Association Of Catholic Bloggers

In today’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees test Jesus, by asking for signs from Heaven. With exasperation, Jesus retorts, “ Why does this generation seek a sign? ” (Mark 8:12). The Pharisees found Jesus’ previous miraculous acts insufficient proof of His divinity. In fact, they find Jesus to be suspiciously fraudulent.  Therefore, they seek human signs from someone who is both human and divine. They cannot understand the God-Man in their midst. The Pharisees can only see with their humanity and cannot fathom God in the flesh. Do You Seek a Sign? How often do you doubt the omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of God in your life? Do you seek a sign of God’s power when all seems lost? Or perhaps you question whether God could really know everything happening in everyone’s life, at every moment. Or maybe you find it unfathomable that God can be everywhere at once. When these doubts and questions come to mind, we act very much like the Pharisees and we seek a sign – a human sign

My husband has been teaching me how to do that numbered box game known as Sudoku.   When he has finishes his crossword puzzle from the Sunday newspaper, I often find him hovering over the numbers’ puzzle. He does it very well, so I figured I would humble myself and ask him to teach me. What a learning experience this has been! In my first several attempts I became quite frustrated.   This is a game that lets you think you are doing well, until, well, you aren't.   Then you have to erase everything and start over, or, as we are prone to do, just put a big X over the unfinished puzzle and start a different one. My husband told me the other day that it is not uncommon to get to the very last number and discover you’ve made a mistake! The puzzles are rated with stars, with the number one being the easiest.   So finally, after a few weeks of attempting to do it, I  finished the easiest one!   Yay for me, right? The thing about these puzzles is that they req

PLEASE CLICK HERE

We went out to grab a bite to eat one night at a bar/restaurant that we hadn’t been to before.   The food was very good and the service was fine as well. Usually I am not too fond of places that have a thousand television sets with music playing overhead because I like to be able to converse while I eat, but this place wasn’t too loud and we were entertained by what was going on in the world of sports, surrounding us at every possible viewing angle. I was very disturbed though, as we were finishing up our dinner and getting ready to leave.   I looked around us as I was putting on my coat when it hit me.   All of a sudden I realized that the other diners were not all white. Now before you misunderstand me, the fact that they weren’t all white didn’t bother me at all, but, rather, I was bothered by the realization that our usual dining places must have no diversity at all, or very little.   You see, if that were not the case, then this crowd probably wouldn’t have stood

Today we are still in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 7, but we’re making a little transition.   As we look at verses 14-23, we could jokingly say, “Tell us what you really think, Jesus!”   That’s because he does not mince any words. We just finished the verses about honoring your mother and father and Jesus telling those gathered that making a donation to the temple does not nullify their responsibility to take care of their parents.   And now, today, he talks quite frankly about what defiles us. Here’s the deal.   Whatever you put into you, can’t defile you because it comes from the outside.   But what does get you in trouble are the things going on inside of you. Whatever foods you take in for instance, comes in and then goes out, but whatever is coming out of you—like your words and actions—comes from what is in your heart, and “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance or folly” all defile yo

In today’s Gospel from Mark we hear Jesus teach about the sinfulness of man coming from what is in the heart, not from what he eats. In accordance with Jewish law, certain foods had always been considered off limits and deemed “unclean.” Therefore, if a Jewish person ate an unclean food, then that person committed a sin. Yet, in this teaching, Jesus declares all foods clean. This is because it is not the food that we eat that separates us from God. Through Jesus’ teaching they gained an understanding of the causation of sin. For, it is our sin of words (our malicious speech, hatred, etc.) that make us move away from God. Jesus could understand why the Jewish people needed to hear this message. It directly contradicted what they practiced. However, once alone with the Disciples, Jesus noticed that they continued to question Him about this teaching. Jesus responded with a question: “ Are even you likewise without understanding? ” (Mark 7:18) Such a question makes you think that Jes

The Sermon on the Mount Carl Heinrich Bloch [ Web Gallery of Art ] Readings   (New American Bible: Philippines, USA) Readings   (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) Gospel  Matthew 5:17-37 ( New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)     Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never

Continuing today in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 7, the leaders – the Pharisees and Scribes – questioned Jesus about the practice of his disciples.   His disciples were eating their meals without ritually washing their hands.   I guess the leaders shouldn’t have mentioned this to Jesus, because did they ever get an earful in reply! Jesus, who was very familiar with them, laid into them about following their human traditions while disregarding God’s commandments.   Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he told them they were hypocrites, honoring him with their lips but not their hearts.   He went on to quote Isaiah, “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.” There is a lot in these first 13 verses of chapter 7, but I would like to propose that we today still have to be careful about upholding our human traditions and placing them above God’s commandments. To remind me to be careful about this, I put a reminder in my phone so that every day I have this ver