Today's Gospel has two parts that don't exactly seem to fit together. First Jesus is condemning the Scribes and Pharisees for the "hard burdens," they put on the people and then, all of a sudden, he says that we should not call anyone Father. What's going on here?
The story of the Foolish and the Wise Virgins can be difficult for us in the 21st century to appreciate fully. Not only do we not understand the wedding customs themselves, the actions of the Wise Virgins seem rather selfish: Why wouldn't they just share with the Foolish Virgins and then everyone...
Jesus is telling us that we must put our abilities at the service of the Master, God our Father. But before we can do that, we have to discern what our gifts are. We all have been given special abilities by God. It's up to us to figure out what those abilities are and how we can best put them int...
When the world ends, we are told that God is going to focus on one thing: How did we care for the poor, the sick, the suffering? Nothing else will matter. Just how we treated who Jesus called "the least" among us.
