In Sermons:

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

Actively Repent And Avoid Presumption

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 1, 2025

We can stand under Gis mystery, His greatness, His uniqueness, and admire or adore Him. That’s the extent of our “understanding,” to stand beneath his Being.

Monday of the Eighth Week in Course 2025 This is one of those liturgical weeks that gets started in one direction and then heads off in another mid-week. Of course, I’m talking about Wednesday as the turn-around day, Ash Wednesday, which begins the universally recognized time of Lent. So we should ...read more

Scripture: Psalm 32:1-2, Psalm 32:5-7, Mark 10:17-27

Denomination: Catholic

Specks, Logs And Improving Our Vision

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 26, 2025

We all know that the Internet has given us lots of opportunities to be tempted to sin, hasn’t it? Is the temptation itself sinful?

Eighth Sunday in Course 2025 Some people don’t have the deuterocanonical book of Sirach in their Bibles, so I’ll read some of the first reading. Sirach was written in Hebrew, but over the years those versions were mostly lost, but survive in Greek. The book is mostly a compilation of proverbs, ...read more

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:54-58, Luke 6:39-45, Psalm 92:2-3, Psalm 92:13-15

Denomination: Catholic

Hardness Of Heart Or True Friendship

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 24, 2025

Tested friends are the most valuable ones, sturdy shelters against future adversity.

Friday of the Seventh Week in Course 2025 Jeshua ben Sira was an Alexandrian Jew who spoke both Hebrew and Greek. About two hundred years before Jesus Christ his family gave us a compilation of his writings, which we call the Book of Sirach. It was used so often in the early Church that it ...read more

Scripture: Proverbs 19:20, Mark 10:1-12

Denomination: Catholic

No Mediocrity Allowed Here

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 19, 2025

Did the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Lord and God and Creator of the Universe, put aside His transcendent glory and empty Himself, coming down all the way to assume our weak human nature so that we could “get by”?

Seventh Sunday in Course 2025 Unless you have a pretty strong grounding in what we used to call “Bible History,” today’s first reading could leave you a little blindsided, that is until you heard the Gospel. King Saul, first king of the Israelite kingdom, had taken three thousand of his best ...read more

Scripture: Luke 6:27-38, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49, 1 Samuel 26:2, 1 Samuel 26:7-9, 1 Samuel 26:12-13, 1 Samuel 26:22-23  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Making A Name For Ourselves Fails The Test Of Joy

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 17, 2025

We have a tendency to believe our own publicity, and feel best about ourselves when we own the deeds to lots of stuff.

Friday of the Sixth Week in Course 2025 “Let’s make a name for ourselves” hints that the first reading, from Genesis, is really talking about the results of human pride. Migrating people from the far reaches of Asia are imagined coming together in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. ...read more

Scripture: Genesis 11:1-9, Mark 9:1

Denomination: Catholic

Black And White Morality--Absolutely!

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 12, 2025

Jeremiah knew what God wanted for them, but they continually rebelled.

Sixth Sunday in Course 2025 It’s likely that if you were educated, as I was, mostly in the 1960s or later, you might have bristled a bit at today’s Scripture passages. They have moral language that is very much black-and-white. If you trust in God and follow His way, you’ll bear much fruit; if you ...read more

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:12, 1 Corinthians 15:16-20, Luke 6:17-26, Psalm 1:1-4, Psalm 1:6, Jeremiah 17:5-8  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

The Mission Transcends Mere Geography

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 9, 2025

The fame of Jesus spread far from Capernaum and His words and healing were affecting many thousands, preparing both Jew and Gentile for the expansion of the Church after Pentecost .

Friday of the Fifth Week in Course 2025 Most modern Christians in North America, I believe, are unfamiliar with first-century geography, even of the Holy Land. I think if I use a midwestern U.S. parable, it might be easier to envision than what St. Mark records in his Gospel here. Let’s try ...read more

Scripture: Psalm 32:1-2, Psalm 32:5-7, Mark 7:31-37, Genesis 3:1-8

Denomination: Catholic