Welcome

In this Sunday's Gospel , Jesus and his disciples encounter a man born blind. The disciples ask: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?"  They want an explanation. They want someone to hold responsible. Jesus redirects them entirely: "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him."  The question they asked, it turns out, was the wrong question. Our marriages have a way of producing the same reflex. Something goes wro

In this Sunday's Gospel , Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well and offers her "living water." She takes him literally, thinking of her own thirst, her own daily burden of drawing water. When the disciples return, Jesus tells them he has "food to eat that you do not know about," and they too take him literally, wondering who brought him lunch. Both the woman and the disciples hear Jesus through the filter of their own needs and desires, and so they miss what he is actually

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus tells people not to be afraid. Usually he is speaking to people weighed down by worldly troubles: illness, poverty, persecution. But at the Transfiguration , something different happens. When Peter, James, and John witness the fullness of who Jesus is, they fall to the ground in terror. They are not afraid of suffering. They are afraid of love itself, revealed without limit. And Jesus does not scold them. He walks over, gently touches them, and s