Gospel: Today Jesus meets Peter for the first time, after being introduced to him by Andrew, Peter's brother (Jn 2). All of them are in the company of John the Baptist, by the Jordan. But in the other Gospels, their first meeting is quite different. In the Synoptic Gospels...
Jesus comes from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee where he says, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of people" (Mt and Mk). And in Luke he performs a miracle before Peter (5:1-11). So which is it? Well, NT scholars generally avoid trying to "harmonize" the Gospels...
But what seems likely to me is this: Jesus, as well as Peter and Andrew, were most likely part of John the Baptist's circle. So it makes sense they would have met in John's company. Perhaps Jesus met Peter and Andrew at the Jordan, took their measure, returned home to reflect...
....on the two men, and decided that these would be good people to join his group. He then travelled to the Sea of Galilee to call them definitively. That helps to explain their prompt response: leaving everything behind. Having met him earlier made it easier to say "Yes..."
The varieties of ways that the Gospels tell the same story shouldn't bother us. They are four different writers telling the same story to four different communities, stressing some things and omitting others, as any of us would do. But at heart they agree: Jesus called Peter...
...and his brother Andrew by name. Jesus also "creates" them in a new way. That is: "I will *make* you fishers of people." (He's creating something new.) Or "You are to be called Cephas" (He's naming something new).
Jesus both calls us and recreates us.
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"And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today..."
"And I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. I've seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I've seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen...
"....and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate, myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities...
Gospel: Today Jesus calls Levi (Matthew) from his tax collecting booth in Capernaum (Mk 2). Remember that Jesus has just called four fishermen. How do you think they would have reacted to a tax collector joining their group? We tend to forget the differences within Jesus's...
...group of disciples. Even at this early stage we have two brothers: Peter and Andrew. Do brothers always get along? Then Jesus calls James and John, whose fishing business with their father Zebedee was probably more successful than Peter's and Andrew's. How do we know this?...
We can't be sure but Peter and Andrew are "casting" their nets, from the shore, while James and John are working on their father's boat with "hired hands. So Z's business was probably more successful. So there may have been some rivalry between the two pairs of brothers...
Dear friends: Let's be honest: This is a strange #Christmas, maybe the strangest any of us have ever experienced. Most of us are far from our homes, far from our friends and families, and those who are able to be with their friends and families are afraid, worried or nervous...
In the past few months, all of have faced the prospect of suffering, illness and death, and many of us have experienced great economic hardships.
So what does it mean to say "Merry Christmas"?...
This is the entrance to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. It's a tiny opening, no more than five feet high. Originally it was much larger, but it was made smaller and smaller to ensure that succeeding waves of invaders would not be able to enter the church easily....
"We spoke earlier of narcissism, of armor-plated selves, of people who live off grievance, thinking only of themselves. It is the inability to see that we don't all have the same possibilities available to us....
...It is all too easy for some to take an idea--in this example, personal freedom--and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.
You'll never find such people protesting the death of George Floyd...
...or joining a demonstration because there are shantytowns where children lack water or education, or because there are whole families who have lost their income....On such matters they would never protest; they are incapable of moving...
Gospel: Today on the Solemnity of #ChristTheKing Jesus tell us the litmus test for entrance into heaven: how we treat the "least among us." Who are they? The hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the stranger, the imprisoned. God will judge us on how we cared, or didn't care, for them..
There are so many arguments today about what it means to live a Christian life and to be a disciple, but Jesus is clear in today's Gospel passage:
"'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’"
Gospel: In Jesus's Parable of the Talents, a servant who does not invest his master's money is punished (Lk 19). Usually the "moral" is about being prepared or using one's "talents" (though the Greek "talanton" didn't have that meaning). But in a provocative "minority reading"...
Barbara Reid, a NT scholar, suggests that it is precisely the third servant, the one who fails to invest, who was the intended hero of Jesus's story: "The third servant is the honorable one—only he has refused to cooperate in the system by which his master continues to accrue...
....huge amounts of money while others go wanting."
Other NT scholars suggest that the parable must be seen alongside Jesus's other eschatological parables, which are mainly focused on preparedness (e.g., the "Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids).