Today’s readings challenge us every day because we can recognize ourselves in so many of those involved in the events that we hear today.  We sometimes find ourselves to be as fickle as the crowd in today’s gospel passages who, in one moment, joyously welcome Jesus to the holy city of Jerusalem like a king with palm branches waving and chanting words forever enshrined in our Eucharistic celebrations – Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord – and then, at another moment condemn Jesus to a […]

“O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them. …Then you shall know that I am the Lord.”  “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will live.”  Our readings today go straight to the heart of our Christian faith.  They speak of death, and new life in Christ.  We hear it promised in the first reading from the prophet Ezekiel and we hear about it actually happening in today’s powerful Gospel account.  In a world where we spend hundreds of millions […]

Throughout Salvation History, we find God acting in unusual ways, calling us to rethink our priorities and expectations as he works to lead us back to himself.  Today’s readings give us good examples of this.  We begin about 1,000 years before the time of Jesus with God’s surprising choice of the boy David to be Israel’s king.  In a society that prized the firstborn, warriors and wise men, Samuel had to accept God’s unusual choice of the last of Jesse’s sons – a mere shepherd – to be anointed as […]

“Is the Lord in our midst or not?”  What a question to ask after God had freed them from their slavery to the Egyptians and led them through the Red Sea to escape the Egyptian army.  And yet, just a month later, we hear the Israelites grumble:  “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

As much as we may be tempted to look back on the Israelites and wonder at their doubt in our first reading, if any of us have ever been truly thirsty, we will be moved to […]