Event Tag: Readings Year I

Thursday of the Twenty-Fourth Week

09/18/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Friday of the Twenty-Fourth Week

09/19/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Monday of the Twenty-Fifth Week

09/22/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Wednesday of the Twenty-Fifth Week

09/24/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Thursday of the Twenty-Fifth Week

09/25/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Friday of the Twenty-Fifth Week

09/26/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Friday of the Twenty-Sixth Week

10/03/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Monday of the Twenty-Seventh Week

10/06/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Wednesday of the Twenty-Seventh Week

10/08/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Thursday of the Twenty-Seventh Week

10/09/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Friday of the Twenty-Seventh Week

10/10/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Saturday of the Twenty-Seventh Week

10/11/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Monday of the Twenty-Eighth Week

10/13/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Tuesday of the Twenty-Eighth Week

10/14/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Thursday of the Twenty-Eighth Week

10/16/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Monday of the Twenty-Ninth Week

10/20/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Tuesday of the Twenty-Ninth Week

10/21/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Liturgy: Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Scripture Readings Mass Intention: Our Deceased Relatives and Friends

Wednesday of the Twenty-Ninth Week

10/22/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Liturgy: Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Scripture Readings Mass Intention: Our Deceased Relatives and Friends

Thursday of the Twenty-Ninth Week

10/23/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Liturgy: Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Scripture Readings Mass Intention: Our Deceased Relatives and Friends

Friday of the Twenty-Ninth Week

10/24/2025 5:30 am – 6:00 am

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Liturgy: Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Scripture Readings Mass Intention: Our Deceased Relatives and Friends

Way, Truth, and Life

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
Thieves and Marauders

Fourth Sunday of Easter Scripture Readings Good Shepherd Sunday evokes images of a smiling Jesus hugging kids and petting lambs. Yet what we have here in this morning’s gospel reading is actually an indictment of the civil and religious authorities. He accuses them of preying on the very people they were commissioned to preserve and protect. It’s hard to see through the imagery that Jesus uses without an awareness of the passage’s context. Jesus had just cured a man born blind who had been called in and interrogated by the religious authorities. That led to the man’s being expelled from the temple. In response, Jesus accused the authorities of being incurably blind. The Pharisees reacted with indignation, asking Jesus, “You’re not saying that we’re blind, too, are you?” This gospel passage is Jesus’s reply. What Jesus is confronting here is something we now call “power distance.” It’s what he saw at work in the treatment of those entrusted to their care by those in positions of authority. If we look at Jesus’s example—that of the shepherd and the sheep—through the lens of our own cultural biases and see in the shepherd a herder whose only concern is getting the sheep safely to market, we’re missing the point entirely. The Good Shepherd’s connection to the sheep is relational, not transactional. That’s what makes all the difference. Think about that for a moment. For Jesus, shepherding wasn’t just a job, and the sheep weren’t just ciphers in a ledger—income and expense. The difference between shepherd and sheep wasn’t one of dominance and dependence, but of interdependence. It was a difference of role, not power and prestige. There was no “power distance.” No “us and them,” but only “us.” What did Jesus mean by calling himself the sheep gate and that all who came before him were “thieves and marauders”? Thieves are unwilling to pay the price. They come to the sheepfold only to get what they can from them, to bleed them dry, giving nothing of themselves in return. And what about the marauders? They not only want to take advantage of the sheep, but they also get a perverse, sadistic satisfaction out of seeing them suffer. It somehow builds their sense of power and prestige to show how much damage they can inflict on others weaker than themselves. How does that relate to Jesus as the sheep gate? The shepherd lays himself down into the gap in the wall, making himself the access point for the sheep to both safety and sustenance. Once again, the thieves and marauders are in a transactional relationship with the sheep, whereas Jesus presents himself as the doorway to a deeper relationship with them. Let’s consider this for a moment from the perspective of the sheep. When their relationship to those charged with their guidance, care, and protection is transactional, how does that make them feel? When authorities treat them as dependent, less than, inferior, and unworthy, what happens to them? The best that could result would be feelings of incompetence and worthlessness. The worst could be resentment, anger, rage, and violence. Whenever an artificial power distance is imposed, it results in an us-versus-them situation where the “us” side feels unjustifiably superior, and the “them” side feels angry and resentful at what is, in fact, injustice. The “thieves and marauders” syndrome arises wherever there’s need. “Even though I walk through the dark valley, I fear no evil.” The psalmist doesn’t say “if.” He implies the truth: it’s “when.” Every one of us, from time to time, has to wander lost in those deep caverns with insurmountable walls to either side, where no sunshine reaches, and the way ahead is unclear. Every one of us has had the experience of the sheep, needing the guidance, protection, and sustenance of the shepherd. The temptation that comes strikes those who find themselves in the role of shepherds. When we’re called upon to provide that guidance, protection, and sustenance, it’s way too easy to think of ourselves as privileged and those we can serve as underprivileged or even unworthy, and to demand that they prove themselves worthy of our help. Help becomes transactional. Our Christian community has dropped this gospel reading right in the middle of our liturgical celebration of the Easter season. There’s a reason for that, and it sits in the middle of the reading where Jesus proclaims, “I am the gate for the sheep.” Εγο ειμι (ego eimi)… I AM… Yahweh. It’s our God himself who manifests his care for us in the shepherd who makes himself the gate of access and protection for the sheep, who guides and sacrifices himself for their well-being. Who cares not a bit about the worthiness of the sheep but lives the relationship with them regardless of the dimensions of their dark valleys—the sick, the vulnerable, migrants and refugees without home or people, the hungry, the homeless, uncared for children, the poor and destitute, the unemployed, the mentally challenged, and those who don’t look, talk, believe, or act like us. We can’t look to Jesus two thousand years ago, who said Εγο ειμι (ego eimi), I am. We are the Body of Christ. He is not the gate for the sheep if we aren’t. We’re not being asked to change this country or the world or to fix everyone’s problems. We are called, however, to look with Christ’s eyes on what’s happening around us and to experience once again that metanoia, that change of mind and heart. We’re called to feel that same cut to the heart, that same compunction that caused the people in today’s first reading to cry out, “What are we to do?” Only if we’re willing to lay ourselves down in the gap in the wall as Jesus did will we find the answer to that question. Readings & Homily Video Get articles from H. Les Brown delivered to your email inbox
On the Road Again

Third Sunday of Easter Scripture Readings I can’t overestimate the importance of today’s gospel reading. If you’re looking for an exposé of what the life of a Christian is all about, you won’t do much better than right here. It begins where we all begin—in the midst of disappointment, discouragement, and resignation. We’ve all been there and, in my opinion, without it, you can’t appreciate what it really means to follow Christ. I’d go so far as to say that the cross is the only door to God through Christ, and there is no other. Think about where the disciples were coming from. The master died an ignominious death, some women were talking nonsense about the empty tomb and seeing him, and the Apostles were paralyzed with indecision. There was nothing left for them in Jerusalem. They didn’t need any more drama. Home was only two hours away. Two hours to walk. Two hours to talk. Two hours to do what we always do: lose ourselves in a post-mortem of failed hopes and plans. What went wrong? What did we miss? It softened the sting of loss. It wasn’t at the tomb, it wasn’t in the locked room, it wasn’t in Jerusalem, but it was on the road of remorse that their hearts burned. For the Jewish people, the heart was the center of understanding, not feeling. They’d had enough feeling for a while. What does it feel like, after all, when the thick clouds of confusion start to dissipate and we get to see more clearly, bit by bit, the shape and dimensions of a conundrum that’s held us baffled in its grip for a long while? Doesn’t it burn? The disciples needed to get away from the confusion and chaotic emotions of the city and on the road before any of it could begin to make sense. What happened when they, Scripture scholars that they were, began to look at the all-too-familiar passages of the Law and the Prophets through the lens of the crucifixion? A little distance allowed them to see what they believed from a whole new perspective. What had been so familiar now struck them as if for the first time. It’s sad but true for all of us that it takes a wildfire for us to see the forest for the trees. Was Jesus with them? You betcha… but no less than how he’s with us when we’re walking away. That companion on the road is always with us, but he never walks shoulder-to-shoulder or speaks unless we’re ready, and unless we’re ready enough to want his presence, and to invite him into our private space. He doesn’t come with us unbidden, and he doesn’t stay with us uninvited. We somehow have to be lost and hurting enough to turn to the last resort. God’s still there when all else fails. And then, the meal… sharing the staff of life with a stranger. It’s not an accident that recognition comes at the moment of breakage. This is not just a superficial acknowledgment. The Greek word is επιγινώσκω (epiginōskō). That’s a resonance that began with the new understanding of the old Scriptures and deepens until it shakes us to the core. It’s in our thwarted dreams, our shattered plans, our broken lives that we finally recognize the One who was with us the whole way. In the breaking and sharing of the bread, we are nourished. On the road, we understood that it’s not until we share a life taken, blessed, broken, and given that we are transformed into the Real Presence. We are the bread of transubstantiation. Once transformed, we’re not the same. We’re not satisfied to sit at home moaning, complaining and licking our wounds. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” So, we get up from the table and leave our safe, comfy space, and get back on the road. We go back to where we left, but nothing is the same. Our destination’s not the same. We’re not the same. We’ve had a metanoia to the core. Luke put this story between the empty tomb and the believing Apostles for a reason. It’s not an accident; it’s a lesson. He’s teaching us about the nature of our eucharist. We set out on the road on a Sunday morning like today, with the disappointments and cares of our world weighing us down. We encounter the Scriptures through the lens of our pain, and so our hearts burn within us. We invite our companion to dine with us, and we recognize him—and ourselves—in the bread taken, blessed, broken, and given. And, when all is said and done, we’re sent out to go back where we came from, enlivened, to bring what we have found to others and to be for them the companions on the road that Christ was for us. We have arrived home to Emmaus. It’s time to invite the stranger who walks with us to break bread. Readings & Homily Video Get articles from H. Les Brown delivered to your email inbox
Whose Sins You Shall Forgive

Second Sunday of Easter Scripture Readings In preparing for today’s liturgy and homily, once again, as often happens, I discover that the common understanding of the gospel passage is not often the richest one or the best one. It happened once more with this one. Perhaps the usual focus on Thomas’s doubts and his transition to faith may not be the best approach. In fact, it may not be the thrust of today’s gospel at all. Whereas the usual focus on Thomas teaches that faith without proof is a higher accomplishment, how does that affect us who already believe? Remember that John’s mystical gospel implicates us. It’s not easy to find ourselves reflected in Thomas’s experience. If it’s not primarily about Thomas’s doubt and faith, what is the point? Today’s gospel is about one thing: forgiveness. Does that surprise you? Look at where we are in the gospel. What you just heard was the original ending. It is the point toward which the whole gospel has climbed. It is the fulfillment of a promise Jesus made to his disciples: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees it nor knows it.” And again, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you and remind you of all that I told you. Peace, I leave with you; my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” That fulfillment happens here in today’s gospel on the day of Resurrection. For John, this is Pentecost, and there is no other. Pay attention to the details John presents us with this morning. It starts on the day of Resurrection, and yet Christ has already ascended to the glory of the Father. He breathes on them. It is the breath of the Spirit that wafted over the waters of chaos to create. Jesus, mirroring the Father, breathes his Spirit over the chaotic band of disciples: cowards, deniers, abandoners, renegades. If the creative Spirit of Genesis brought about the universe and its array, the Spirit of John brought about the community of the church. It creates something out of nothing. And that’s when we notice Jesus’s first words echoing in that upper room: Peace! Eιρηνη (eirene)! Shalom! This is the peace he promised that the world cannot give. The world seeks the end of conflict. The Spirit brings wholeness, healing, fullness of life, and communal well-being. The peace that comes from the Spirit creates new relationships out of old wounds. We cannot understand how this is constitutive of forgiveness until we step away from the concept of sin as transgression. If we’re still counting sins as the number of times we did wrong, we’ll never fully appreciate what John was saying. Sin isn’t transgression. It isn’t wrongdoing. It’s a breakdown in relationships. Once we look around, seeing through that lens, we see our broken selves, our broken bonds, our broken world in a different light. It’s a world that’s not at peace with itself; it’s a world that desperately needs healing… needs the peace the world cannot give. The disciples were gathered in that room in distrust. The doors were locked because they distrusted the Jewish authorities and their minions. They distrusted one another because they’d seen what each of them had done. They distrusted God because the one they’d dedicated their life to in God’s name had failed them. What they found in that room on that resurrection day was peace. The creative Spirit of peace and reconciliation. The Spirit of forgiveness. It has nothing to do with saying you’re sorry, but everything to do with healing the wounds of division. It has nothing to do with beating your breast or on your knees and crying, “O my God, I am heartily sorry…” and everything to do with letting it all go. Don’t think that when Jesus said, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained,” that has to do with the other people. No. When you forgive others as an individual or as a community, you’re healing your side of a broken relationship and setting both of you free to heal. If you retain that brokenness, it remains yours as well as theirs. You see, just as injury is a two-way street, the perpetrator and the victim locked together in a painful dance, forgiveness works the same way. Healing can’t begin until at least one of them gives it up. A man I’ll call David had a falling-out with his brother over their mother’s estate. Nothing dramatic — just the slow poison of a disputed piece of furniture, a perceived slight, a lawyer’s letter. They hadn’t spoken in three years. David came to me not for absolution but because he was exhausted. He said, “I’ve gone over it a thousand times and I’m still right.” I told him I believed him. Then I asked: “How’s that working for you?” He laughed, which surprised him. What he eventually understood — and it took months, not minutes — was that his being right had nothing to do with his being free. He was still locked in that room with his brother, doors bolted from the inside, replaying the same argument. The wound belonged to both of them equally, regardless of who caused it. He reached out. His brother wasn’t ready. That’s the part nobody tells you — you can release your side of it and the other person may not move. But David did something the disciples did: he stopped waiting for the world to fix it and let the Spirit do what the world cannot. He said later, “I don’t know if my brother and I will ever be close again. But I’m not in that room anymore.” Now, where does Thomas come into this picture? Thomas had difficulty accepting that healing […]
Seeing and Believing

Easter Sunday Scripture Readings In the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment turned the world on its head. Belief gave way to reason, and the scientific method of observation, questioning, proposing a hypothesis, experimenting, and analyzing took its place. That gave humankind a technological revolution, but it robbed us of something at least as important. It subjected faith to experiential verification, forcing the spirit to compete with the physical—while the conceptual tools of each are incompatible with the other. What I mean is that encounters and experiments belong to two distinct but interrelated universes. Let’s talk about belief. The Enlightenment was right to challenge uncritical beliefs of the sort that infected humanity from the beginning. Humans are, and have always been, storytellers. It’s the means by which we understand ourselves and our place in the cosmos. In short, myth is the framework we use to find and share meaning. Meaning is not a question that science can answer. On the other hand, stories take on a life of their own, and when their context changes—a different time, a different culture—they can not only become divorced from their meaning but can be given interpretations antithetical to their original purpose. Some examples of stories given interpretations far afield of what they were intended to convey include the creation stories in the Book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. People down to our own day try to apply scientific thinking to these spiritually meaningful texts and succeed only in creating for themselves an unreal universe that has no meaning. They convey neither spiritual nor scientific truths, and rational people are right to challenge those beliefs. They go too far, however, when they challenge the myths themselves because science has no tools to handle spiritual meaning. Why am I talking about this on Easter morning? Because the difference between belief and faith will determine our understanding of Easter. I use the two terms to mean very different things. Beliefs can be learned. They can be shared. They can be expressed. And, depending on context and understanding, they can be wrong. Faith is a very different animal. Faith exists in the realm of experience, in the realm of relationship, in the realm of trust. Faith can find expression in beliefs, and beliefs can bolster faith, but they are not synonymous. We humans do things rather backward. We formulate systems of belief to lead us to faith. Yet faith is the key that unlocks the meaning behind our beliefs. The rationalists are not only right to criticize faithless beliefs, they do us a favor. Faith—that is, trust—must come first before understanding. Look at our gospel today. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found it open and empty. That’s all she knew. Her reaction was fear. Peter came to the tomb and rushed in. He saw the burial wrappings—the shroud and head cloth—folded carefully but empty. His reaction was confusion. The disciple whom Jesus loved hesitated. He approached with reverence. He saw what Peter had seen, but he saw things differently. He saw and believed, though the gospel says they did not yet understand the scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. The disciple whom Jesus loved saw and believed. Was it the love that made the difference? Did his relationship with Jesus allow him to observe what the others had only seen? Was what he saw what we now call the Shroud of Turin? I have seen the Shroud of Turin up close and personal. I have seen, and I believe. If the Shroud is what the physical evidence suggests it may be, what the Beloved Disciple saw was not merely empty linens. He saw linens that bore the image of what had just happened—scorched from within, imprinted by light, still warm perhaps from the event that had passed through them moments before. He saw the first photograph of the resurrection, taken by the resurrection itself. No wonder he believed. No wonder John says he didn’t yet understand—because what he was looking at had no category. It had never happened before. The disciples did not find an empty tomb and construct a resurrection theology. They found evidence of something that demanded a new category entirely. The resurrection is not a conclusion. It is an encounter with something unprecedented—something that leaves marks on linen and on people, and that no one who encounters it up close is ever quite the same afterward. The physical mechanics of the resurrection are beyond our grasp. There is, nor can there be, any physical, experimental “proof” of the resurrection. Our experience of the resurrection begins with the testimony of those who were there. But that’s just the beginning. Our trust in their word—their stories—must lead us to a personal encounter. Like the people of the Samaritan village, we start out hearing their testimony and descend into faith. “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have experienced for ourselves, and we know that this truly is the savior of the world.” Like them, and like Jesus’s own disciples, we cannot seek understanding so that we might have faith. Rather, like Saint Augustine, we embrace fides quaerens intellectum—faith seeking understanding. We stand in the empty tomb this morning in the shadow of death. Will we, like the beloved disciple, see and believe? Christ is risen! Христос Воскрес! (Christos Voskres!) Get articles from H. Les Brown delivered to your email inbox
The First Word

Easter Vigil Scripture Readings We began in darkness. We began this evening’s liturgy in darkness. We ourselves began in the darkness of the womb. The universe itself began in darkness. We’re asked this evening to reach back and bring forward the תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu wa-bohu), the shapeless emptiness that came into being in the dark. It’s still with us. It’s still here, underneath it all, resisting all the “let there bes” from God and humanity. It breaks through from time to time, infecting our efforts with futility, our loves with loss, our hope with despair. Its darkness waits patiently for us to rejoin it in the tomb. All of that ends tonight. Tonight we experience…we celebrate the light. As John tells us in his prologue to the new creation, “… the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not devoured it.” [John 1:5] The Nothing cannot swallow creation, the Silence cannot stifle the Word, the Darkness cannot extinguish the Light, Death cannot corrupt Life, and Despair cannot destroy Hope. God’s messenger sits atop the stone we so carefully put in place to bury our weakness, our fear, our guilt, and our shame. We struggle to hide our human weakness away from the light of day. The tomb that held our joys and hopes prisoner in its inky blackness stands open and exposed. “Do not be afraid,” the messenger says, “I know that you are seeking […] the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said.” Darkness and chaos and confusion are banished by God’s word. The waters of tohu wa-bohu—the waters of death and destruction—are transformed by the savior God’s power. The desert of human hunger and destitution is transformed by the waters of God’s love. We approach him without money and without cost. His love comes to us unbidden and unearned and returns to him in the glory of the resurrection. And the dead end of the tomb is revealed as the doorway to endless life. It is finished. Τετέλεσται (tetelestai). Christ is risen. Христос Воскрес! (Christos Voskres!). Jesus Christ has conquered. Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Νικᾶ (Iēsous Khristos Nikā). Glory to God in the Highest. Gloria in excelsis Deo. Praise to Yahweh, our God. Hallelu-Ya! הַלְּלוּ-יָהּ (hallelu-Ya) Alleluia! Alleluia! Get articles from H. Les Brown delivered to your email inbox