Laetare 2025

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The lack of money is a test. Insufficient resources is a test. In today’s Gospel, Jesus sees a large crowd coming to Him, so He puts a question to Philip, “‘Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’ But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”

Jesus is enacting here His own sermon, where He told His disciples not to worry about what they would eat, or what they would drink, or what they would wear: “For your heavenly Father knows you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”…

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The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

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Jonathan Haidt’s important book The Anxious Generation demonstrates that smartphones and social media multiply anxiety. This is particularly true for adolescents. He’s right. Yet the problem of anxiety is not new. Tolstoy in the 19th century said, “Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.”

Election years exacerbate anxiety. But anxiety haunts the human experience. A little 4 year old spent Tuesday morning crying through morning prayer on the first day of school, right over there. Perhaps the mother was also weeping. Letting go of your child, whether for JK or her freshman year out of state, is fraught with worry....

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Thanksgiving 2023

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But here’s the astonishing kicker: we are to present these cries of desperation with thanksgiving: “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” We’ve been accustomed to think of thanksgiving as an acknowledgement of abundance. Thanksgiving is for the prosperous and well-fed, with family gathered in a warm house and a rest from work. But here, Paul directs our thanksgiving to arise from our lack, our poverty, our need, our desperation….

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