Weekly Reflection

Jesus, with His friends, has travelled far north into the region of Caesarea Philippi. In this secluded spot He asks them who people think He is. There’s variety of opinions: perhaps He’s John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. But what about the apostles themselves: what do they think? It’s […]

The healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter comes about through the mother’s faithful perseverance. Jesus is impressed with her unrelenting prayer. Her faith is a wonderful example. We may ask why Jesus responded to the woman in the way He did. After all, it does seem, to be honest, brusque, even a tad rude. The

In today’s Gospel, the fact that Jesus can command the storm to be still, and can even cross the sea by walking on it, shows only one thing: that He is God. The disciples, even in their panic, would not only see the miracle – they would remember the scriptures. They would know that they

In the days of Jesus, the people of Galilee came to realize that there was someone special in their midst. A young man had appeared who, it seemed, had special powers of healing, and who spoke in ways that captivated his listeners. This was someone who just had to be seen, and someone that people

Today’s feast celebrates the presence of Jesus in the mystery of the Eucharist, His presence among us under the appearance of bread and wine. How is it possible, nearly 2,000 years after His death, that He is with us in this way? How do we know it is Him? When Jesus rose from the dead,

Today we celebrate the most astonishiong, mind-bending truth of all: that though there is, and can be, only one God, yet in this one there are three persons. We could never have known that had it not been revealed through Jesus. In the Gospels He speaks of Himself frequently as the Son, sent into the

In today’s Gospel, Jesus appeared to His disciples, who were overjoyed to see Him. Yet each one of them also saw that Jesus bore the wounds of the crucifixion. They saw the marks of the nails and spear in His hands and side. Most of them remembered their cowardice and desertion of Jesus at a

In today’s Gospel we see Jesus in the act of praying. It is just before His arrest; and He prays, not for His own safety, but that God may be glorified. Jesus also prays for His disciples. He sees them as a gift from the Father and commends them for their faith in keeping God’s

We know from the experiences of those first followers of Jesus that keeping His commandments was sometimes costly. In the part of St. Peter’s first letter that we heard as our second reading today, St. Peter reminds us that there is a distinct possibility that following Jesus can bring suffering and even death. St. Peter

All of today’s readings have been about building the Church. In the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear how the early Church began to organize itself by devolving jobs to different people. In our second reading, from St. Peter’s first letter, the man that Jesus called His rock and instructed to