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The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord concludes the celebration of the Christmas season. After today, our churches will take down their festive Christmas decorations including the prominence of the manger scene. The baptism of Jesus marks the shift in the focus of the liturgical year from the infant Jesus to the adult Jesus. The heavenly voice proclaims Jesus to be "my beloved Son." With his baptism in the Jordan by John, Jesus begins his adult ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing. He proclaims the Kingdom of God in word and deed.

The goal of every disciple of Jesus is to disciple another person. By baptism we are all Evangelizers. How do you disciple a man or woman? Jesus' typical call to the seekers of his day was, "Follow me!"

Lepers and Wise Men? Who would have thought the light of the Epiphany would shine on both, so strategically close together in the liturgy? We’re tempted to assume there is some mistake in the choice of this Gospel for the Friday after Epiphany…

Both the reading and the Gospel today speak to a central claim of Christian life: love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable. It is often tempting to think that as long as we stay spiritually clean and upright with God, we can treat people however we like. Yet this is fundamentally opposed to the teaching of the Church as illustrated in these readings. God loved us before we loved him and created each of us out of love.

Today's gospel picks up from yesterday's story about feeding the five thousand. The disciples had returned tired and hungry from being away on ministry and Jesus had taken them away for rest. We read, too, that it did not work out that way. Jesus had a change of plans. I wonder how that went over with the tired disciples. I wonder, too, if the suggestion that Jesus dismiss the crowd to find food may have come from human weariness; the sooner the crowd left, the sooner we get our rest. I don't imagine Jesus' response - feed them yourselves - went over too well as they saw themselves going into the cities to shop. Perhaps, a little tension in the air?

After a long day of teaching the crowd, I can only imagine that Jesus is quite hungry too. Standing in that deserted place for hours, Jesus, fully God and fully human, had a stomach rumbling just as much as those gathered. Jesus must have also sat down with the people to eat after the disciples set out the loaves he had blessed. Sensitive to this human need for sustenance, Jesus was moved with pity to look out on the horizon to see his own sheep in need. The translation of the term “moved with pity” from the Greek draws on the idea that he experienced an abrupt, forceful compassion, from deep within his gut. Jesus nourished that crowd with his Word and with the loaves that were taken, blessed, broken, and given, just as he does for us who gather at the Feast of the Eucharist.

May the soul of Fr. Andrew, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

As we bid farewell to another Advent and Christmas season, in today’s Gospel we see Jesus’ healing power at work and hear him call his followers to “Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand.” What do these words that Jesus spoke to the Galileans some two thousand years ago mean to Christian people today as we bid 2020 – which will be forever known as the year from hell – farewell? A lot of people these days are complaining they have “COVID fatigue.” I think this means that we are tired of dealing with all the restrictions that are being placed upon us including the demands to be vigilant about wearing masks, and social distancing, and constantly washing our hands – those pesky practical and symbolic gestures that keep us safe and ask us to put the needs of others before our own. Truth be told, trying not to let our guard down is exhausting, and we all want our freedom of activity and movement back.

There is nothing like the sight of a Christmas tree dumped by the curb, to dull the joy of this season.  All too quickly, valentine cards are now on full display in every local drug and grocery store.  It is tempting even as Christians, to wrap up our sentiments of good cheer and peace on earth with the decorations.  But with the feast of Epiphany, we welcome the magi, those mysterious figures from the East who pose their question to each of us: “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?”

It is GOD who grants our salvation, as the Psalm proclaims, He has done wondrous deeds, remembered His people, spoken to us through prophets and ultimately through His Son Jesus! John declares plainly he is not the Christ but calls us to prepare for His coming.

In the second century of the Church, the ancient Fathers of the Church, inspired by God, developed their understanding of the received revelation from God about the Virgin Mary, as they contemplated and studied the Virgin in relationship to her Son, Jesus Christ in Scripture and Tradition. Read more...

Advocate of Eve. Seat of Wisdom. Cause of Our Joy. Help of Christians. Mother of Sorrows. We know her under other names as well: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Knock, Queen of the Americas, and Our Lady of Prompt Succor. All of these titles and names would be meaningless without her first name, her first title: Mary, Mother of God.

The first reading and the gospel remind us today of key moments in life, endings and beginnings. The Word of God was with God from the beginning, “became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” On this last day of the year 2020, the psalmist invites us to “sing to the Lord a new song.” Between reduced work hours, jobs lost and uncertainties about the future even with new COVID vaccines, so many victims along with those grieving in the US and worldwide, do not feel like singing today.

The Love of the Father awaits us night and day in the tabernacles of the world, in the daily Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the reception of the Holy Eucharist. Let us, like Anna, approach Him with hearts well-seasoned so as to be prepared to recognize Him and receive Him worthily as food from the hands of Our Holy Mother the Church and remain with Him forever.

My community has a ritual we practice when one of our sisters is near death. Every sister who is able takes her turn sitting at the dying sister’s side, hour by hour, until the Lord comes to take her hand and lead her home. It is a tender and loving ritual. When we attend to her this way, waiting together for the fulfillment of God’s promise, we too, like Simeon, enter the sacred space, the living temple of God. I

As the year 2020 slowly comes to an end, many people will begin to reflect on the happenings, both the not-so-good and the good, that have marked this most unusual year. Today's Gospel reading on the Feast of the Holy Innocents calls our attention to the anguish that the jealous and power-hungry Herod inflicted. Sobbing and lamentation have certainly also been heard in our strife-ridden world when young children who were forcefully separated from their parents were not reunited, and adults and children alike lost their lives to brutality and war, natural disasters, and, yes, the pandemic.

The challenge of the feast of the Holy Family is for us to let go of the impression that we need to be perfect in order to be holy. Holiness is not about our never doing the wrong thing. It is not about our never questioning what is happening in our lives. It is not about nothing bad ever happening to us.

I think we all have those moments under the flush of great emotion and a “spiritual high,” when martyrdom would have an appeal. St. Stephen’s life: his preaching and the miracles he performed had caused great animosity among elements of the people that their anger exploded and led to his being stoned. Stephen had lived a life full of the Grace and Power of the Holy Spirit. He was a living testimony to the Gospel he had preached, and his life had become a living witness of the Wisdom and Spirit of the Living God which this life well-lived exemplified.

Today we celebrate a chief element of our Christian faith: we celebrate the birth of Christ, and we celebrate not just the fact that Christ was born of Mary in Bethlehem, but also the reality that Christ is being born each day in our hearts. The mystery of the Incarnation is not just a static reality, it is a dynamic reality, for we are each day, as St. Augustine puts it, more Christ than we were the day before, as the grace of God operates more and more within us.