Daily Scripture

Scripture:

Hebrews 10:19-25
Mark 4:21-25

Reflection:

Yesterdays, Today, and the Hope for Tomorrows

It’s been a month since the start of 2025.  It seems like a lifetime, to me.  If you made any resolutions, how are you doing with them?  Most of the new people I saw walking or running by the house on January 1^st have long since stopped.  It’s hard trying to be better than we’ve become – to make positive changes and make them stick.

It was my birthday a few days ago.  It’s interesting having a birthday less than a month from the start of the New Year because, for me, I become very introspective at both times.  Getting close to January 1^st, I tend to look back at the past 365 and examine who I’ve become and the ways I’ve failed being the good man I want to be.  But then around my birthday I look at the short stretch of the last 28 days, and how I want to look at the next year of my life, should I be blessed to live that long (I sure hope so… I want to see my little girl grow, and I also need to mow that lawn).

There’s a lot in our scripture today that I’d like to write on, but I think there’s one underlying message and likely something we’ve all heard many times.  These three passages, I think, sum it up:

Psalm 24:1-2,3-4ab, 5-6            ”Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.”
Hebrews 10:19-25                        ”We must consider how to rouse one another to love.”
Mark 4:21-25                                 “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket?”

Yes, I know they’re out of Liturgical Order, but bear with me.

The Psalm:  Our world needs to see God’s face.  The polarization of our country and society, our world, is so apparent and acute.  There are so many good people, and yet every night we see such visions of horror on the nightly news .  Take a moment to look past our current political climate and you’ll see a three-year-old boy sitting stunned and bloodied in an ambulance.  The body of an innocent child washed up on the shore.  Young girls kidnapped en masse and forced to be “wives” to their captors. We see the funerals of children killed in urban gang wars.  We see the anguish of their mothers who could not keep them safe.

And we run out of tears.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes “We must consider how to rouse one another to love.  We should not stay away from our assembly.” (Hebrews 10:24a, 25a)

How?

The horror that’s happening in our world today is frightening.  Looking at this every day makes it extremely difficult to not feel as though what little good you or I can do would make much difference.  As one family under God, I just can’t believe the things we do to each other.

And in our homes…

The way we treat those we love most is, perhaps, the most frightening to me of all.

Mark quotes Jesus for us today, who implores us to place our light not under a basket to be hidden, but on a stand to shine before all.

You might say, “But I’m just one person and a world of billions!”  I agree.  You are one person in a world of billions.  And most won’t see you.  But “you know who” does.  And so do the people you interact with every day!

WE can change the world!  It can start in our own families and with our friends… something as simple as a smile can change the course of someone’s day.  And maybe that person will change the way they treat someone else… and so on.  And all because of you.  The light of your one candle and fire the light of one more, and from the sharing of the light with each other, billions can be lit.

As community in this way, we must be willing to accompany each other on the road.  We can’t hate and scorn, hurt and murder, turn a blind eye to all we abhor in the world.  We simply have to carry God’s love and compassion to others through our service to them.  We must be the change we want to see in the world.  We live and proclaim Christ, crucified and risen, by the way we live our lives.

Friends, now is the time. Now is the time to make good on that resolution.  We can do it if we do it together.  Let’s infect each person we see with our love and our faith, our care and our hope.

Let’s be the best bible anyone has ever read.

Dear God, thank you for the gift of eternal life with you.
Please grant us the grace to carry your mercy, compassion, and love to all.
To all.  Amen.

Paul Puccinelli is Director of Liturgy & Music at St. Rita Parish in Sierra Madre, California, and a member of the retreat team at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center.

Scripture:

Hebrews 10:11-18
Mark 4:1-20

Reflection:

                                Hear this! A sower went out to sow. –Mark 4:3

We are in the midst of winter and as I look out at my garden, I am already thinking of which roses to add and creating a pollinator garden. I love growing roses and have forty-four bushes at the present and will be adding eight or nine more this Spring. Digging in the dirt, pruning, mulching, feeding are all a part of nurturing a healthy bush. I look forward to the middle or end of February when it is time to prune back the bushes. March and April is time to feed the roses to bring them out of their winter slumber. If I have done those things correctly and the weather cooperates, the blooming will begin its cycles. So much of rose gardening depends on these things. And when it all comes together the fruit of my labor are beautiful roses to share with my friends. 

The Gospel for today is also about planting, pruning, feeding and nurturing. The parable of the Sower is more than about working the dirt. It is about caring for our soul. How do I nurture my soul? What do I plant? What do I prune away? How do I feed my soul? Just as a rose bush or most plants have cycles of growth, blooming and dormancy so do our souls. Jesus relates the seed the sower sows to the Word of God. The Word the Sacred Scriptures are a great source of food for our souls. In the Benedictine tradition, feeding on the Word of God is called Lectio Divina. This is taking time to read a scripture passage thoughtfully. This can be one from the daily readings or of your choosing. As you read the passage, is there a word or phrase that catches your attention? Read it again. What word or phrase catches your attention? Read it a third time and then hold on to one word. Let it soak in like a gentle rain. This is feeding or nurturing your soul. This may also be done with music lyrics or instrumental music. Spiritual reading is another way to feed the soul. It takes me a while to get through a book I choose for spiritual reading because I stop when something catches my attention and I ponder that for a day or two before returning to the book I am reading. 

Pruning the soul may not be as pleasant as feeding the soul but just as important. Cutting away or cutting out the dead rotting parts changes us just as it changes the shape of the bush. This soul pruning can be through Reconciliation, prayer, fasting and almsgiving. This also allows us to continue to grow into the person that God has created us to be. Resting is also part of the growing process. Taking time to rest our bodies in quiet or taking in nature in a gentle walk is good for the soul as well.

Jesus is the Master Gardener and taking time with him allows us to grow closer to him. Doing our soul work allows us to prepare ourselves for the Word of God to be planted in our hearts. 

 And as he sowed, some seed fell on . . . -Mark 4:3

 Linda Schork is a theology teacher at Saint Xavier High School in Louisville, Kentucky.

Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas

Scripture:

Hebrews 10:1-10
Mark 3:31-35

Reflection:

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025!

As we begin this new year our scriptures of today call us to ponder and reflect!

In the gospel today we hear Jesus reminding us that whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother.  So, if we as followers of Jesus who believe in the Good News and practice this by living a good Christian life, we are to be counted as a member of God’s family.  This should make us feel pretty good.  We couldn’t be any luckier than this, to have this close relationship with Jesus as such!

            Ponder and reflect time!!!

What about those times when we wander away from the family of God when we adopt an attitude of arrogance or entitlement when we decide it’s not that important to be in God’s family and decide we don’t really need the loving family of God.

What happens when we decide we want to exclude certain persons whom we don’t feel belong in the family of God, so we turn our backs on those who may not share our beliefs, culture, race or religion?  In doing so, we ignore those persons who are in need of our love, support and care.

In our psalm response today we pray the familiar refrain;
Here am I Lord; I come to do your will.  Ps 40:8a and 9a

We can all recall the times in our faith life when we have responded in faith to God’s call.  We can also recall those times when we have been slow to respond or even ignored God’s invitation to open ourselves up to this challenge of following God’s will.  It takes courage to accept God’s invitation.  Saints and sinners alike who have gone before us, and those who stand with us in the present day share our successes and failures that this call to discipleship affords us.

Today we celebrate the life and gifts of Saint Thomas Aquinas. As a Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas is considered one of the Catholic Church’s greatest theologians and philosophers. Early in life, Thomas felt called to religious life and planned to enter the Dominican religious community.  The Dominican’s charism is to be teachers and preachers.  He met great opposition from his family and endured a certain amount of abuse in trying to answer his calling, even to the point of imprisonment. With his brilliant mind he was able to author important texts that continue to educate the ordained, professed and lay ecclesial ministers for service in our church.  He took his call to serve as teacher and minister to all peoples seriously for which our church owes him a great debt of gratitude.

As we ponder and reflect on our call to service to all God’s people, may we hold Saint Thomas Aquinas and all educational and formational leaders in prayer and may we respond joyfully ‘Here am I, Lord, I come to do your will!’

Blessings on this Jubilee Year of Hope!

Theresa Secord is a retired Pastoral Associate at St. Agnes Parish, Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Hebrews 9:15, 24-28
Mark 3:22-30

Reflection:

In our Gospel reading for today, there are some scribes, who, apparently seeing or hearing about Jesus driving out demons, say, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons.” Then Jesus points out the fallacy of those statements: “How can Satan drive out Satan?” And then, toward the end of our reading, Jesus says, “Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the holy Spirit will never have forgiveness but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” And then we hear, “For they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.”

Maybe I’m too caught up with the divisions among us, but I wonder whether we are tempted, instead of thinking, “I need to watch out about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit!” to think, “What he/she/they said was a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and they should never be forgiven!” In other words, we can be tempted to look for justification for our condemnation of others instead of avoiding condemnation ourselves.

I’m not saying that there isn’t evil being done. There is. I’m not saying that we should not speak up for what is right. We are called to work for justice. What I am saying is that God is the ultimate judge, and the question of condemnation is solely up to God to answer.

In our first reading from Hebrews, we hear that “once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages to take away sin by his sacrifice.” That was not an act of condemnation, but of salvation. If we follow Jesus who did that for us, our lives are oriented towards love. Instead of looking for reasons to hate, perhaps we can call on the Holy Spirit to empower us to love.

Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P., is the local superior of the Passionist Community in Birmingham, Alabama. 

Scripture:

Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-30
Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

Reflection:

From St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians:

Brothers and sisters:
As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.
Now the body is not a single part, but many.
You are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.

As I age, I realize ever more clearly that there are many parts of my body that in my youth I did not notice or worry about. Now, though, some don’t work as well as they used to. Some are just weaker. Some make cracking noises that are startling. I wear cheaters to read. I certainly cannot run or jog. Yet, they are all a part of me.

I don’t read in St. Paul’s letter that every part of the Body of Christ is perfect in itself. Sometimes one part needs to help another part. Sometimes, one part is ailing while another is healthy, or one is weak while the other is strong.

We believe the human community is also one body, though our skin are different shades or our language unintelligible to others. As St. Paul says, Jew or Greek, slave or free, we are all a part of Christ’s body. Yet we waste so much time drawing lines between “us” and “them.” We distinguish recent migrants from those among us who are fourth-generation migrants. We use words like “extremist” to marginalize and exclude. We are suspicious of someone simply because of race or color or who they love. Yet still we are a part of the same human body that is glorious in all its diversity.

Let us care for those among us who are afraid, alone, rejected, or hiding from themselves just as we would care for our own body. Let us embrace with love those among us who perhaps are forgotten or despised or displaced parts of the Body of Christ.

Robert Hotz is a consultant with American City Bureau, Inc. and was the Director of The Passion of Christ: The Love That Compels Campaign for Holy Cross Province.

Scripture:

Acts 22:3-16 or Acts 9:1-22
Mark 16:15-18

Reflection:

To Rise Above the Toxins of Disparagement, Division, and Hatred…
to Remain “Unharmed by Deadly Poison”

Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Catholics honor the saints as intercessors, models of holiness, and witnesses to the faith, rooted in our core belief in “the communion of saints”. This practice enriches the spiritual life of the Church and encourages us, the faithful, to pursue holiness in our own lives.

Like Sacred Scripture, though, this practice is not merely past HISTORY, it is OUR STORY. And lest St. Paul’s conversion become a pseudo-pious anecdote of some rabbi/Pharisee traveling to Damascus in the first century, we believe it is also a celebration of our own call to ongoing conversion or ‘metanoia’ (i.e., change of mind or heart, a turning around).

Earlier this week, The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Episcopalian Bishop Mariann Elder Budde preached on the ‘Pillars of Unity’ at Washington National Cathedral, centering her text on Jesus’ parable about building our houses on rock, not sand. With many dignitaries and high-ranking officials in the congregation, including President Trump and Vice President Vance, she spoke of the pillars of truth and humility, then concluded her reflection with a final pillar of unity — mercy — making a plea for compassion, especially for the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants:

“They are afraid… the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals,” she said. “They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues and temples.”

The next day, in an interview, she was asked what is the role of the church in moral leadership today… in helping people understand what is our moral responsibility? Knowing that various denominations around the country offer themselves as sanctuaries for people who are facing the threat of deportation, this is most pertinent in understanding our conversion.

Bishop Budde responded that the first and primary role we have is by example. We are to take the teachings of our faith and welcome the stranger, to love as we have been loved, to be compassionate and to live this out in real terms with real people. And then, when given the opportunity, to speak. We are called to be the conscience, and at other times to be the consolation, the presence, of Christ.

May we share our experience of our loving, merciful God. Blessings to you for this Feast of Conversion!

Fr. Jack Conley, CP, is the local superior of St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.

Scripture:

Hebrews 8:6-13
Mark 3:13-19

Reflection:

There was an old military ballad that began with the lyrics: “Give me ten men who are stout-hearted men, and I’ll soon give you ten thousand more…”    I had four uncles who had all served during World War II so I no doubt heard one or more of them belting this out sometime during my childhood.   I wish I had known then that each of them were truly American heroes.  The stories they could have shared!  Guadalcanal, Iowa Jima, Midway Atoll, Normandy.   They had all enlisted right after Pearl Harbor; very young men who sought to serve when words like Duty, Honor, Country weren’t just slogans on schoolroom walls, but deeply embedded in the mores of our society.   They served full knowing the dangers and difficulties of leaving home, occupations, loved ones and risking their lives.   

Mark’s gospel tells us that our Lord prayed overnight on the mountain and then sent for twelve men from the ranks of His disciples, twelve whom He would make His apostles.  He called them to be with Him so they might learn by being with Him more closely.  We know the numbers of Christ’s followers ebbed and flowed in number, usually due to the danger of being one of His followers.  What Christ called these twelve men to do was so much more than just believing and following Him.   They would be the men He would send out to heal the sick and the lame, to cast out the devil, and bring the word of God to all.   He made them leaders who had to answer that call full knowing the dangers and difficulties of leaving homes, occupations, family, and risking their lives to follow Christ.  

I know I must strive to answer His call ~ every day.   He calls me to be my best self, to be one of the “stout-hearted men”, one who leads others to answer the call of God.    “Many are called but few are chosen.”  Fewer still are those who answer the call.        

Ray Alonzo is the father of three children, grandfather of two, and husband to Jan for over45 years. He is a USN Vietnam Veteran, and a 1969 graduate of Mother of Good Counsel Passionist Prep Seminary. Ray currently serves on the Passionist Alumni Council.

Scripture:

Hebrews 7:25-8:6
Mark 3:7-12

Reflection:

In our Gospel reading, Mark relates that, even though Jesus “withdrew toward the sea with his disciples,” people followed Him, hoping to be healed. Their hopes were fulfilled, and Jesus did heal them.

Once again, we are reminded not only of Jesus’ power but of His love and mercy. We, too, can go to Jesus at any time, in any place, in any situation. We may not receive the healing or resolution we expect, or even want, but we have faith that we will receive what we need.

Our Gospel reading does speak to us about expectations. Mark tells us that when Jesus would encounter unclean spirits, they would shout, “You are the Son of God.” Mark also tells us that Jesus would warn them “sternly not to make him known.”

We see this often in Mark’s Gospel. Why was Jesus being so secretive? I have believed for some time that Jesus was being secretive about who He was, because He was trying to manage expectations. Many people at the time, and many people even now, expected to see the Savior as a kind of conquering warrior. And yet, Jesus did not save us by might or conquest as the world understands such things. He saved us through sacrifice. As we hear in our first reading from Hebrews: “He has no need, as did the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when he offered himself.” His disciples needed to witness His Cross and Resurrection before they could come to understand how He would be the Messiah.

It seems to me that, even though we are called to work for justice, we are called to bring healing more than retribution. It is in the love of God in Jesus Christ that we can work against evil and oppression. May we follow Jesus in love and mercy.

Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P., is the local superior of the Passionist Community in Birmingham, Alabama.