Some years ago, I met a five-year-old girl named Mary who had just, only a few days earlier, been presented with a brand new red toy wagon. She never tired of giving her dog Sheppy rides in it. Little Mary smiled at me and whispered: “You know what? I
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Homily for the First Mass of Father David Matthew Anthony Notre Dame of Bethlehem Church, Bethlehem Pennsylvania 5 June 2016 Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C Thus should one regard us: as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Now it is of course required of
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Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you
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Thus is the kingdom of God; as though a man should cast seed into the earth, then sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow without his knowing it. For of itself the earth bears the crop, first the blade, then the ear, then the
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Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God. –Matthew 5:8– Some years ago, an experienced teaching sister at Immaculate Conception Elementary School in Allentown, Pennsylvania, stood before her second-grade class on the first day of school. “Boys and girls,” she began, “my name is Sister Assunta.”
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Let both grow together until the harvest. –Matthew 13:30– In his famous experiments of the 1960s, Yale University’s social psychologist discovered that his subjects were, in obedience to authority, surprisingly willing to administer what they thought were high voltage electric shocks to poor learners. As a teacher who is
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During my twenty-four-year stay in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, I came to know a woman named Anne who, in many ways, was like a second mother to me. Anne was full of maternal wisdom. About her own children, she’d say, “You can give birth to ‘m, but you can’t explain ‘m.” She
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For I know well the Spring that flows and runs,Although it is night. That eternal Spring is hidden, For I know well where it has its rise,Although it is night.I do not know its origin, nor has it one;But I know that every origin has come from it,Although it is
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When I was growing up, my older sister Elizabeth used to tease me with the first three lines of this list of negatives. Later in life, when I became a teacher, I added lines four through eight and used the result liberally with my high school sophomores. In a
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And he [i.e. Jesus] said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.” But he strictly charged them and commanded them not to tell this to anyone, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by
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