Category: Bible Reading & Meditation

“Death is at work in us, but life in you.” –2 Corinthians 4:12 Our culture of death will eventually be true to its name and die out. (We pray that this death of the culture of death will occur as soon as possible so that fewer people will be traumatized.) Death as a work of the evil one will be destroyed by another kind of death — a loving death to self in the pattern of Jesus’ death on the cross (see Phil 3:10). The writer of Song of Songs proclaims: “Stern as death is love, relentless as the nether...

“Lord, teach us to pray.” –Luke 11:1 Is the Lord satisfied with your prayer life? Pope St. John Paul II, at the end of his first encyclical letter, maintained that our prayer must be “great, intense, and growing” (The Redeemer of Man, 22). He also emphasized that the Lord wants our prayer to be combined with fasting, for the Lord has decided at this time to make prayer and fasting the first and most effective weapons against our culture of death (The Gospel of Life, 100). According to these criteria, is your prayer life satisfactory to the Lord? To pray...

“But here you are, putting your trust in deceitful words to your own loss!” –Jeremiah 7:8 Some Catholics are still trusting in “deceitful words” today: “It’s OK to live with your girlfriend and still receive Holy Communion at Mass each week. You’re a Catholic, and you’ll go to heaven. No one goes to hell anymore.” “Is it really a sin to use artificial birth control? All your Catholic friends do it. Look, the music minister and lector had vasectomies. Why should you go to Confession for that?” “So you got pulled over for a few DUI violations. Don’t worry, you’re...

“My mouth shall declare Your justice, day by day Your salvation.” –Psalm 71:15 The Lord has promised to place His words in your mouth, as He did for Jeremiah (Jer 1:9; see also Mt 10:20). From that day, He will “set you over nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant” (Jer 1:10). With God’s Word in your mouth, you will be a world force. In fact, the Lord will not only occasionally place a word in your mouth; He will fill it (see Ps 81:11) with...