Category: Bible Study

“Indeed, she has received from the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.” –Isaiah 40:2 The prophet Isaiah addresses Jerusalem, the holy city of God. Jerusalem had turned its back on the Lord, despite all the great blessings He had showered upon it for centuries. Finally, in 587 B.C., Babylon invaded Jerusalem, conquered the city, razed it to the ground, and forced all its inhabitants into exile in Babylon (see 2 Chr 36:15-21). This is the “double” punishment which Isaiah refers to in today’s first eucharistic reading (Is 40:2). Yet now God speaks a word of “comfort” to...

“Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing.” –Isaiah 35:10 The Lord promised that the desert would bloom with abundant flowers (Is 35:1-2). The Lord was not referring to just any desert but to the desert separating the Israelites exiled in Babylon from their homeland. In other words, the Lord promised to remove obstacles separating us from our eternal, heavenly home with Him. A huge crowd separated a paralyzed man from Jesus, Who alone could heal him (Lk 5:19). Four of the man’s friends overcame this obstacle by carrying the paralytic up onto the roof and...

“For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground, that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.” –Baruch 5:7 We are walking a path through the millennia to our heavenly home. Our path is obstructed by rough, winding, mountainous terrain (Lk 3:5; see also Mt 7:14). Possibly the most difficult obstacles we face are “age-old depths and gorges” (Bar 5:7). “Age-old depths” have become very deep, and the drop-offs are steep. It is usually impossible to walk down or walk up a gorge. Climbing...

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; hence, the holy Offspring to be born will be called Son of God.” –Luke 1:35 Ever since the Son of God, the second Person of the blessed Trinity, God Himself, became a man, many people have refused to believe Jesus is God. They find it difficult to believe that God Himself could have been conceived by Mary through normal sexual intercourse. They are partly right, for Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary and not by sexual intercourse (Lk 1:35). The...

“He touched their eyes and said, ‘Because of your faith it shall be done to you’; and they recovered their sight.” –Matthew 9:29-30 In today’s Scripture readings, the Church is proclaiming God’s promise that “the eyes of the blind shall see” (Is 29:18). She implies that Jesus will heal blind people this Christmas season. This is great news for the physically blind, those who love the blind, and those who realize their spiritual blindness. All of us are spiritually blind in some way. For example, some people honestly don’t see what’s wrong with artificial birth control. This blindness warps their...