“Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”  “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Wow – those are two really bold, demanding statements, aren’t they!?!  And yet, they’re straight from God, one through Moses, as we heard in today’s first reading from the Book of Leviticus, and the other from Jesus himself as we continue to hear from his Sermon on the Mount.  That’s what we – we who believe in God and follow his son, Jesus – are called to do.  It’s a […]

“Let there be light.” These are the first words of God recorded in the Bible.  We all know how important light is to us; just stub your toe in the darkness in an unfamiliar room and you remember how important it is.  Every major religion extols light and identifies God with the light.  The ancient Egyptians worshiped Ra, the god of the sun.  Jewish people use the menorah to celebrate the Hanukah miracle of faith triumphing over evil and they declare in psalm 27 that “The Lord is my light […]

In all of sacred scripture, there are only two accounts that tell us of the life of Jesus between his birth and his public ministry: his presentation in the temple – as we celebrate today – and his finding in the temple when he was twelve years old.  We hear the account of Jesus in the temple every three years on Sunday but the account we heard today about his presentation in the temple occurs on a Sunday only when the second of February is a Sunday; the last time […]