casual theology

"It is finished" (John 19:30) and "Father into your hands I commend my spirit." (Luke 23:46) When the Allied Forces successfully invaded France on D-Day it marked the beginning of the end of World War II. That victory all but assured the ultimate defeat of the Nazis. It was only a matter of time to finish the job. Certainly there were many more battles to fight, but once the Allies were able to establish their front lines there was no hope for a German victory. Jesus came preaching, "The Kingdom of God is near!" Jesus spoke more about the establishment of God's Kingdom than anything else. All that he did was oriented towards this message. The miracles he performed were signs of the presence of the Kingdom. He cast out demons, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind and forgave sins all to demonstrate that in the Kingdom of God there is no enemy, no disease, no blindness, and no sin. In short, Jesus came to establish a beachhead for the Kingdom of ...

"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 said, “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 for us. He longs for us to know him because he knows that only then will we be f...

"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) Where was God when the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan? Is he all powerful but uncaring, or is he all loving but impotent? Why did he allow so many innocent people be washed away? Where is God when over 1 million abortions take place each year in United States alone? Why did God allow the cancer to return? Where is God when life hurts? “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” Jesus cried out from the cross with the very questions that shake our faith. The great Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar reflected on the depths of the suffering Jesus endured for us on the cross. In his homily, “The Scapegoat and the Trinity”, he said, “Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for him, the less he has merited it ... there is nothing familiar about it to him: It is utterly alien and full of horror. Indeed, he suffers more deeply th...

"Woman, behold your son…Behold your mother." (John 19:26-27) We celebrate this Third Sunday of Lent just a couple days removed from 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 first miracle, there when he sacrif...

"I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43) Tradition tells us the name of the Good Thief was St. Dismas. We know nothing of his life other than the fact that he was sentenced to crucifixion for being a criminal. Many would say that his final act was to steal heaven on that Good Friday. After the first thief mocks and scorns Jesus, Dismas rebukes him and offers a simple request to be remembered by Jesus. Somehow he recognized in the beaten, bruised and broken body of Jesus what the crowds of Jerusalem could not or would not see. Somehow he was able to see Jesus as the King of Kings ready to enter into his kingdom. His simple act of faith was rewarded by Christ’s promise of salvation. It’s easy to be skeptical of death row confessions. We hear how hardened criminals suddenly “find Jesus” when it seems most convenient for them and it’s difficult not to react with some level of incredulity. We often ask ourselves how God could be so gullible as to acc...

"Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34) Dr. Bernard Nathanson passed away on February 21, 2011. Dr. Nathanson was a leader of the pro-abortion movement and founding member of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL, now the National Abortion Rights Action League). He estimated that he had supervised or performed over 75,000 abortions including the abortion of his own child. He admitted that he and his associates purposely feed misinformation to the media and deliberately attacked the Catholic Church in order to change public opinion to support legalizing abortion in the late 1960’s. Then something happened. Dr. Nathanson started to question the pro-abortion claim that the unborn child was merely a collection of cells and not a human life. A longtime atheist, Nathanson still continued to support abortion rights despite his growing doubts until the mid-1980’s when he finally became convinced through advances in m...

Long before Susan G. Komen made pink fashionable the Church has been breaking out rose colored candles and vestments on the third Sunday of Advent. Unlike the Bucs’ tangerine unis or the Rays baby blues it’s not just a marketing ploy for a liturgical version of an alternate jersey. So why do we switch from purple to pink? Why do we change colors on the third Sunday of Advent just to go back to purple for one more week? To understand why the Church changes colors on the third Sunday of Advent we’ve got to understand what all these colors mean in the first place and why we use them. The Church follows a liturgical calendar that begins on the first Sunday of Advent and ends on the Solemnity of Christ the King. The liturgical year is made up of different seasons and each season has a specific color connected with it. Advent and Lent are primarily purple, a color that symbolizes repentance. The Christmas and Easter seasons use white to represent light and glory. White is also used throughou...