Category: Bible Reading & Meditation

“People do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins burst.” –Matthew 9:17 Jesus said that His disciples would have to wait until after His ascension before they fasted (Mt 9:14-15). They had to receive the Holy Spirit before fasting, because Jesus’ kind of fasting is so explosive that it would be destructive unless encased in a life in the Spirit (see Mt 9:17). For example, after Jesus fasted for forty days, He exploded in the power of the Spirit (Lk 4:14) into the three greatest years of ministry in history, culminating in His death, resurrection,...

“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life.” –Deuteronomy 30:19 For many years, the Lord has challenged us to choose life in the first Bible reading of the Mass for the second day of Lent. In retrospect, we have reason to think we should have taken the Lord’s command more seriously in past Lents. Considering partial birth abortions, euthanasia, sperm and egg banks, experiments in cloning humans, artificial insemination, sterilizations, chemical and surgical abortions, rampant pornography, gang violence, more wars and rapes, starvation, more refugees, torture, more prisons, capital punishment, addictions, the debt...

“Now is the acceptable time!” –2 Corinthians 6:2 Many of us long for the renewal of the Catholic Church. We hunger for the members of the Church to be set on fire, to abandon themselves to Jesus. We long for Masses to be full of people who are filled with the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:4). The Lord’s answer to your longing is: “Repent and believe in the gospel. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” I am sitting in a 6:30 AM Mass with several hundred people who have come to receive ashes at the...

“I have truly built You a princely house, a dwelling where You may abide forever.” –1 Kings 8:13 Solomon built the Temple which the Lord filled with a cloud of His glory (1 Kgs 8:10-11). We who have been baptized into Christ, however, are greater than Solomon (Mt 11:11). Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19) and the Holy Trinity lives within us. Many sick people touched the tassel of Jesus’ cloak and were healed (Mk 6:56). We, however, have actually received – and can daily receive – the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus,...