Category: Bible Reading & Meditation

“Appear not before the Lord empty-handed.” –Sirach 35:4 God’s Word commands us not to come before the Lord empty-handed (Sir 35:4). This means we must come to the Lord with our offerings – with the fruit of our service, finances, parenting, work, and life. Nonetheless, in another sense, we are to appear before the Lord with empty hands – we hold back nothing from the Lord. We offer it all to him. Every physical possession is a gift from Him, and we offer them all back to Him. Our spiritual fruit is His, not ours. We don’t hold on to...

“Return to the Lord and give up sin.” –Sirach 17:20 In today’s eucharistic readings, the Church gives us a Lenten “trailer,” to use movie terminology. Today’s first reading from Sirach fits well on Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent in two days. “Turn again to the Most High and away from sin, hate intensely what He loathes” (Sir 17:21). “Return to the Lord and give up sin, pray to Him and make your offenses few” (Sir 17:20). “But to the penitent He provides a way back” (Sir 17:19). “Happy is he whose fault is taken away, whose sin...

“Praise no man before he speaks, for it is then that men are tested.” –Sirach 27:7 When we open our mouths and speak, we open our inner selves and reveal publicly: our “heart’s abundance” (Lk 6:45), our faults and sins (Sir 27:4), and the bent of our minds (Sir 27:6). Therefore, be “slow to speak” (Jas 1:19), don’t talk too much (Prv 10:19), and “let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear” (Eph 4:29, RSV-CE). “All of us...

“People were bringing their little children to Him to have Him touch them, but the disciples were scolding them…Jesus became indignant when He noticed it and said to them: ‘Let the children come to Me and do not hinder them.’ ” –Mark 10:13-14 Jesus loves children. He created children. He’s the only Person Who ever intentionally became a Child. He embraces and blesses children (Mk 10:16). He makes children a sign, a sacrament of His kingdom (Mk 10:15). Jesus wants His disciples to imitate Him in His love for children. He wants: married couples to joyfully conceive children, children to...

“Therefore let no man separate what God has joined.” –Mark 10:9 If Jesus is not God, He has not saved us by His death on the cross and Christianity is false. Yet we know that Jesus is God because: He rose from the dead by His own power, and only God can do that (see Rm 1:4). Jesus’ disciples are living in a holiness, freedom, and purity which is humanly impossible. Only God can make us new creations. One of the greatest examples of living a new life in the divine Jesus is Christian marriage. For millennia in every culture,...