On the Sundays after Easter, we get to read from several passages of the Gospel that are like “snapshots” of the Resurrection: We are told of the experience of the disciples, the eleven and others, at different times, places and how they came to have an encounter with the Risen Christ. But one of the…
Easter 2 (A) – 1 Peter 1: 3-9; John 20: 19-31
You may already know that the Sunday after Easter is also called “Low Sunday” as in “Low attendance Sunday“, I guess because everybody is tired after all the churchy things going on during Holy week and Easter! It’s usually the time when the priests, if they have an assistant or a seminarian, would ask them…
Easter Sunday (A) – Matthew 28: 1-10
I had time on my own this past week and I took this opportunity to read, to binge read to be precise, a novel a friend of mine let me borrow from her. Not just a novel but a thriller actually, kind of a gruesome story to say the least, and yet, as those stories…
Maundy Thursday (A) – John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
“Before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father…“ One of the distinctive features of John’s Gospel is that we always meet a Jesus who is fully aware of what’s going on around him. Many times in this book, we see…
Lent 5 (A) – Ezekiel 37: 1-14
This Sunday, we’re finishing up with our Lenten exploration of some passages of the Old Testament (next week is already Palm Sunday), and today we have a lesson from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel. Prophecy is a strange word for us, but still not unfamiliar: don’t we hear ever so often about “the prophecies…
Lent 4 (A) – 1 Samuel 16: 1-13; Psalm 23
This Sunday is going to look a little different than other Sundays because we’re going to dedicate part of our liturgy to do a service of healing with laying of the hands and anointing. It is a tradition that has always existed in the church, it’s already mentioned in the New testament, in James’s Epistle,…
Lent 3 (A) – Exodus 17: 1-7; Psalm 95
Last week, we talked about how Abraham was called by God to cross the wilderness trusting in God’s promise to give him a new land, a great name and countless descendants. About five centuries later, Abraham’s people finds themselves again in the wilderness, having to go back to Canaan, after they had been freed from…
Lent 2 (A) – Genesis 12: 1-4a
Today, we continue to read from the Book of Genesis. Last week, we talked about how the book is believed to have been written during the Exile in Babylon, in the 6th century before Christ, at this time where Israel starts to reflect on what it means to be a people, to have a land,…
Lent 1 (A) – Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7
What we have come to call “The Old Testament”, the first part of the Bible for Christians, is believed to have begun to be put into writing during Israel’s captivity in Babylon, in the 6th century before Christ. This would make sense for several reasons: – The first reason is that it wasn’t the masses…
Ash Wednesday (A) – Psalm 103: 8-14
“The Lord is full of compassion and mercy* slow to anger and of great kindness” (Psalm 103: 8) I love it that we start our Lenten journey with this passage of the psalm that reminds us that our God is a loving, forgiving God. Psalms are these songs of Ancient Israel that the people used…