Humility is about making Jesus bigger. We make Jesus bigger by thinking and praying about Him. Demons still howl and flee when Jesus is bigger in us, bigger than our concern for self.

The Bible’s promise is that all those who continue to ask questions will receive answers. Some already have. Some are still asking, and have not received answers yet, but if they keep asking they will. No one who fails to ask, or who stops asking, will receive answers.

29 August 2025  Mark 6:17-29 “And she went out and said to her mother, ‘What shall I ask?’ And she said, ‘The head of John the Baptist.’”...

The feeding stories of the New Testament are not meant to portray the mission of the Church as a hunger program. We do not fulfill our calling as disciples by having soup kitchens and food pantries. All the feeding stories of the New Testament are signs of a much deeper and broader mission, viz., to make disciples of all nations.

Maybe it is because we are not supposed to get worked up about tombs. There is only one tomb that Christians should really care about, and that one is empty.

Inattention to little things in the end means indifference to excellence, competence and growth. Little things are inseparable from the big things.

The Scribes and Pharisees wanted people to use great care in the way they talked about obligations, and to make distinctions about obligations that made sense.Jesus wanted the same thing.

We need to live our lives in such a way that people ask questions, and then we have to give them answers. That is what repentance looks like for us now. Because repentance is a kind of levelling up.

Jesus never did, and still doesn’t, have a problem with a spirituality based on close reading of the Bible and earnest prayer based on that close reading. He has a problem with people not doing that enough.

Jesus points us to the oldest prayer in Judaism, which is still a central feature of Jewish prayer: the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). The part that comes after “You shall love the Lord, your God…” describes five steps that form disciples in the love of God and the love of neighbor.

Years of discipleship mean that for years we have lived close to the One who is the meaning of life. Years of discipleship mean we don’t have to wonder what the meaning and purpose of our lives is. It means we are spared many of the burdens of uncertainty, shame, and guilt. It means we have a supportive community around us all the time providing comfort, guidance, and care.

Wealth becomes demonic in direct proportion to the distance it travels from Jesus.

The Rich Young Man’s problem was not so much that he wanted his wealth, but that he didn’t want Jesus. He was hoping maybe what he needed was one of the 613 commandments (the total number of mitzvotmentioned in the Old Testament) that he had perhaps overlooked. But it was far bigger than that. He thought he could pick up the tab for his life himself, but “Follow Me” was more than he expected to pay, and he flinched.

So why would Jesus talk like that? It may be because He wanted the disciples to be clear about the kinds of things crowds would say about them. Maybe He wanted to direct them to the people and places where they would be most effective.

Children don’t have an innate knowledge of God any more than they have an innate knowledge of spelling. They have to be taught. They don’t have an innate knowledge of virtue either. They have to be taught. Children do have the innate capacity to learn those things, but they cannot learn without teachers.

In fact, that poisoning had happened before World War II, and would continue long after. Pope Pius believed that the world desperately needed an antidote, and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was at least part of that.

Forgiveness is so hard that sometimes it really, truly kills you. That’s why we have to keep doing it, because if we stop, we might never start again.

A capable hierarchy isn’t built from the top down, but from the bottom up. We get the bishops and priests we need from faithful homes, schools, and parishes.

“It is not the will of My Father, who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.” Our children are vulnerable and dangerously weak. They need to hear more loudly and clearly from us the Good News that God wants to save them, save us all.

Drawing lines was dangerous work. It still is. Jews are being murdered in Israel today because of their theological identity. Christians are being beheaded in Mozambique and other places in sub-Saharan Africa because of their theological identity. Christians and Jews both have paid in blood for the lines they have drawn.