Sunday's Readings

On the Sunday of the Passion, the sermon is to a great extent the long Gospel reading of the events during the final earthly days of Jesus.

Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus with the full depth of his emotional life, and it is a love that they, in their capacity, returned and shared.

We see this prodigal son in others, and we see him in ourselves.

We may go to Jesus, speak with him, and listen to him as he gives divine utterance to our desperate need.

Jesus will cast out demons and cure the ill. He will go where the Father sends him, even to Jerusalem.

Across the span of centuries, the liturgy and its sacred stories tell of God hearing the cries of the oppressed.

Jesus Christ is our radiant glow. Not only is he light, he is all-sufficient.

“I hate and I love,” the old poet wrote. “Perhaps you ask why I do it. I don’t know. But I sense it and I am crushed” (Catullus, 85).

Those who trust the Lord live in exactly the same world as everyone else.

Jesus is victory over formlessness, emptiness, and the deep darkness of endless night.