Category: Sermons

When Jesus first meets Nathanael in John’s gospel, he promises him something extraordinary: “You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Angels are all over our scriptures. From Genesis to Revelation, from Jacob’s dream to Gabriel’s annunciation, from the songs of the heavenly host to…

A little while back I was watching some television show, and for some random plot reason or another one of the characters ended up in a monastery which was under a vow of silence. She was assigned to clean a wine vat with another resident, and there was a rather comical scene, because the vat…

Today, I feel called by the scripture to talk about anxiety. I think about anxiety a lot, to be frank—I’m a very anxious person, by nature. And the most fabulous—and resonant—definition of anxiety I’ve ever heard is that anxiety is using your imagination to be mean to you. Whoof. And yet… well… yes! Thing is,…

The scene we just heard from Luke’s gospel is a familiar one to anyone who regularly prays the Angelus. For a time, I prayed it twice a day, six days a week while a brother with the SSJE. The community’s tower bell rings the Angelus daily at noon, three hundred and sixty three days a…

Easter has always captivated my imagination—even in my days as an angry atheist, convinced that such miraculous events are of course impossible. Yet, in this season of my life, marked as it is by bereavement, scarred by the awful and unanticipated absence of my late parents, Easter—with all its accompanying hope and joy—has been less…

This evening’s lections highlight for us a very important dual reality about what we might call “the Religious world-view.” The passages from Zechariah and Psalm 87 remind us that the beauty and goodness of religion have real power to bring people into a relationship with the Divine. Here a context is disclosed where the abundance…

Our religious practice has a pretty tenuous relationship with historical time. Of course we know that centuries separate the Exodus and the Resurrection, but in liturgical time, they happen on the same day. Likewise manna in the wilderness and the Eucharist, the Suffering Servant and the Passion of Christ: time folds in on itself, and…

Enter into the joy of your master. This solitary phrase from twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel has rung like a bell through my praying imagination this week. As he discloses what we commonly call “The Parable of the Talents,” this phrase rings twice from the lips of Matthew’s Jesus. Enter into the joy of your…