As the liturgical year winds down the church is less concerned with the number of shopping days until Christmas than with sobering reflections on the end of all days The Gospels conclude with Jesus rsquo final instructions to his disciples his final testaments which weave together words of hope

Just for fun with the help of Google I did a search on the World Wide Web for the word ldquo love rdquo I found there were at least 54 700 000 sites well ahead of ldquo hate rdquo with 6 400 000 ldquo All You Need Is Love rdquo was a stunning Beatles rsquo hit in 1967 and the Centrum S

During the moving memorials of the attacks on Sept 11 2001 we gazed upon a collage of the extraordinary goodness of ordinary people Those who would flinch if called saints acted just as saints did Today we celebrate such saints throughout the ages mdash that great cloud of witnesses whose lives

At times we are tempted to wish that certain sayings of Jesus were lost or omitted from the Gospels Jesus rsquo sharp answer to the Pharisees and Herodians in today rsquo s Gospel might be one of these ldquo Repay render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God rdquo T

Recently I watched ldquo My Big Fat Greek Wedding rdquo a film filled with the exuberant joy of the human condition It culminates in a wedding feast with steaming plates of food much to drink and enthusiastic dancing Frequently in literature and drama weddings are the setting for a joyful deno

Tales of unrequited love have shaped the tragic imagination in dramas like Euripides rsquo s ldquo Medea rdquo or Shakespeare rsquo s ldquo Othello rdquo in which the spurned Roderigo hastens the downfall of ldquo one that loved not wisely but too well rdquo in epic poems with Dido on the

Recall times when your initial no was transformed into a new way of following Christ.

Today’s Gospel seems to challenge fairness, preferring concern for the “last.”

Jesus' parable states that all church order is subject to the law of mercy and forgiveness.

Church life in the last six months has been dominated by shameful actions of some of its priests and hierarchy and is now preoccupied although belatedly with protecting its most vulnerable members The fourth of the great discourses of Jesus in Matthew Ch 18 called the Sermon on the Church a