All Saints/All Souls [Content warning: sexual abuse] When an abuse scandal happens in which the abuser is an artist—a filmmaker, painter, writer, or composer—there is often the question of what to do with that person’s work. Toss it or, as … Read More
30th Sunday Ordinary Time The disciples on the road with Jesus, eyewitnesses to his miracles and privileged recipients of his teaching, should have been looking for Bartimaeus, but they were too focused on themselves and their own concerns. They didn’t … Read More
29th Sunday Ordinary Time On the way to Jerusalem, between two healings of blind men (in chapters 8 and 10), Mark repeats this pattern three times: Jesus reveals his destiny; the disciples misunderstand what that means; Jesus reorients them to … Read More
28th Sunday Ordinary Time It can be comforting to treat today’s Gospel as another of Jesus’s hyperboles about the call to discipleship. However, we should not avoid its truth. The man in the Gospel seeking eternal life had observed all … Read More
27th Sunday Ordinary Time There is no getting around it. Today’s Gospel will hurt. Let us acknowledge that pain and admit there are no simple answers when families struggle with divorce. The lectionary allows a shorter version of today’s Gospel … Read More
26th Sunday Ordinary Time Today, Jesus’s disciples complain about an outsider driving out demons, something they had failed at earlier in the chapter. But their complaint is not that this person was healing or does so in Jesus’s name. They … Read More
25th Sunday Ordinary Time To get the full irony of the disciples’ argument today—who among them was the greatest—we need to know what happened in the section before and what we’ll hear in the following section of Mark’s ninth chapter. … Read More
24th Sunday Ordinary Time Today’s Gospel reading is the turning point in Mark’s narrative, where we hear for the first time since Mark 1:1 Jesus referred to as “Christ” and the cost of following him. From now on, Jesus’s road … Read More
23rd Sunday Ordinary Time “Be opened,” Jesus says to the man who was deaf and mute. But be opened to what? First, be opened to fullness of life. The man’s inability to hear or speak cut him off from the … Read More
