Category: Bible Reading & Meditation

“The kingdom of God has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” –Matthew 11:12 Halfway through Advent, the Lord brings up the subject of violence in relation to His kingdom. Jesus tells us that His kingdom has suffered violence, and the violent are taking it by force (Mt 11:12). This could have several meanings. Satan has forcibly stolen people and resources that rightfully belong to God. We must engage in spiritual warfare using the spiritual weapons of prayer and fasting to bring down Satan, destroy his strongholds, and return the stolen property to God (see 2 Cor 10:3-5;...

“Mary set out, proceeding in haste into the hill country.” –Luke 1:39 Mary was the first and is the greatest evangelizer. As soon as she conceived Jesus in her womb, she shared Jesus with Elizabeth and John, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb (Lk 1:39ff). They both were filled with the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:41). After Mary, as Our Lady of Guadalupe, came to St. Juan Diego in Mexico, eight million people came to new life in Jesus over the next seven years. As Pope St. Paul VI taught, Mary is the star of evangelization (On Evangelization, 82). Mary, the greatest...

“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...