Gospel Reflections for Challenging Times

  Monday - 25 th Week in Ordinary Time Gospel – Luke 8:16-18 Under the Covers Church of Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem   No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed! Well, of course, that’s true!   Hide the light under a basket?   Under the bed?   No one in their right mind would do something like that.   That would be silly.   And yet!!!!   I bet every single one of us did exactly that sometime when we were kids! We would sit in bed reading.   And it’s a great book; you can’t put it down!   And then it happens!   We hear Mom yell - Ok, bedtime!   Lights out!   Go to sleep!   Oh no!!   I’m right in the middle of something exciting!   I can’t just close the book!   What to do???     So we grabbed a flashlight and ducked under the covers!   And in our tent-like, light-filled bed, we continued our reading adventure!   These days we are probably reading ...

  25 th Sunday in Ordinary Time Gospel – Luke 16:1-13 Payback! Old City Bazaar, Jerusalem My first job after college was working in retail as the manager of the boys department at a local store.   It was not much fun.   The salary was very minimal.   I essentially worked on commission; the more items sold in the department, the more money I made.   Not unlike working at a restaurant for tips!   I found out very quickly that I was not cut out for the job of convincing people they needed to buy clothes, lots of clothes! That is the situation we find the steward in today’s Gospel reading.   He is not a slave; he works on commission.   Whatever the master earns, the steward gets a percentage. The steward, at the time of Jesus, is essentially a business manager; he takes care of all the finances and business transactions, making sure that the master earns a profit.   But the steward has to earn a living too; so with any loan, he adds in f...

  Saturday – 24 th Week in Ordinary Time     Gospel – Luke 8-:4-15 A Teaching Moment Synagogue Church, Nazareth I have very vivid memories of preparing to get my driver’s license and, most especially, all the time and effort my dad put in to teach me!   I was so eager to learn and just couldn’t wait til he said those magic word – let’s go for a drive.   Of course, learning to drive stick-shift was not an easy task but Dad was patient and kind.   He even constructed some wooden barriers in our driveway so that I could practice parallel parking.   He was a great teacher; he made me want to learn and to ask questions! The parable in today’s Gospel is so very familiar – the sower and the seed.   But let’s put the parable itself aside and just focus on one verse – “Then his disciples asked him what the meaning of this parable might be.”   Think about that!   They didn’t understand and yet they wanted to!   So they asked the...