The Gospel reading for today’s first Sunday of Advent is our seasonal realignment to get our priorities right; warning against the addictive nature of worldly wealth and what true riches actually are. Today’s parable is the story of a man who amassed greater and greater wealth, only to have has life taken away before he…
If a book was to be written about how not to be elected and how not to be popular, Jesus would probably be the main character. In today’s Gospel reading, we see that Jesus is becoming popular and electable, and he does what he can to ruin that. He insults his potential donors and powerbrokers…
‘My heart is Democratic, but my brain is kind of Republican,’ said JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon years back, and I resonate with that myself. There is an openness and idealism about being a democrat, openness to immigrants, to the downtrodden and to the rest of the world that I think is virtuous. And…
Thomas Edison is famous for his inventions of the light bulb. We forget that he attempted the lightbulb 1,000 times unsuccessfully before prevailing. When a reporter asked him, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison said, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.” Our Lord and…
‘A proud man’ wrote Lewis ‘is always looking down on things and people and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.’ Pride also distorts our second love of others. ‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something,’ Lewis continues, ‘only out of having more of…
Jesus is not saying that God has a hit squad that takes out people who are sinners, and you could be next. Jesus’ whole life is contrary to that. What he seems to be saying is that, since we are all going to die, and since we are all sinners, the only way that our…
