Today we hear from John’s Gospel. You probably already know that there is not a year fully dedicated to John’s Gospel in our lectionary. Over a cycle of three years, we read from Matthew’s (Year A, where we are since Advent), Mark’s Gospel on year B and then Luke’s Gospel on year C. And then,…

A Meditation to read at home for Epiphany We have noticed that during Christmas time, we read either from Luke’s or Matthew’s Gospels because they are the only evangelists who wrote about Jesus’s childhood. And we have also noticed that the two accounts do not overlap: Luke’s focuses on Mary’s story, while Matthew tells us…

We had a question last week about the origin of the “Christian Christmas”, and I said I would look it up! According to my sources, it seems that the birth of Jesus started to be celebrated in the 3rd century on the day of the pagan feast of the “Birth of the unconquered sun”. It…

You probably already know that we have two Christmas stories in the Gospel: One by Luke and the other one by Matthew (John and Mark don’t talk about Jesus’s infancy at all). What’s interesting is that we have two different perspectives in Matthew’s and Luke’s and they don’t overlap: Luke tells the birth of Jesus…

Each year during Advent, we have some pretty colorful readings, as you have probably noticed before: The prophecies of doom and restoration around the Exile in Babylon, Jesus announcing to his disciples his return and the end of the world, the final judgment. Later in Advent, we also hear about John the Baptist’s powerful predication…

Only twice in my time as a priest did I have someone getting really all upset during Bible study, and one time was while studying the passage of the Gospel we have just heard. This man who got all upset was one of the kindest person I’ve known but, for a reason I couldn’t understand…

Today, we have one of these passages of the Gospel that is important to hear with a little bit of historical background. Now I know what some may think when we say that: Oh, she is going to tell us not to read it literally but to understand all of this as symbols. And that’s…

Because that’s the best week to do that, let me start by telling you a story that is a little spooky. One day in Iceland, a young woman “au pair” was taking a walk with the little girl she was in charge of. On their way, they saw a church from afar and the little…

By now, we probably know everything we need to know about tax collectors! If you remember from last week, our Gospel was “The parable of the pharisee and the tax collector praying in the Temple“. We talked extensively about the reasons why tax collectors at Jesus’s time were considered as sinners and how they were…

Today, we have another parable with a couple of characters that seem to be complete opposite: The pharisee and the tax collector. This is not the first time we find a couple of opposite characters in Luke’s Gospel: you probably remember the unjust judge and the widow last week, and recently, we also talked about…