casual theology

"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her." (Luke 10:42, from the Gospel for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time) I was listening to a podcast with Fr. John Riccardo and he said something to the effect of “we often think that the calling to be a disciple is to work for Jesus, but the calling of a disciple is to be with Jesus.” The Gospel account of Martha and Mary this week is so important for us to hear and learn from.  Over the last six years, I have worked in two suburban parishes doing adult formation. Both parishes are located in very affluent areas and have a large number of upper middle class, white collar professionals. We have CEOs, attorneys, physicians, salespeople, pharmaceutical professionals, corporate executives, and even professional athletes. I’ve joked at times that our home could probably fit in the garages of some of the parishioners I kn...

“Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.” Colossians 1:15-16 (Second Reading from 15 th Sunday of Ordinary Time – July 10, 2022) I must confess that I love Stranger Things, the streaming series on Netflex*. If you’re not familiar with Stranger Things, it’s a sci-fi/horror show set in a fictional Indiana town in the mid-80’s where our core group of characters battle evil forces from the Upside Down, another dimension that is a corrupted copy of their own world. I love how they’ve nailed the whole 1980’s vibe from the music to the clothes to the freedom we had as kids to roam the town with little parental supervision. The storylines are suspenseful, and you get attached to the characters. The primary hero figure is Eleven, a girl with telekinetic superp...

  “Give them some food yourselves.” Jesus’ words to his disciples were surprising, challenging, and seemingly impossible. They responded as most of us would have, taking a quick inventory of their resources and realizing their limitations. In making such an outrageous suggestion Jesus was trying to get his students to live by faith not by sight. As St. Paul would often refer to in his letters, Jesus was trying to get the disciple to be transformed by a renewal of their minds (Rom. 12:2), to no longer behave like unspiritual men, but as spiritually minded disciples (1 Cor. 2:14-16). It is important to keep in mind when the feeding of the multitude took place. Sunday’s reading was taken from Luke 9:10-17. Leading up to this event, the disciples had witness Jesus calming the storm (Luke 8:22-25), a woman healed just by touching is garment (Luke 8:43-48) and Jesus raising a girl from the dead (Luke 8:49-56). Furthermore, the disciples had just returned to Jesus after he had sent them...

 “Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rom. 5:4-5, Second Reading for Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, 6/12/22) Paul speaks of boasting in our afflictions, elsewhere he makes a point that we should boast of our weakness (2 Cor. 11:30, 12:5, 12:9). It seems so countercultural to boast in what we cannot do or over situations that look more like failure than success. We want to herald our victories and revel in our strengths. But in the upside-down nature the Kingdom of God, we are called to embrace the very things that seem to disqualify us in the eyes of the world. This was true of the Twelve that Jesus chose: poor and uneducated fishermen, an outcast tax collector, and a political extremist. As the saying goes, “God d...

Have you received the Sacrament of Confirmation? Did you know that the Catholic Church teaches that when we are confirmed we are receiving the same grace and outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the disciples received on the first Pentecost? In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it clear that Confirmation “perpetuates the grace of Pentecost in the Church.” (CCC 1288, 1302) The Catechism also uses that terminology to describe how the Mass perpetuates Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. (CCC 611, 1323) That’s powerful when you stop and think about it. Many of us are familiar with the idea that the sacrifice of the Mass, through the Sacrament of the Eucharist, is representing Jesus’ work on the cross; that is, at every Mass we are being reconnected to the one event of Calvary. It is significant that the Church uses the same verb, perpetuate, when describing what happens in the Sacrament of Confirmation. We receive the same Spirit, the same outpouring, the same grace, as the first...

On multiple occasions over the past year I’ve had a reoccurring dream. I find myself in an insane asylum where the inmates have taken over and have the appearance of zombies. I was going from room to room looking for other trapped people, some asleep and others unaware of what was happening, and leading them to escape. At the same time, I encounter a few of the insane zombies and I am able to cure them so they become “normal” and leave with us. I believe this is a prophetic dream speaking to the nature of our culture and our mission as Christians. In the early telling of the story of Narcissus in Greek mythology the young man become enamored with his own image and committed suicide after despairing that no one could love him as much as he loved himself. It’s from this story that modern psychology takes the name Narcissistic Personality Disorder to describe an individual with an inflated sense of their own purpose and a lack of empathy for others. The Mayo Clinic lists the followin...

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it feels like the past year has been one long Lent. The coronavirus pandemic began shutting down society just a couple weeks after Ash Wednesday last year. Since then, we have experienced prolonged times of imposed fasting and abstinence. It has felt like a long spiritual desert where our religious practices and community gatherings have been disrupted. Like Jesus in the wilderness, as a church and a nation we have experienced a season of temptations which we haven’t always resisted. Our faith in institutions, religious and secular, have been put to the test.   I listened to an interview on the radio about the impact that quarantines and shut-downs may have in the future as people’s habits—like dining out, traveling, or going to movies—have changed and they may not go back to some of those things as restrictions are lifted. The same can be said for churches. Many who may have been attending Mass out of habit or obligation have had the better pa...

I’ve been praying and reflecting on the state of our world over the last 6 months. It seems that we are in the grasp of a demonic darkness rooted in fear. This darkness is suffocating, intensifying, and seeks to blot out any light. We are fearful for our health, our finances, and our safety. Fear is driving division and unrest to isolate us against each other.  Fear is one of the primary results of sin, it’s right there with shame and death. Fear gripped Adam in the garden (Gen. 3:10), and we have been in its grasp ever since. At its most fundamental level fear is rooted in our separation from God, in our fallen nature. Cut off from God by sin we feel alone and abandoned, and we feel threatened and vulnerable---because we are. Fear causes us to act from a place of self-protection and self-preservation rather than how we were originally created to live through the gift of ourselves to other in free acts of love.  COVID-19 has robbed us of the false sense of securit...

Let’s file this under “things I never thought I’d have to write about.” Several months ago I noticed a lump on my left triceps. I brought it up to my doctor and after looking at it and feeling it, he said it was a lipoma, a benign fatty tumor, and nothing to be concerned about. He said he’d seen this in other patients and when he sent them for referrals to the surgery office the surgeons just tried talking the patients our of having an elective procedure. A few months passed and this lump wasn’t going away, in fact it had grown. I saw my doctor again and again he said it was a lipoma, but he would agree to give me a surgical referral if I really wanted one. Due to a busy schedule I let a couple months pass and then finally asked for that referral at the end of March. After several tests, including a biopsy, I got the diagnosis last week that I had pleomorphic liposarcoma, a rare and usually aggressive form of soft tissue cancer. Talk about a lightning bolt out of the blue. I w...

Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper, “If you love me, keep my commands.” (Jn. 14:15) As Christians we look to these words of Jesus as a kind of mission statement and a guiding principle in what we do and how we even define what it means to be a disciple. While some of Christ’s commands may seem easier than others, they are all challenging and all call us to move out of our comfort zones.  We are commanded to repent (Mt. 4:17), to avoid anger (Mt. 5:21-22), to be forgiving towards others (Mt. 18:21-22), to pray for our enemies (Mt. 5:44), and to care for the disadvantaged and suffering (Mt. 25:31-48). These commands of Christ form the heart of Christian morality and social justice. Although difficult at times, no one doubts the seriousness of the call to obey these commands, just as no one doubts Christ’s intention that these apply to any and all who would call themselves disciples.  When we read how Jesus said that the world would know we are his by our love...

I received a flyer in the mail from a local non-denominational church advertising their services for the holiday season. These mass mailings aren’t all that unique, many churches, Protestant and Catholic, send them out around Christmas and Easter as a way of reaching out to people who may be looking for a place to worship. But this flyer was a little different than others that I’ve seen and it got me thinking. Here’s part of the text from the flyer (I changed the name of the church): Go ahead. Sleep in on Sunday. Whether you like the idea of sleeping in, want to free up some extra weekend time for that family gathering at the in-laws, or are just heading out of town on the weekends. Whatever the reason, find some extra peace from the holiday hustle with us on Thursdays at our Early Weekend Service.   We’ll have the same great kids environments, same great coffee, same great music and teaching you’ve come to expect from Relevant Church…Now on Thursdays, too. ...

In the aftermath of the tragic events in Charlottesville there has been a wave of criticism towards some churches and pastoral leaders who did not promptly or explicitly express the “proper” public outrage and condemnation of the white supremacists. I know priests who received highly critical, if not outright nasty, emails from parishioners. Social media has been flooded with articles, blogs, and opinions from right and left about what should or shouldn’t be said or done. More often than not, the driving factor of this controversy has been substantially colored by one’s political leaning. It is great that the internet connects us and allows the spread of information to happen in near real time, but it also compels people to give an immediate response as well. Against the advice of St. James, we become quick to speak and slow to listen. Ultimately the challenge before us is how should a disciple of Jesus Christ respond in the face of injustice, violence, hatred, and racism? I...

People often look at the four Gospels and wonder why there are slight differences between them. They all share the same essential message, that Jesus was the Son of God in the flesh who lived and died and rose from the dead. Yet each Gospel has it's own particular lens of looking at Jesus: to Matthew Jesus is the Messiah, to Mark he is the Lord, to Luke he is the Divine Healer, and for John the Son of God. Vatican II's document on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, tells us that  scripture is "the words of God, expressed in the words of men" (DV 13).  By way of analogy, this video does a great job of showing how different photographers, trying to emphasize a particular idea, produced different views of the same man. Again, like the Gospels, the essence of the man photographed is the same, the lighting, angle, and setting give different perspectives.

[Note: These reflections were originally posted for Lent 2011.] "I thirst." (John 19:28) It’s approaching three o’clock in the afternoon. For nearly 20 hours Jesus has endured torturous treatment at the hands of the chief priests and Romans. He’s been tried, beaten, scourged, dragged his cross through the city and finally nailed to it. Since noon he’s hung on the cross, the hot sun beating down on him. He called to mind Psalm 22 when he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” That Psalm goes on to describe his condition when it says, “My mouth is dried up like clay, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.” But, Christ's thirst was for more than water, and his words call out to each of us today just as they did to those at the foot of the cross. Jesus thirsts for us. Stop and think about that for a moment. God longs for us. His desire for us isn't born out of necessity, as if there is something lacking in God, but springs from his love...

[Note: These reflections were originally posted for Lent 2011.] "Woman, behold your son…Behold your mother." (John 19:26-27) Just a few weeks ago we celebrated the feast of the Annunciation. As we listen to the final words of Jesus before his death and resurrection we also call to mind the words of Mary to the angel, "Be it done unto me according to your will." How similar is Mary's abandonment to the will of God as her own son's prayer in the garden the night before he died, "Not my will but your will be done." Here at the cross the obedience of Mary and Jesus come together to free us from our slavery to sin so that we may use our will to say yes to God as well. In these simple words Jesus entrusts his own mother to the Church, represented by the beloved disciple, and the Church to his mother. We can be confident that as we look to Mary she will always lead us to her son. She was there when he was conceived, there when he performed his ...