At first read, this parable about the fruitless fig tree can be unsettling. Many of us can imagine well the kind of life this tree had, growing along in a…
Despite all my years of scientific training, I have a hard time seeing the stars whirling above my head at night not as little twinkling jewels set into a firmament,…
Jealousy may flow from a perceived lack of access to achievement. When you see extraordinary gifts in someone else, you may despair that a door has been closed to such…
When I worked in academia, graduation tended to bring forth questions of making it on one’s own. Students wondered aloud or to themselves: Will things work out for me? Who…
“Vanity of vanities. . . . All things are vanity!” This phrase in our first reading from the book of Ecclesiastes is often quoted to voice the fleeting quality of…
A friend once told me that loving is a way of knowing, that we are to read scripture with more heart, and less brain. In the parable of the Sower…
It would be easy to read today’s Gospel and be content to remind myself that actions speak louder than words. Yet, the two powerful images in Jesus’ parable, a rotten…
How can I be delivered from the world’s wisdom into a fuller life? In his homily in today’s Office of Readings, Pope St. Gregory laments, “With my mind divided and…
Every religion has a tale about practitioners who “can’t see the forest for the trees.” Buddhism offers the story of the unruly cat. The master ties the cat to a…
One night, the local news announced the lottery jackpot had reached nearly a billion dollars. Sitting with my housemates, we marveled at this astronomical amount. “Think of all the good…
