Scripture for Life: Today's readings invite us to journey in reflection from the heroic to the ridiculous to the sublime, as Jesus invites us to perceive the infinite value of every relationship.
What if our starting point in thinking about what it means to be a person in communion with God, oneself and the world was not reduced to institutional belonging, but instead began with humans' inherent capacity for God?
Scripture for Life: The church's prayer this week leads us through a long and difficult process of watching Jesus be stripped of human power so that we can learn something about what divine power is.
Scripture for Life: The parable we call the prodigal son describes an incurably philanthropic God who responds to a little love with overwhelming, unrelenting, unrepayable generosity and joy.
Art: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel's "Stations of the Cross" paintings espouse Jesus' program of liberation in their images of oppression in Latin America, showing us how to bridge the gap between Jesus' era and our own.
Scripture for Life: Anyone who lives with passion, deeply committed to the cause of Jesus, will be tempted in the same ways he was. The trickiest thing is that temptations arrive in the camouflage of good ideas.
Scripture for Life: We can begin to create a different world by speaking less and listening more. The very act of listening is an admission that we need to see through others' eyes as well as our own.
Scripture for Life: Speaking to a humanity that tends to equate good fortune with God's blessing, Jesus draws the map to happiness by a different route. His description of blessed happiness reorients our imagination.
Commentary: Jesus' humorous yet serious warning can be hard to heed as this pandemic is prolonged. It seems the "beams" are in other people's eyes, not ours, and they are blind to both the danger and the solutions.
