Some years ago, I was at one of my kids’ soccer games. Another parent approached me with a very serious and emotionally charged question. 

This man’s mother had died in another state.  His sister was handling the arrangements and had shocked him by saying that their mom would be cremated.  He hadn’t expected this since their father had been bodily buried, but he wanted to know if this was ok – ok in the sense that would his mother’s place in the Resurrection and her eternal life be affected. This is the kind of question people ask priests at soccer games; mom, eternity, no pressure.

Read More

There are a lot of evaluations in today’s readings, of Jesse’s sons, of the man born blind and of Jesus himself. We do a lot of evaluating, and we need to recognize our limitations.

The NFL draft is coming up in a few weeks and a key part of the preparation is the what they call the “NFL Combine.” They invited 319 players to spend four days getting measured for height, weight, wingspan, and so forth. They were tested physically for speed, strength and athletic ability and skills. They were tested for intelligence and psychologically and they were interviewed.

That is just a piece of the evaluation process. These are multi-million-dollar contracts in an ultra-competitive league. Scouts watch hours of video, attend live games, do background checks, interview their college coaches, many have further workouts. It’s exhaustive and done by professionals; people who eat, sleep and breathe football.

Read More

Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ (John 4:10)

Living water. What does Jesus mean by “living water?” The phrase was commonly used to refer to running water, like a stream or river, as opposed to a pond or lake. That is what this woman thinks he is talking about at first. That would be in line with our Old Testament passage this morning from Exodus. The water God loosed from the rock in the wilderness was running/living water, clear and good to drink.

Read More