scripture reflections

Reflections on Christian bible readings

Tuesday, Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for February 11, 2025

Genesis 1:20-2:4a, Psalm 8:4-9, Mark 7: 1-13

So do we acknowledge that God gives us everything we have?

Do we consider ourselves utterly dependent on God’s gifts for everything in our life?

If not, that’s the perspective we are hearing in today’s readings. Genesis, the Psalm and the Gospel are all telling us that at the very ground of our being, where we begin, God is the one who counts.

In Genesis the ancient Jewish writers made the point by saying that God made everything. That’s a pretty direct statement about how dependent they believed their life was on God and God’s grace.

The Psalmist says we are utterly dependent on God by being a believer who is awed by God’s love and gifts to human beings. “What is man that you should be mindful of him?”

In Mark’s Gospel Jesus is absolutely dismissive of the way the Pharisee’s have twisted Jewish tradition so that the love of God that was part of the original Jewish practices has been lost. Now only the practices survive and none of the recognition that it offered a way to do what God does, love one another.

I think it is hard for us to accept our dependence on God. There isn’t anything obvious in everyday life that demonstrates God’s direct care and support. It’s possible in this day and age for a person to live a life that never encounters a serious proposal of faith in God. Perhaps more to the point, we who profess a faith in God and an interest in being faithful and living a life that exemplifies God’s presence on earth can have a hard time figuring out where God fits into the picture.

Sometimes it’s convenient to think that God lives in Church and that we come to visit and hope to pick up some help so we can go back “out there” and live our lives as good people.

Sometimes we can believe God is active and involved in what happens in our lives beyond Church and other things holy. But when asked it might be hard to explain just how.

I don’t have a clean clear answer to how God creates our world even as we live in it or about why bad things happen to good people. But I do believe that the answer lies in taking the term faith seriously. The best translation of what we call faith is what in any other context we would call trust. So learning to recognize and act on a faith in God is to act in the way we would trust someone, someone who loves us and always acts in our best interest. Like a parent for their child.

So I go back to the questions I asked first.

Do we acknowledge that God gives us everything we have?

Do we consider ourselves utterly dependent on God’s gifts for everything in our life?

Do we trust God?

Can we work hard and be responsible and still sense that the very ability to work and respond is a gift of God’s love. Can we be blessed in our abilities and ambitions yet frustrated in many of life’s situations and still trust that God is here in the midst of it. If we can be open to finding God in this way then we can let go of some of our fears and discover a new freedom that results from trusting in God.

Monday, Second Week of Ordinary Time

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for January 20, 2024

Hebrews 5:1-10, Psalm 110:1-4, Mark 2:18-22

 At first glance these two readings can appear to be pretty far removed from our experience. At least that’s what I thought when I first read them. The Hebrews reading is about Jesus as priest and few of us are priests. Second, Mark’s Gospel is talking about how Jesus’ life on earth creates a special situation. His disciples don’t fast because of it. Since we live 2,000 years after Jesus of Nazareth walked among us it would seem the situation is long past being useful to us.

However, closer examination reveals that the two readings are more about the kind of relationships Jesus had with God the Father and with those around him. Let me explain.

In Hebrews the relationship is identified as a priestly relationship. The reading says, priests were understood as the people’s “representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices to him.” It’s still that way today. We expect priests to be the people with a special relationship to God. Although Hebrews is about being chosen as a priest it reminds us that every priest is chosen from among the people and that Jesus too “learned” and only over time was he “made perfect.” In other words, the topic is priesthood but the subject is Jesus who came as one of us, a human being just like us. Sometimes we can be tempted to think of Jesus as God, kind of temporarily, acting as a person. But that isn’t what Catholic teaching says. It says Jesus was a human being, with two natures. Christmas wouldn’t mean what it does if God were only pretending to be a person. The wonder is that the second person of the blessed trinity became a human being, born just like the rest of us, subject to the same difficulties and in need of the same learning and discipline as the rest of us. If that is true, then Jesus can more easily be seen as a model or representative of us as Christians and the readings as examples of the kind of relationship we can have with God.

Mark’s Gospel tells of the time of Jesus’ own ministry and how it was unique. Jesus identifies himself as the bridegroom and he invites us all to this feast. He is being criticized because his life was an open invitation, like the meals he and his followers enjoyed. Like the meals, he told stories about the King who invites the ordinary people out in the streets to come to the wedding feast. By doing this, Jesus is changing the way people could expect to relate to God. Jesus, the ultimate priest, in Hebrews, is extending the invitation to all us to have that same priestly relationship with God. We are to be as it says in 1 Peter, “a kingdom of priests.” It is this extravagant welcoming behavior that raises the questions among those who follow John the Baptist and the Pharisees in the Gospel.

I think Mark is trying to remind us that Jesus came to bring Good News, which is what the word Gospel means. Jesus didn’t come to ask us to fast, suffer or feel guilty about our mistakes. Jesus came to invite us to a great feast that God offers. Using the marriage analogy opens to a great wealth of interpretation. It isn’t that being married is always easy but rather that the two people are happy together, share a life together and can say over time, we are good for each other and as a result we are better individuals because of it.

This world is not a perfect place, but unless we begin by acknowledging that we are blessed just to be here, that life is a gift that opens to wonderful possibilities we will have a hard time coming to the kind of close personal relationship that God wants to have with us. Together these readings suggest that the relationship with God can have the power and wonder we have thought of in terms of priesthood, but extended to be a banquet for all. This world, this life is God’s gift to us. The first thing we should do isn’t to give up something or restrict our behavior. The first thing we should do, is say thanks.

Thursday, First Week in Ordinary Time

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for January 16, 2025

Hebrews 3:7-14, Psalm 95:6-11, Matthew 1:40-45

Today’s readings are stories of compassion. The story from the Old Testament is familiar. God has led the Israelites out of Egypt, freeing them from oppression. This is recounted ironically in the complaints voiced both in the Hebrews reading with a quote from Psalm 95 and then in today’s Psalm. Finally, the Gospel tells another story of how a person with leprosy asks for help and Jesus compassionately cures him. Both stories are examples of God taking care of God’s people in everyday life saving situations.

I think it is important to recognize the emotional component in Jesus’ actions. Mark says Jesus was “moved with pity.” Jesus operates out of a personal concern and care for people he meets. He is not a miracle making machine out to light up the country side. Hence, the admonition to just go see the priest and perform the rituals that the Law of Moses requires. He is doing this for this person but otherwise things are expected to stay the same. He’s not trying to break the mold, or issue some kind of challenge to the religious establishment. At least not in this action for this man. It’s a personal response. I think that is very important for us to recognize. Because it opens a better way of understanding God’s relationship with us at all times. I suspect that we can think of God’s saving history with humanity as, “what God does.” As in the first reading when God may be angry but God doesn’t abandon God’s newly freed people.

I certainly don’t want to shake the idea that God acts to give us better lives as part of who God is. But I think we need to nuance it somewhat. I think we need to see God’s action, as unbelievable at this may sound, as a personal, emotional response to the one being helped. This is not about building a highway so we can all get around better. It is laying one stone in the water so this person can cross.

God’s gifts are personal, individual to each of us, heart felt offers to make a life better. That is why the Psalmist calls out, “Oh, that today you would hear his voice.” We are asked to be in conversation with this God. God is saying, “Let’s be friends.” Too often we can’t believe or accept that such an offer is real. We do what the Psalmist deplores, we “harden our hearts” like the Israelites in the desert. Having been saved from their Egyptian oppressors they complained about conditions in the desert, they tested God.

The man with leprosy offers a better model. So giddy with being cured he goes off and tells everyone. The trick is to do what the author of Hebrews advises, “hold the beginning of the reality firm until the end.” If we are blessed enough to see and hear what God has given us then we must hold on to that reality in today’s world for each of today’s situations. Isn’t that was we do with a friend who cares for us?

It’s also why prayer is so important. Like a conversation with another person, prayer is specifically a time when we adopt a one-on-one stance towards God. By praying, we acknowledge the personal relationship just as the leper did by asking for help and, in fact, as the Israelites did by complaining to God about their situation. God already considers the relationship personal. The issue is, will we?

Friday, after Epiphany

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings, January 10, 2025

1 John 5:5-13, Psalm 147:12-15, 19-20, Luke 5:12-16

If the letter from John is written for people who need to be reassured of what faith in Jesus means, the man in today’s gospel doesn’t need to read it. This man falls at Jesus feet and literally pleads for his help. There is no doubt about Jesus and what he can do. The situation is absolutely straight forward, he sees Jesus and pleads to be healed. He knows it’s just a question of whether Jesus wants to. “If you wish” he says.

Isn’t it interesting that roughly 70 years later John’s community of believers is getting confused about who Jesus is and what that means for them? For the man with the skin disease it was simple. Jesus healed people, would he heal me? I suspect there wasn’t any theology involved at all. The man wasn’t concerned about whether Jesus was the Son of God or not. He needed help, this was his chance.

Jesus wasn’t trying to teach this man anything either. There’s no instruction about how to live his life he just sends him to the Temple to fulfill the Jewish requirements for cleansing. If anything, Jesus is trying to keep it quiet. But that isn’t working because people are passing along the information, the “good news.”

It seems to me there’s a lesson here about keeping things simple and honest. About sticking with what you know. Jesus healed the man because that’s what he was about. The Psalm says God does that kind of thing all the time. For Jerusalem, “he strengthens the bars of your gates.” God has: “blessed your children,” “granted peace,” and filled people with the “best of wheat.” However, we are far more removed from the person of Jesus of Nazareth than John’s community and we often aren’t sure anymore what he can do. We wonder who he is. The challenges to understanding what meaning there is to human life come from way beyond variations in Christian faith to non-Christians, non-theists, humanists and even those who have no interest at all. So I think it’s important to know and hold on to what we believe. We need to understand what gives meaning to our lives. There are plenty of alternatives within easy reach.

For the man in the village, “when he saw Jesus,” he knew what he wanted. Maybe the problem is we don’t see Jesus anymore? Have we made Christian principles so abstract they are no longer connected to their source? Has it become hard to recognize the gifts God gives? For John’s community, John could say, “Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within himself.” Have we lost touch with God’s testimony: that sense within us that God is with us, that God makes the world a good place? Maybe that’s why we don’t see Jesus. Belief in God is a different world view. It’s not a magical world view. It does say we are not alone. There is more to life than what is on the surface and the evidence is in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ life tells us what God’s life is about. He is willing to heal us, but first we have to see him, to recognize that reality.

I believe we have the possibility of overcoming the challenges in our world because of our belief in Jesus and the life he lived. That belief forms the basis, a foundation if you will, for a solid happy life. It sets up a course of action we can follow. If we use the translation from the New Jerusalem Bible instead of the New American, we may have the best way to say it: “Who can overcome the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Thursday, after Epiphany

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for January 9, 2025

1 John 4:19-5:4, Psalm 72:1-2, 14, 15bc, 17, Luke 4:14-22

I think for 1 John it’s safe to say that to love God we need to love our neighbor. To be authentic Christians means we have to take care of each other. Which is exactly what Jesus is talking about in Luke’s Gospel today. When he reads Isaiah to his neighbors in his home town he is not only claiming to be the Messiah to bring about God’s promises, he is identifying what those promises are. From the time of Isaiah God’s salvation has meant: good news to the poor, liberty to captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed and a year acceptable to the Lord.

I’m not sure there is much that can be added to that message. The challenge to us is will we do what Jesus says is the fulfillment of God’s promises. It’s apparent that so far in the history of Christendom we haven’t succeeded. Jesus literally embodied God’s fulfillment since he did all those things. The message being, this is the time for salvation from all that oppresses us. I believe each of us must embrace each moment, each decision, each choice we have with love for our neighbor. John says God have loved us first, now if we are to love God in return there is only one thing we can do. Extend love to everyone else.

It may be worth noting that this reading in the synagogue in Nazareth is the very beginning of Jesus’ work. Jesus starts at home. He doesn’t go off to some distant land or to people he doesn’t know. Jesus begins with the people who know him best. Maybe we should worry less about world poverty and care more and pay more attention to the people we grew up with. How are those relationships? Are there needs among our friends that are going unmet? Is there someone we know who needs to be set free from what oppresses them? Offering love to those closest to us may be personally challenging but it may also reveal exactly what we need to see as well. It may be the beginning of taking our faith seriously. That what we believe requires certain behavior.

Maybe if we could begin with those closest to us, if we could take each decision and choose based on the love of others we would accomplish what John’s letter claims, “the victory that conquers the world is our faith.”

Monday, after Epiphany

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for January 6, 2025

1 John 3:22-4:6, Psalm 2:7bc-8, 10-12a, Matthew 4:12-17, 23-25

I think we need to begin with what Jesus says as he begins his public life, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This has been a strong influence on my own understanding of what Jesus was trying to do. The question for me focuses on what you mean by “at hand.” In my opinion it has too often been interpreted as some undefined future, perhaps when the world ends and God reigns over heaven and earth. Perhaps it just means it’s not here yet and someday life on this earth will be idyllic. Each of these responses is strongly influenced by ideas of what “the Kingdom of heaven” means. These are often images of life after death or God’s final victory in the end times, i.e. the end of the world.

However, I have come to believe that Jesus had something else in mind. That Jesus saw the Kingdom as a present possibility. It was “at hand” because it was available here and now. This view matches with Jesus own behavior. Today’s reading gives us a very nice summary:

“Teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness among the people.”

The construction of this summary puts proclaiming the Gospel in the center of two actions, teaching and curing. So in the style of the time the author is telling us the point of both actions is proclaiming the Kingdom. So Jesus spent his efforts not just telling people about the Kingdom but bringing it into being by curing people then and there. The good news (Gospel) is the Kingdom starts here with lives made whole. We know that Jesus cures people again and again throughout the gospels. Today’s scripture scholars admit that he was probably a wonder worker. The result is pretty clear, “great crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan followed him.”

It may be easy to go along with the idea of Jesus bringing the Kingdom into being for his contemporaries because we believe he is the Son of God. But history makes it harder for us to see the Kingdom as “at hand” for us. Too much bad stuff goes on to believe that God’s Kingdom could be part of our lives now. I think some of the answer is in our first reading where John is concerned about the anti-Christ or those people and things in the world which are opposed to Jesus and therefore the Kingdom he preached. The anti-Christ is often seen as a signal of the end of the world and John mentions this explicitly, “This is the spirit of the antichrist who, as you heard, is to come.” But then, significantly for my argument, says, “But in fact is already in the world.” This letter comes from around the time of the John’s Gospel, about 100 A.D. Already very early in the Christian tradition a sacred writer has to admit that end time events are already taking place. My point is, images and statements that can be interpreted as dealing with the final days of the human race are often also valid as statements about significance and meaning for human life. The Kingdom of heaven may well not be fully formed until the end of time but that doesn’t mean it can’t make a real difference for us right now. I believe that’s how Jesus saw it. The Kingdom is “at hand.” It is available to us if we act as John’s letter tells us, “we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.” This belief and resulting behavior can change us and the world we live in.

Christmas Weekday

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for January 3, 2024

1 John 2:29-3:6, Psalm 98:1, 3-6, John 1:29-34

Twice in today’s Gospel, John the Baptist says he didn’t know Jesus but he recognizes him as Son of God because he did see the Spirit come and stay with him. Well, to me that sounds a lot like our circumstances. We don’t really know Jesus either. By which I mean the presence of God right here in this world. As I have often suggested, we too easily think of God as distant, a divine entity off in heaven somewhere to whom we prayer when our life situation turns in the wrong direction. We haven’t been effectively taught that the God of Jesus, his Abba, is present to us here and now. Yet that is exactly what the Christmas story is all about. The divine born as a child, helpless, dependent on the people around him for his every need. God sanctifying human life by being present in it.

Can we, like John the Baptist, recognize the Spirit in the people we meet? That’s really what the author of 1 John is trying to help us do. He’s exhorting his community to stay true to their belief in Jesus as Son of God. He makes the case that once a person has come to know Jesus and what Christian life is all about that person wouldn’t go back to his or her former way of life. I think our challenge isn’t that much different. We need to recognize the Spirit’s presence in ourselves and others. We know people aren’t perfect but surely we recognize that all of us are trying to do the right thing, care for others, love our children and live a good life. That’s what the Church means when it says we are the Body of Christ in the world today. It isn’t just a nice platitude but rather the way of seeing the world as a place of God’s presence and activity. Aren’t we all trying to make the world and our lives better? Isn’t everyone regardless of religion or background, hoping for a better future. Don’t we feel a desire for life that is good and could be even better. That’s the Spirit John the Baptist could see in Jesus, a divine presence, that signaled a real change from the norm of his time.

1 John makes that point by saying, “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” This is the time to live out that reality as the Psalm says by not being “lawless” but, “sing to the Lord a new song” recognizing that Jesus has taken away our sins and the guilt that weighs us down. We are beloved children of God and can forge new paths. We just have to recognize the Spirit that stays with us, as it did with Jesus. The Spirit John the Baptist saw in Jesus we can see too, in ourselves, in others and accept that Spirit as the life God gives us each day. As children of God we too can baptize with the Holy Spirit, by bringing new life to ourselves and others in how we approach and conduct daily life. As the first letter of John says, “what we shall be has not been revealed,” but “we are God’s children now.” We are the people who can make God’s Spirit active in this world. Let’s do it.

Solemnity, Mary the Mother of God

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for January 1, 2025

Numbers 6:22-27, Psalm 67:2-3, 5-6, 8, Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 2:16-21

One of the things about reflecting on Scripture, or our lives for that matter, is you have to pay attention to the details. Sacred Scripture is the result of many people pouring over the text for years and then other people doing the same thing again, keeping, adding and adjusting until what we have in our Bibles is an amazingly refined piece of work. Nothing is in there by accident, nor was it something that someone dashed off in a moment of hurried necessity.

So I make this point because there’s a detail in today’s reading that I think raises very interesting questions. I think I noticed it because today is the solemnity of Mary as the Mother of God. Luke is talking about the shepherd’s coming to visit Jesus and passing on to Mary and Joseph what the angel’s had told them. And then he says, “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” This reminds me of the scene later in Luke after Jesus, now 12, has been talking with the teachers in the temple. Once again Luke says, “His mother kept all these things in her heart.” So for me, Luke is saying Mary is trying to understand what these events mean even after visits from angels. Why else do you reflect on something?

This pattern began the first time the angel comes to Mary and announces that she is favored by God. According to Luke, Mary’s response was to be disturbed and “asked herself what this greeting could mean.” Luke is portraying Mary as not being sure what is going on. To me the real indicator comes after the angel tells Mary that her cousin Elizabeth is six months pregnant and she immediately leaves and goes “as quickly as she could” to see Elizabeth. I’m convinced she’s going primarily to verify what the angel has told her.

We see this same behavior in the shepherds of today’s reading. The angel announces Jesus’ birth to a group of shepherds and gives them a sign they can verify. This child will be lying in a manger, an animals feeding trough. What do they do? They go “in haste” to see if it’s true. Luke spells out the evidence, they find “the infant lying in a manger.” And only then do they tell Mary and Joseph the message of the angel. Finally, when they return glorifying God for all they had seen it is because it was, “just as it had been told to them.” In other words they weren’t sure it was true until they could see it.

Now you could write off Mary’s reflecting on all these things in her heart as devote behavior in the face of divine revelations. However, I think Luke is giving us a sample of what happens when we encounter God acting in our lives. What, in retrospect, we interpret as God’s help in our lives is often something we didn’t recognize at the time. Coming to see God’s action is a process of real life verification, checking out what parts are good and what isn’t. I don’t think we should read these wonderful Bible stories and think, “how come that doesn’t happen anymore?” It wasn’t obvious to the people at the time. It took time for people to figure out that these events were God’s action.

Luke’s telling of the story is from the perspective of one who understands the significance of what happened. We shouldn’t take them so literally that we miss the underlying meaning. Without undercutting the point of the story Luke is hinting at what it might have been like for the original participants. Which suggests what it might be like for us. God could be bowling us over and we may not, in the moment, recognize what turns out to have been an angel in front of us.

Seventh Day, Octave of Christmas

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings, December 31, 2024

1 John 2:18-21, Psalm 96:1-2, 11-13, John 1:1-18

The first thing that strikes me about John’s prologue is the cosmic feel to it. It’s big. Unlike Matthew and Luke, John is not talking about the highly specific historical Jewish connections to Jesus. It is an introduction that stresses the universal nature and divine origin of Jesus. The Word which becomes flesh is the source of creation, the light that is the life of all human beings and which stands undefeated against the darkness.

It seems significant to me that in describing the eternal origins of Jesus of Nazareth John feels it necessary to include a darkness that stands over against the light. Importantly the darkness does not overpower the light. But it is there. We see this opposing force in our first reading from the 2nd letter of John. There he is talking about anti-Christs who have left the Christian community. He believes their appearance heralds the end of time and is encouraging the community to recognize that those who left were never really part of them. He wants the community to appreciate that they know the true Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. This truth never deceives us into going down a wrong path. The darkness doesn’t win here either.

This ultimate win over darkness doesn’t mean the road is clear cut. John’s prologue points out two awful ironies.

“The world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.”

We know for all the wonderful things Jesus did during his life and the great parties he went to along the way it ended badly. He was tortured and hung on a cross to die. Clearly there is a challenge to being part of the world, even if you are the Son of God.

The upside to this story is that light and truth win. So for us it’s a question of sticking with the good people who like John’s community of believers are willing to stick together and recognize the truth of God’s love and presence. We know not everyone will see it this way. However, as John says, “to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God.” Becoming children of God is a real gift. According to the Gospel, children of God are “not born of human stock, or human desire or human will but from God himself.” I think the way to understand this is that believing in Jesus is not automatic. We aren’t Christian like we’re Asian, or African American or White. We’re not Christian in the way we’re tall or introverted or a great singer. Coming to believe in Jesus as Son of God is a process that often begins when we’re children and we hear the Christmas story or accompany parents to Mass. We become believers because of other believers. Even Jesus needed the support of other people. In the beginning it’s John the Baptist who tells others about Jesus. So as adults we either see the idea of God present in our lives as something that offers meaning to life or we reject it. Nobody forces this on any of us. It’s our choice. It’s a gift from God himself because what comes from God is our human freedom. To be children of God is to have the freedom to take full advantage of our talents and gifts, to create a world of peace and justice. The creation that began before time with God’s Word and light isn’t finished. As children of God, it’s just our turn.

Sixth Day, Octave of Christmas

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings, December 30, 2024

1 John 2:12-17, Psalm 96:7-10, Luke 2:36-40

Today’s Gospel continues the story of Mary and Joseph bringing Jesus to the Temple to be consecrated to the Lord. Simeon, an upright and devout man, has just recognized Jesus as the promised savior. Now Anna, a prophetess, arrives and talks about Jesus to those waiting for redemption. Both are devout Jews, both, a man and a woman, were able to recognize Jesus as the redeemer. Then Mary, Joseph and Jesus go back to Nazareth where Jesus grows up.

I’m glad Luke sees these two believers as important to telling the story of Jesus. I also like that the family goes back home where Jesus “grew and became strong,” a person that God “favors.” This has an everyday feel to it. I think that’s important for us because too often religion and the belief in God are assigned to the professionals. Priests, nuns, preachers and monks are supposed to be religious. The rest of us operate in the real world and drop-in on religious events like sacraments, Mass or prayer services. It’s as if we have to take time out for religious or spiritual activities. That’s not a helpful way to see faith or things we label spiritual because it suggests the spiritual and spiritual things are separate from regular stuff.

The problem with separating the spiritual from the everyday is that we can begin to identify the spiritual as holy and the everyday stuff as something less. All this other stuff then looks like it is keeping us from being holy because we’re all tied up with kids, work, vacations, spouses and well, life. If, however, you are Christian and believe in the Incarnation, that faith tells us all this stuff is what’s holy and blessed and part of being spiritual. It’s not separate at all.

So we have to begin to rewire our thinking to understand that belief in God and religion is a language for talking about our life values and how what we do means something. I know for many people spirituality has gotten so institutionalized, so dependent on a special language that we don’t recognize ourselves or God in it anymore. I actually think the best thing to do is to talk to other people about that problem. If we talk to others, regular other believers, about what they believe and why, it helps sort out what makes sense for us. We have good evidence that this works from today’s first reading. John is praising different groups of regular Christians, people he labels as children, fathers and young men, because they “know the Father” and “are strong” noting, “the word remains in you.” This letter from John is dealing with the problem that some people had left the community and those who remained were worried that something had gone wrong. He is reassuring them that they can know what is right and act accordingly.

So can we. All of us, just as Simeon and Anna, can recognize God in our lives. The whole point of Jesus being born is to say that God is here with us every day right with the kids, work, vacations, spouses and everything else. We just have to look for God’s presence in everyday situations, perhaps talk with a few others about how they see it and accept that we too can know “him who is from the beginning.”