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John 9: Understanding the assignment
“They understood the assignment.” That’s been a popular phrase lately. I noticed it in social media posts about celebrities at the Met Gala who showed up in sufficiently avant-garde fashion choices, but I’m sure it long predates that (and will soon be passé). It calls to mind the kid who shows up to class having…
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My favorite en-route saint
OK so let me tell you about my favorite saint-on-the-way, Father Pedro Arrupe, SJ. Betsy found out that she had been accepted to LMU and awarded the Pedro Arrupe Scholarship on the same day that the “Saint of the Day” in my go-to devotional, Give Us This Day was Pedro Arrupe. A few weeks later,…
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John 8: 12ff: Uncluttered
Man, clutter is a sneaky thug. Ever since Hurricane Ian missed us, I’ve been antsy to take on the clutter in my life. I’m not sure what the causality is between a hurricane and a Marie Kondo instinct, but timing-wise, the antsiness came after the storm. Maybe the recognition of how close we came to…
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Icing on the cake
So, this is kind of cool: I had an article published in a real publication. America Media published a piece I wrote addressing the question nobody was asking: Would Pope Francis like the Hulu murder mystery “Only Murders in the Building”? You can read it here. I have been meaning to write about Pope Francis’…
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John 8: Mercy Finds a Way
Like a flowering weed growing through the concrete, mercy finds a way. I’m pretty sure I took a class on the Gospel of John at seminary. I still have the Anchor Bible commentary authored by Father Raymond E. Brown, which I would not have otherwise and for which I’m grateful. I don’t remember who the…
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John 7: Fake News
How do you know who’s real and who’s fake? Have you ever sat at the middle of a table at a big group dinner? If I’m sitting in just the right place (or wrong place, I guess), I find myself on the edge of two different conversations, and while I can juggle for a little…
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John 6 (sort of): What if He thinks we mean it?
I just finished Fr. Mark Thibodeaux’s excellent Ascending with Ignatius: A 30-Day At-Home Retreat, which I recommend highly. He ends the last day with a prayer that St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is known for: Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, me memory, and my understanding, and my entire will, All…
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John 6:16-21 – Rule #7
More in the “Florida Man trashes Fourth Evangelist” saga tonight. John 6:16-21 is a little story that kind of seems like a joke your 9-year old niece is retelling from Saturday Night Live. It probably made some sense at the time, but some significant elements must have been lost in the retelling. Jesus walking on…
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John 6:14-15 – Wrong GUY
Maybe we’ve got the wrong GUY. John 6 is known for its discourse on the Eucharist, which we’ll get to. But there’s a bridge verse early in the chapter that is super-relevant right now that we should talk about. So John 6 starts with Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes. There are a lot of similarities…
Reading Francis 