Sunday's Readings

In a sense, we are not so different from the first disciples. Faith must be drawn out of us, and only the power of Christ can do that.

Lent tells us about dried bones, hope that is lost, flesh that is going to death. We know all this, and yet do everything to turn away.

Though enlightened, we cannot see all the workings of Christ. The working of God perceived by our senses and accessible, though in a limited way, to our thought, is a very small measure of what God is doing and how God works.

Again and again, Israel is tested.  Again and again, Christians bear the wounds of Christ. Hunger and thirst become signs of one’s deepest need, the need for God from moment to moment.

Discipleship is felt in the tension between two legitimate and apparently contradictory ways of responding to the call of God. One is to remain stationary and rooted; the other is to move and grow.

A new and better life is imagined outside the circle of providence, outside the garden of all good. But, alas, life without God is death.

Moses, representing the law, and Elijah, representing the prophets, appeared with him, showing that the law and the prophets are assumed and fulfilled in Christ.

It is not enough to do the good, one must will the good. It is not enough to refrain from evil actions; one must refrain from evil thoughts and feelings (anger, lust, jealousy) which likewise damage human community.

We loosen, by God’s augmenting help, our bondage to our own sins by obsessing less over our failure and focusing more on relieving the pain of others.