Weekly Devotional

We like to think of faith as a linear thing – a progression – constantly growing and developing.  But sometimes our faith journey can be a wee bit regressive; as it was for the disciples.  In Mark’s account, the core disciples (the twelve whose words are recorded, plus the women…...

As Bob Stuenkel, one of our beloved pastors, points out, I often use cultural and media references in my preaching and teaching.  And so it was to those sources that my mind went to as I prepared this reflection.  I thought of the wonderful British movie from 1994, Four Weddings…...

I am not the biggest fan of karaoke. Perhaps that is why I chuckle every time a karaoke host says, “Come on up! You don’t have to be a good singer; you just have to think you are!”...

Many years ago, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen of the Diocese of Rochester, NY - and host of the television shows The Catholic Hour and Life Worth Living - spoke to the Lutherans of the Upper New York Synod of the Lutheran Church in America (LCA)....

Ironically, Jesus’ reputation - which is in tatters in the eyes of the religious authorities, his family, and the Jewish community in his hometown- appears strong in the eyes of Herod Antipas.  This is the son of Herod the Great who ruled as king until his death, but now his…...

Poor Jesus. The religious authorities don’t like him (too many examples to cite here). His family thinks he’s crazy and organize an intervention to persuade him to stop his foolishness (Mark 3:19f)....

St. Óscar Romero once said: There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried. How true that is! Likewise, there are things that can only be understood through direct, face-to-face encounters, through the forging of connections, through touching the lives of others....

The phrase “to turn something inside out” springs to mind this week.  It is a sense that begins with the opening words of the Gospel text: “Jesus went home.”  We think of home as a place of safety, acceptance, and belonging.  And given all that has happened in Mark 2,…...

Martin Luther was not only a Roman Catholic preist, but an Augustinian friar.  St. Augustine (whose rule the order follows and after whom it is named) was the father of the doctrine of Original Sin.  Simply put, this doctrine holds that humans are born with the sin of Adam in…...

When, in 1973, the Gallup organization gathered statistics on the religious preferences of Americans, they discovered that of those who provided a response, 87% described themselves as Christian, 6% as belonging to other faiths, and 5% had no preferred faith.  Fifty years later, in 2023 (the last year for which…...