. The readings present a clear challenge of turning our lives around. Turning from bad behavior to good behavior. But then I got defensive about it, I don’t know that my behavior is all “that bad”. I don’t think I have lots of really crimson sins or scarlet letters that need wiping away. Getting defensive kind of stopped me. Then after a little bit of time I read it again.

This time I noticed the very first words of Isaiah, “Hear the word of the Lord” and I noticed that what the Lord was saying was, “Come now, let’s set things right.” I realized that the readings weren’t so much about us and what we may or may not have done in the past. These readings are about moving forward and how God views our lives. When Isaiah talks about crimson red becoming white as snow or scarlet becoming white as wool it seems to me he is talking about the change itself. The subject is who we are now and not what we have done in the past. It suggests that what is important is our responding to God in this moment regardless of past behavior. That’s why even the worst of sins, those crimson and scarlet things, can become white as snow, because God wants us to be part of God’s plan, part of God’s life right now and going forward.

I think the message here is God doesn’t carry a grudge but makes all things new in this moment. We simply have to listen to God’s instruction today and respond. To do otherwise is to give past behavior power over our present. Worry and guilt about what we’ve done or should have done creates a burden God doesn’t see. It’s why Jesus in the Gospel is so hard on Pharisees and Scribes because they had gotten all caught up in what is required, rules that meant listening more to other people’s expectations instead of God. As leaders they worried about what other leaders would say, they looked for approval from others and therefore became more concerned about how things looked than for the real needs of other people. They were being hypocrites, betraying their tradition by letting the past tradition supplant what God was doing in the current moment, what people needed right now.

So Jesus’ advice is that we simply work together as servants of each other to help where we can, since none of us has the final answer or the ultimate truth. Our challenge is to “hear the word of the Lord”. That word can come to us in lots of ways: a reading from Scripture, a surprising family situation, a person in need, a friend offering to help. Life itself presents God’s word to us and we have to be ready to grasp it and respond. We have to do what the Psalm says, “Go the right way” and I would add, do it right now. Go the right way, right now. In the present moment respond to what God is asking of us and don’t worry about what came before. When we do that it will be like we wash ourselves clean and as our Psalm says, encounter “the salvation of God.”

Scripture Readings for March 13, 2025

Esther C 12, 14-16, 23-25, Psalm 138: 1-3, 7-8, Matthew 7: 7-12

Today’s readings appear to be quite clear about what they are trying to tell us. Rely on God when you are in need, call to God for help and God will answer and turn your mourning into gladness. It is important for us to recognize our need for God. In more ways than we may care to admit we are dependent on God and should seek God’s help especially when we are desperate, feeling alone or overwhelmed. That is an important fact of the spiritual life.

However, the difficulty I think is we’ve all had times in which we needed help or wanted God to help someone who was clearly in need and the problem we faced wasn’t solved or the good we prayed for didn’t happen. So I think the question is, why does Jesus tell us in very plain language that “everyone who asks, receives and the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened?” No doubt you have prayed for someone who was dying and they did not recover. You have prayed for people who needed food and assistance yet their needs went unmet. How are we to understand what Jesus and the Psalms say when we read, “I called for help and you answered me.”

I have often heard people try to deal with this situation by saying that God did answer their prayer but God said no. I think there are other ways to think about this that are closer to what our faith is trying to tell us.

Consider Deuteronomy 4:29-30, talking to the Jewish people, God’s chosen people, God says,

“When you have grown old, when you have grown corrupt, doing what Yahweh regards as wrong and so provoking his anger you will vanish from the country which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will be utterly destroyed. Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, only a small number will remain.

If however, from there, you start searching once more for Yahweh your God, if you search for him honestly and sincerely, you will find him. You will suffer everything I have said but in the final days you will return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice.”

 What this passage suggests is that God isn’t promising the Jewish people a rescue from their devastation, but rather an open door to welcome them home when they seek to be close to him.

I think that we have too readily thought of this asking, seeking and knocking in terms of our physical needs and current situation. I think what Jesus is talking about is deeper. His is a view to our outlook and attitude towards life, our trust in God. Will we be overwhelmed and give up or no matter what happens will we make the best of it? Even if “the best” means working through really difficult situations. I don’t think God promises us that life will be easy, or that he will rescue us from physical peril. I do think God offers us the chance for life to be rich, full of wonder, beauty and meaning. God says if we come looking we will find life offers us that outlook, a faith that allows us to see the big picture and be happy with our place in it. Isn’t that what we really want, a life of meaning, to see where good comes from. To know that we counted for something, that we made a difference in this world. I think we can all put up with difficult and even devastating times if we knew the result was worth it.

Let me give you one simple and concrete example. We’ve all seen stories on TV about the family whose house is destroyed but no one is hurt. All they can say is how glad they are that all the kids are OK and they’ll figure out what to do next because they’re so glad everyone is still together. That’s the kind of deeper meaning and values that are addressed by the seeking that Jesus is talking about. When everything has gone wrong with the way we think things should be and we can we still see that life itself is good and worth living then God has opened the door and we have been given what we were looking for.

Scripture Readings for Monday, March 10 2025

Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18, Psalm 19:8-10, 15, Matthew 25: 31-46

Today’s readings are so straight forward we might be tempted to think there is nothing left to say. Leviticus is a list of rules of behavior, the Psalm says God’s laws are perfect and Matthew says at the end of time Christ will separate who goes to heaven from those who doesn’t.

I don’t think these readings are trying to frighten us into good behavior. Too often we focus on the last judgement scene and take it literally as what some future reality will look like. I think it’s more about recognizing that human behavior has consequences. It’s saying God values what people do. Our behavior is important in the grand scheme of things. What we do matters to how life turns out.

Leviticus itemizes a list of behaviors that are all about loving and respecting our fellow human beings. These are concrete practical statements about how to act. This list finishes with the command we all recognize because Jesus famously uses it to answer the Pharisee who asks what is the greatest commandment of the Law. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But this is not just a list of rules. It is an invitation by God for us to be holy. It’s in the second line of this reading, “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” God is saying be like me. Be my friend by doing what I do. Act this way because that’s how I act.

When we get to Matthew, we find out why in Leviticus God gave those guidelines, why it’s so important to love and care for our neighbor. The Son of Man explains, twice, once to the saved and again to the damned, that everything we do for or against others we do to the divine presence. God is here with us, a part of life in this world. That means everything we do in this life has ultimate consequences and importance. Each of us lives a life of value to God and therefore is significant to the life of the world. Each of us will make a difference with the life we live. The only question is what kind of difference. Today’s readings say we are invited to do what God does and be holy as God is.

Scripture Readings for February 14, 2018

Joel 2:12-18, Psalm 51: 3-6, 12-14, 17, 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2,

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Is anyone confused by today’s gospel? Jesus says in three different ways, don’t parade your religious practices around for others to see: don’t trumpet your alms giving, don’t make a show of your praying, and when you fast don’t make it appear like you are fasting. Yet here we are at Ash Wednesday and many of us will receive a great big cross of ashes on our foreheads. That isn’t exactly praying behind closed doors where no one will see. You can be sure everyone is going to see ashes all over your forehead.

So why does this reading question public displays of almsgiving, prayer and fasting when that is exactly what Lent asks us to do? Perhaps this story of Jesus teaching about traditional acts of piety isn’t about being modest or unassuming in our religious practices?

The first thing I noticed when I spent time praying with this reading was the repetition of the word, hypocrites. We have three different religious practices, almsgiving, prayer and fasting. But we have one type of behavior that keeps getting criticized, being a hypocrite. Whatever Jesus may be saying about almsgiving, prayer and fasting we know he finds fault with hypocritical behavior.

Every time the almsgiving, prayer or fasting is secret or hidden, it is rewarded by God.  When it is done for others to see, it is considered hypocritical behavior. I think, Jesus is saying the key to the value of our actions is the attitude we have in doing it. Unlike the hypocrite, our thoughts, our feelings, the hidden inner, secret part of us should match what we do in the open.

Jesus isn’t promoting hiding our almsgiving but rather a giving to others that expresses our real concerns. Jesus isn’t against public prayer, he wants our prayer to be about who we are. Jesus isn’t worried people will know we are fasting, he wants us to fast as a way to focus on what we may too often ignore, those inner feelings or attitudes we hide even from ourselves. Jesus wants us to ask ourselves, are we hypocrites? Do we live based on what we believe? Or do we cover our true feelings with phony behavior? Perhaps, it is what we hide deep inside that should concern us most?

So how does Lent and receiving ashes today help? Why the emphasis on almsgiving, prayer and fasting during Lent? The practices of Lent are meant to break into our patterns of behavior. Just as Joel called for trumpets to blow, just as Paul said this was the day of salvation, we need something to get our attention. Coming to get ashes, not eating meat today and on Fridays in Lent, giving money or our time to others, adding a time to pray or changing how we pray during Lent gets our attention so we can practice doing what God’s asks of us. We are being asked to make it intentional so it can become part of who we are.

To use a baseball analogy, think of Lent as our annual spring training. Lent is about getting ready for the regular season. In every sport we understand that to play the game involves learning the skills, doing the drill to get it right. We need to practice what we are going to do during the game so it is part of us. Lent is practice for the game of everyday Catholic life.

We all know everyday life is responsible and rigorous. It is taking care of our children, making decisions at work, building loving relationships, figuring out what is the most important use of our time. The question Jesus poses is: will what we do each day match our Catholic faith? Will what we do, match our innermost feelings and attitudes? What we do with Lent could make a difference. Make the decision to do something different in Lent, put in the practice it takes to make a difference every day from now on.