I admit I have to smile this year when reading anew the Gospel for Christmas Eve! We have talked so much during Advent about how we were in a season of planning, of preparation, how we were supposed to be alert, ready for the Lord’s coming…and so tonight I can’t help but smile at the…

I am often asked the meaning of the pink candle on the Advent wreath: “What does it stand for?” or “When are we to light it?” so you may know by now that the pink candle represents Joy. In some churches, all the linens including the priest’s stole are changed to pink for the occasion…

We talked last week about this kind of tension there can be during the season of Advent between the business and excitement around us, and the quiet, contemplative, and sometimes gloomy atmosphere we find at church, both in our liturgy and in our readings. Last Sunday, we talked about Isaiah and how he prophetized at…

There is always this tension in Advent when, on one side, everything around us invites us to get busy and excited as we prepare for the Christmas celebrations and, on the other side, we find ourselves at church in this quiet, contemplative, and even rather gloomy mood. Advent in the church is traditionally understood as…

“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”These famous words from John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic in the 16th century, come resonate in me as I read the “Parable of the final judgment“, the last parable in Matthew’s Gospel, the parable the lectionary leaves us with as we wrap…

You’re probably all aware that we are reaching the end of our liturgical year, in two weeks we will be in Advent, and with the end of the liturgical year we are hearing the last lessons from Matthew’s Gospel. They are not the easiest ones. They are what we call the “Parables of judgment”: The…

All Saints’ Day in one of those very rare occasions where we get to read from the Book of Revelation, at least in mainline protestant churches. There is a good reason for that, and it probably has to do with the fact that the Book of Revelation is a bit suspicious to us. By that,…

We’ve have just heard the fourth and last chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, and we will conclude today on this series. In these past weeks, we have come to explore a bit of Paul’s theology, his fundamental beliefs about Christ and about Christian life. Mainly, we talked about how Paul considers that humility,…

We continue today with the reading of the Letter to the Philippians, we’re now in Chapter 3. Last week, we turned our attention to Paul’s “mini-creed”, this hymn he wrote to summarize his beliefs about Christ and Christ’s mission, and we may have been quite surprised that for Paul, basically, the story of Christ can…

We continue this week to read Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and we will read the whole letter over the course of the month. This week we’re in chapter 2. The idea is for us to explore both Paul’s theology, his way of understanding who is Christ and what is Christ’s mission, and also to…