On the next day, when the great crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took palm branches and went out to meet him, and cried out: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel.”  (John 12:12-13) A common custom in many lands of the ancient Middle East was to cover in some way the path of someone thought worthy of the highest honor.  In 2 Kings 9:13 Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, was treated to this honor.  Each of the four Gospels report that the people of Jerusalem gave Jesus the honor of walking on a covered path.  However, in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) we hear that the people lay their garments and cut branches to place on the street.  Only the Gospel of John specifically mentions palms. So, … [Read more...]

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life;  whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” (Jn. 11:21-27) At a recent school Mass, I spoke to the students about fear.  I mentioned that I had been afraid of the dark when I was younger, and that I was still scared of snakes now that I am older.  And I asked … [Read more...]

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.”(Jn. 9:39-41) The Gospel this Sunday is about the cure of the “man born blind.”  Jesus did so by making clay out of dirt and saliva, by putting the clay on the man’s eyes, and then by instructing the man to wash in the Pool at Siloam.  The closing words of this Sunday’s Gospel passage sum up the meaning of the cure of the man born blind.  It’s not just a miracle cure of a physical illness.  It’s about opening the eyes of … [Read more...]

… [Read more...]

Jesus answered and said to her,  “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;  but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;  the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”(Jn. 4:13-14) Most of us don’t know what it means to be literally “dying of thirst.”  We may have used the expression before, but it might just have been a hot July afternoon.  I would venture to say that there are very few of us who have gone entire day without something to drink, let alone a week.  But to people living in the desert at the time of Jesus, water was something precious.  Since rainstorms were few and far in between, water had to be found by digging or collected for storage in cisterns.  The idea of a “running stream” was something that … [Read more...]