Tim Staples explains how the title Mother of God has it's foundation in Scripture. It all goes back to the story of the Visitation when Elizabeth calls Mary "Mother of my Lord." First, when Elizabeth “exclaimed with a loud cry… why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me” (Luke [...]
Lucas Cranach the Elder - Adam and Eve One of the interesting things about conducing a parish mission is how many people stay behind to ask really probing questions. Last evening here in Indianapolis a man named Frank asked me if it was wrong not to believe certain things the church teaches. He's a [...]
Remembering that the New Testament is hidden in the old and the old is made manifest in the New, yesterday's feast provides three powerful images from the past that converge at Pentecost: Wind, Fire and Witness. The mighty rushing wind connects back to the first day of creation where in the first verses of the Bible [...]
On the week before Christmas in 1941 my grandfather was walking with his two sons to market in downtown Pottstown, Pennsylvania. It had snowed the night before and the roads were too icy to drive. That's why they were walking. As they crossed the river bridge a coal truck turned on to the bridge. The bridge [...]
One of the things the atheists like to destroy is the New Testament. Without anything positive to offer themselves, they feel obliged to de-construct the authority of the New Testament if they can. A favorite way to do this is to try to show that the New Testament is a much edited, late cut and paste [...]
In reading Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet's Jesus A Theography I enjoyed the second chapter the most. Frank and Leonard aim to show how Jesus Christ is echoed and reflected in every part of the Scriptures. They build up a full picture of Christ the Lord--not just by trying to reconstruct the "historical Jesus" (that exercise usually [...]
Remember the old joke about the man who says to the priest, "I never go to your church Father. The place is full of hypocrites!" Priest answers, "Well come along anyway. We can always make room for one more." In today's gospel Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath and the Pharisees pick him up on [...]
Here's an excerpt from today's gospel, and there is something there I had never noticed before: The Lord said to him, "Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside? [...]
When I was a child I was taught the Sunday School song, "Trust and Obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to Trust and Obey." So this morning at Mass this song comes back to me in the reading of the gospel. It is the story of the healing of the [...]
In seminary we had to study modern Biblical scholarship, and one of my great blessings was that at Bob Jones I learned to be skeptical of the fundamentalists, but at Oxford I learned to be skeptical of the modernists. Both groups seemed to me to be like two madmen strapped back to back. Both the fundamentalists [...]