It's now a week since the Paris attacks and it has been a tense week, with hateful rhetoric flaring up in France and Europe, and the US. I continue to have reservations about Islam and its compatibility with our western values, but I am dismayed by the level of hate speech that has contaminated our ability to look at the world …
Farewell, René Girard
René Girard died November 4th in his home in Stanford, California, at the age of 91. Most probably you haven't read any obituary about him, and I only learned of his death tonight when I went on the Girardian Reflections website. The reason why I went on the website tonight was because for the past few days …
The gospel of peace
How to speak of peace after the terrorist attacks in Paris? And yet peace is the message of both our readings today - especially Ephesians 2, but also the parable of the good Samaritan. Both readings are about peace, about breaking down the walls that separate and divide. Every time there is an …
Come out from hiding!
Saint John tells us at the beginning of his Gospel: No one has ever seen God, but the only Son who is at the Father’s side has made him known. The invisible becomes visible, the unknown becomes known. These paradoxes are at the heart of the Christian revelation. Revelation indeed means unveiling, uncovering - …
People of the Second Coming
Touch is the message of today's gospel reading. The poor man Lazarus was untouchable, except by the dogs who licked his wounds! He was one of the invisibles, one of the people that we choose not to see because they might trouble our conscience or our easygoing relationship with life. And he who did not touch …
You are a parable!
"In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst babel . . . speak the truth." These words were written by William Stringfellow over 40 years ago and they pretty much summarize the message of today’s gospel reading. In the face of a living death, the man was …
Artists of Faith
Today is the feast day of St. Luke, the Evangelist, "the beloved physician," as St. Paul calls him in our reading today from the Letter to the Colossians. Luke wrote one of the three 'Synoptic Gospels" and one can easily see it is the most artfully and best written of the three! It is a …
The Parable of Parables
The parable of the sower and the seed: We read it today from Luke's version (Luke 8:4-15). This is the parable of parables. It is the parable that provides the key to all Jesus parables! Because we hear from his mouth what is the purpose of parables and what is the pedagogy that Jesus employs. …
Ordinary people gone fishing
(Only a brief text summary of this sermon. The audio file above is complete.) I was shocked by how much opposition and outright hatred has been directed against Pope Francis before and during his visit to the U.S. - hateful attacks from both the Left and the Right, because he does not fully line up …
When our thinking is turned upside down
A few years ago two important books were published: Debt, the First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber (2011, revised 2014); and Le Capital au XXI siècle (2013) by the French economist Thomas Piketty, quickly translated into English as Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and many other languages. Piketty's book became an immediate sensation and …
Ancient Answers 