“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love … [and] offer him up as a holocaust.”  These are shocking words to us; we can’t imagine anything so barbaric.  But, they would not necessarily have been so for Abraham.  Child sacrifice was an accepted practice in Abraham’s time among the pagan religions; even some of the Jewish kings practiced it.  But our God does not desire human sacrifice.  So, as we hear with great relief in today’s first reading, God stops him!  God was putting Abraham to the test, […]

As if the coronavirus pandemic isn’t enough of a worldwide crisis, now we’re struggling with extreme temperature swings and ongoing storms not only here but in unusual spots around the world.  Did you see the photograph of the Pantheon in Athens covered with snow?  It’s such an unusual event that the place has been packed not with tourists but locals coming to take a look.  And, on the other hand, there was recently a tragedy in India where dozens of people lost their lives due to flooding caused by heavy […]

“I just can’t wait until we get back to normal, whatever that is!”  That’s one of the refrains we have all heard so often over this past year as we continue to struggle through this coronavirus pandemic.  We also hear comments about a new normal, where things will be different but we’ll get used to it. Wearing masks, bumping elbows rather than shaking hands, keeping a safe distance may all become the new normal and we’ll just have to adjust.  It makes me think of the new normal that we […]

Fortunately, Hansen’s Disease – the medical name for leprosy – is almost a thing of the past.  There are currently only about half a million known cases of the disease worldwide.  But, we are still struggling to control other infectious diseases, such as the common cold, the flu, HIV and now, COVID-19; it’s caught all of us in its grip, hasn’t it!?!  And so, we can identify with today’s readings.  Just as the people in ancient Israel didn’t understand leprosy, what caused it and how it was spread, so we […]

We don’t often hear from the Book of Job at Sunday Mass.  In fact, we only hear from it twice in the three-year reading cycle, and only in Year B, as we are in this year.  Today’s reading is a good reason why we don’t – it’s really rather depressing, isn’t it?  We hear Job complain: “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery? …So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted me.”  Not very good news, is it?  I don’t know about you, […]