Gospel Reflections for Challenging Times

  Friday – St John Bosco Gospel – Mark 4:26-34 Judge Me By My Size? Capernaum, Along the Sea of Galilee You see this dot at the end of this sentence.   Yeah, that punctuation mark, the period!   That’s how big (small) a mustard seed is.   That tiny little dot that Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel.   That smidgen that can end up growing to a height of over 9 feet!   Such a tiny thing that grows to majestic heights!   What Jesus doesn’t mention is that the mustard plant is essentially a weed!   It is considered the largest of all shrubs.   Once it takes root, it grows with great abandon and is almost impossible to get rid of.   Kind of like kudzu in the South!   Nobody sows mustard seed; nobody puts it in their garden.   If they did, it would over-run the garden and choke out all other plants.     Most of the people in Jesus’ time dismissed Him as unimportant; they saw Him only as a carpenter’s son an...

  Thursday 3 rd Week in Ordinary Time Gospel – Mark 4:21-25 Keep the Light Aflame! Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem 3 days ago, on Monday January 27, we observed the 80 th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp.   Until the liberation of some 7 thousand prisoners remaining at the site of the camp by soldiers of the Red Army, the German Nazis had murdered approx. 1.1 million people in Auschwitz, mostly Jews, but also Poles, the Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and people of other nationalities. 2 years earlier on Jan 14, 1943, Anne Frank wrote this in her diary: “Terrible things are happening outside. Day and night more of those poor helpless people are being dragged off, with nothing but a rucksack and a little money. On the way they are deprived even of these possessions. Families are torn apart, the men, women, and children all being separated. Children coming home from school find that their parents have disappeared. Women retu...

  Wednesday – 3rd Week in Ordinary Time Gospel – Mark 4:1-20 Potato – Potaaaho! Mount of the Beatitudes I admit it!   Despite living in the country for a good chunk of my life, if I were a full-time farmer, I would quickly die of starvation.   These days my only farming experience consists of harvesting zucchini – no muss, no fuss!   The only time I ever actually farmed – from planting to harvesting – happened when I was in 4H and my brother George and I tried growing potatoes.   It did not go well! We planted ‘seed’ potatoes and then we just waited!   I don’t remember watering the ground or weeding, much less making any sort of daily check on the progress, or lack thereof!   When it was finally time to dig up the crop (thanks to Dad alerting us), it was a meager harvest.   Many of the potatoes were unusable because we ‘skewered’ them, trying to dig them up with the pitchfork.   What few were left, we gave (sold) to Dad to sell ...