In Sermons:

Not So Important Where The Messiah Came From Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 31, 2025

In two weeks we will be celebrating the three days that shook the world, and the Friday we call “Good” because it led to our redemption.

Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent 2025 As St. Paul and others spread the joyous and demanding Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman world, and even beyond, they read from the Scriptures. But the story of Jesus was available orally. The Gospels in writing were not set down on papyrus right ...read more

Scripture: John 7:1-2, John 7:10, John 7:25-30, Psalm 34:17-21

Denomination: Catholic

Merciful, Merciful And Gracious Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 30, 2025

We confess our sins with true repentance and determination not to sin again, and we are forgiven. Freely. That is God’s self-definition. He needs nothing from us, no. His love for us is constantly being thrown back in His Holy Face by us sinners, but He keeps summoning us to be loved.

Fifth Sunday of Lent 2025 On this Fifth Sunday of Lent, which some of us grew up knowing as “Passion Sunday” or the first Sunday of the Passion, the Church is getting really serious about the identity and mission of Jesus as Christ/Messiah. Isaiah speaks for God, declaring “Remember not the former ...read more

Scripture: Deuteronomy 22:24, Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126:1-6, Philippians 3:8-14, John 8:1-11  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Dysfunctional Families All Over The Place

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 26, 2025

By seeking the Lord, we will find Him, in word and sacrament, each week as we gather here. By His power our sins are forgiven, and we are filled with His grace, His very life. We can smile always because of God’s deliverance.

Fourth Sunday of Lent 2025 Forty years did the people of Israel travel here and there through the southern desert. That was time enough for their nation to become the butt of jokes for all the people around them. It’s true that when Joshua took command from Moses, now taken to God, the Lord dried ...read more

Scripture: Luke 15:1-3, Luke 15:11-32, 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Psalm 34:2-7, Joshua 5:9, Joshua 5:10-12  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Truly God And Man

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 25, 2025

Old Herod was not even a Jew, but he sometimes paid attention to Torah, since he was “king of the Jews,” He even thought of himself as the true Messiah.

Word Made Flesh March 25, 2025 This day, this most critical of solemnities, was supposed to take place in a castle or palace, or some really important place in Israel. The Messiah was imagined to be conceived in an independent Israel, and that Messiah, the natural son of a king and queen was ...read more

Scripture: Isaiah 7:10-14, Isaiah 8:10, Psalm 40:7-11, Hebrews 10:4-10, Luke 1:26-38  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Hosea--Is He A Loser And Chump? Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 24, 2025

He fell in love with a woman who found herself lovers, lots of them. She was frequently unfaithful. Despite her infidelity, Hosea took her back time after time.

Friday of the Third Week in Lent 2025 The prophet Hosea, if he lived in our modern culture, would be called a total loser, an inveterate chump. He was prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel and ministered during the reign of King Jeroboam II in the middle of the eighth century before Our Lord. ...read more

Scripture: Mark 12:28-34, Psalm 81:6-11, Psalm 81:14, Hosea 14:2-9

Denomination: Catholic

Memory And Identity

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 19, 2025

Why was God not pleased with most of His redeemed people?

Third Sunday in Lent 2025 The richness of today’s Scripture readings makes it important for all of us, preacher and congregation, to take time during the week to reflect on the many messages God is sharing with us, His people, as we finish the first half of the Lenten season. If we pay close ...read more

Scripture: Luke 13:1-9, 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 1 Corinthians 10:10-12, Psalm 103:1-4, Psalm 103:6-8, Psalm 103:11, Exodus 3:1-8, Exodus 3:13-15  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

God Manages His Vineyard Well

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 18, 2025

Jesus reworks the old parable of the vineyard to fit the new barbarism. He directs the moral at the human vineyard managers, the religious and secular men who treat the Law and Temple as their personal fiefdom.

Friday of the Second Week of Lent 2025 St. Matthew’s Gospel is moving toward its climax, which is called Holy Week. Frequently we see Jesus crossing swords verbally with his adversaries. Jesus was an out-of-towner, considered a religious zealot and “hick” by the secular and religious authorities ...read more

Scripture: Psalm 118:22, Genesis 37:3-4, Genesis 37:12-13, Genesis 37:17-28, Psalm 105:16-21, Matthew 21:33-43, Matthew 21:45-46, Matthew 21:44, John 11:49-51  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Palm Sunday Of The Lord's Passion: Cry Of Dereliction, And Salvation And Healing

Contributed by Paul Andrew on Mar 13, 2025

In marriage, husbands, and wives fulfill your vows in your interpersonal communication. Abandonment prevails in small and large ways. The healing is to deliver the intimacy in your marriage out of what Jesus did for you.

Brennan Manning was an author who later was ordained as a Franciscan priest and who served in the Korean War. He tells the story of how he and his best friend, Ray, enlisted together and served in the same Marine platoon. One night a grenade landed in the foxhole where Brennan and Ray were. Ray ...read more

Denomination: Catholic

To See The Face Of God

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 12, 2025

What a great gift the Transfiguration is for us, glorifying God in our second full week of Holy Lent!

Second Sunday of Lent 2025 If there is a fundamental difficulty with religion, it may be that God, and every attribute of God, does not belong to us. All is naturally out of our human comprehension. We say God is transcendent. As Bp. Barron teaches, we are like two-dimensional stick figures on a ...read more

Scripture: Luke 9:28-36, Genesis 15:5-18

Denomination: Catholic

Forgiveness Tour

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 12, 2025

Praised be God. He will always give us the grace to accomplish anything He requires. The gift of forgiveness, even of our enemies, is ours for the asking.

Tuesday of First Week in Lent 2025 Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, as Genesis teaches, but our mental image of God, if we try to make one, is corrupted by our experience of other people. When the Greeks envisioned their so-called gods, they tended to be a lot more powerful ...read more

Scripture: Matthew 6:7-15, Psalm 15:4, Psalm 34:4-7, Psalm 34:16-19, Isaiah 55:10-11, Isaiah 55:9  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Decision Day--Don't Wait

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 10, 2025

We don’t know when our termination date will be. It could be later today or tomorrow. We don’t get to decide.

Friday of the First Week in Lent 2025 Ask anybody of mature age what are the two most important dates of anyone’s life and you will get a potpourri of answers. The statisticians will say the dates of birth and death, because those dates control so many decisions and outcomes. The real answers, for ...read more

Scripture: Psalm 130:1-8, Matthew 5:20-26, Ezekiel 18:21-28

Denomination: Catholic

What's So Bad About Pharisees Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 5, 2025

Ask yourself which of the Lenten practices holds the lowest place in your priorities. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving: surely one of these is least attractive to you. Focus your prayer this Lent on that facet,

Ash Wednesday 2025 What was the “leaven of the Pharisees”? What led Jesus, when discussing self-discipline, to call these self-described “separate ones” hypocrites when they prayed, fasted, and gave alms to the poor? They were not hypocrites because they followed the Law, Torah. What they wore on ...read more

Scripture: Joel 2:12-18, 2 Corinthians 5:20, 2 Corinthians 6:2, Matthew 6:1-6, Matthew 6:16-18, Matthew 16:6  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Validating Our Christian Identity

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 4, 2025

Lent is a time in which we engage our interior self with its brokenness, weakness and intentional wrongdoing. We are all sinners, but we are sinners endeavoring to become saints, by our faith and practice.

Friday after Ash Wednesday 2025 A priest of my acquaintance many years ago was in conversation with a Lutheran minister. He asked the minister if he believed that Martin Luther had made any big mistakes setting up a parallel Christian church. The minister candidly admitted that he thought Luther ...read more

Scripture: Isaiah 58:1-9, Psalm 51:3-6, Matthew 9:14-15

Denomination: Catholic

Battle In The Desert

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 3, 2025

Our exemplar in spiritual warfare is Jesus Christ

First Sunday of Lent 2025 Our Lord Jesus Christ was the Son of God. But He was, in human eyes, first the Son of Joseph and Mary, and since Joseph was a descendant of King David, their greatest king, Jesus was also called “Son of David.” That was important in Jewish eyes back in the first century, ...read more

Scripture: Romans 10:8-13, Luke 4:1-13, 1 John 2:16, Deuteronomy 26:4-10, Deuteronomy 17:14-20  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

The Great Trades

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 1, 2025

God, the Most High, has given us everything we own, so generosity in His service is only just.

Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Course 2025 The wisdom book we have in Greek called Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus (since the early churches used it so often) reads like the book of Proverbs. Today’s proverbs regard offerings to God. Our sacrifices to God, in the spirit of the second-Temple Jews, should ...read more

Scripture: Leviticus 2:1-16, Deuteronomy 12:6, 2 Corinthians 9:7, Mark 10:28-31, Exodus 23:15  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic