What is Love?
In our Gospel text for today, Jesus responds to the questions of the Pharisees and shares again the greatest law to love God with all of whom we are, then adds a way in which we can do that by loving our Neighbor as ourselves. While we’ve heard these teachings before, have we truly pondered what it means to love God? What does love in action towards God look like? Join us for a text that often leaves us with more questions than answers.
Bless
This Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of St Francis and learn a little about what his life can teach us. We also consider a familiar gospel text in new ways as we center ourselves in the many characters and positions of the text. The Gospel is rarely an either or text but often a yes and proposition as our lives find us connecting with many faces within the text.
Enough
Our Hebrew text and Gospel invite us to consider the unending Grace God offers us through our creation and the knowledge that we are enough.
A New Song
The first time ever I drove down Los Osos Valley Road from the freeway, I said, aloud, “This is the most beautiful valley I have ever seen.” It was a spring morning following winter rains. The sky was a brilliant blue. The nestling hills were an intense green. The first wildflowers were beginning to emerge along the roadside. And as we came near Los Osos, great splashes of colors bathed the fields where farmers were raising flowers for seed. The…
Forgiveness: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve
In today’s gospel story, Peter asks Jesus, how often should he forgive? Jesus replies: “77 times.” Yowza-77 times!!! Is he serious? Most of us are just beginners when it comes to the act of forgiving.
Pray
This week, Matthew’s gospel turns to Jesus teaching his disciples what it will mean for him to be the Messiah and the hard road ahead. While this text introduces the idea of suffering into the life of discipleship as followers of Christ, we are also called to ask how we move out of God’s way, out of our own way in developing lives of faith and communities that serve God, each other and the communities around us.
Who do you say that I am?
We encounter a shift in the flow of Matthew’s Gospel this Sunday and hear Jesus talk about all the people and profits others say Jesus may be, but the important question to his disciples and us was, who do you say that I am? As we move through our own lives as followers of Christ, what stories and narratives do we craft of who Jesus was, is, and continues to be in our lives?
Cultivating Mercy
Mercy! Mercy is something that is in short supply today. Mercy is showing compassion or forgiveness towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or ignore. Mercy is an act of kindness that springs forth from a generous heart.
The Dark Night of the Soul
I don’t know what storms you and your loved ones are facing, what darkness you and your loved ones feel surrounded by, but I do know this: before you even have the chance to pray, “Lord, save me,” Jesus is already by your side, holding you up, so you can walk back to the boat together.
The fog and transformation
This Sunday is the feast day of the Transfiguration. How do we continue to follow Jesus through our own times of fog and discernment? Luke’s Gospel and rooted connections with our community help show us the way.