It is Ash Wednesday today. Despite the comforting familiarity of the yearly cycle of penitence and fasting, this Ash Wednesday is a little different from all the others we have known. Yes, this day still marks the beginning of our journey through the penitential days of Lent. But let’s be...
It is perhaps not surprising that the summer of this annus horribilis has brought with it a bitter and bumper crop of hopelessness. It’s somehow in vogue to speak and write of hopelessness—not as you might imagine, but instead as the needed catalyst for change, perhaps a...
We are headed into a stretch of parables this month, all of which Jesus tells as an effort to help people understand what the kingdom of heaven is like. It is not always a comforting picture. “Parables are not parallels,” my old preaching professor used to...