Fr Jason Smith LC
One Ash Wednesday, my dad announced to my brother and I that for Lent he would be fasting on bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays. He wondered if we would like to join him.
Aaron and I looked at each other thinking he had flipped his lid. Aaron said he’d stick to giving up arguing; I said I’d continue to refrain from hitting Aaron until Easter. With all of our resolutions on the table we were ready to begin our Lenten regimen. More…
The brilliance of this painting is most viewers can’t see what it’s about, but since I already gave you a hint…
We could have dubbed this week leading up to Holy Week “Hypocrisy Week,” given the general theme of the readings at daily Mass. Jesus goes tête-à-tête with the Pharisees, pointing out their duplicity and false piety to them. There is a subtle danger in cheering him on, More…
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
We may wonder sometimes if Jesus knows our grief. We forget that he is just as human as we are. When Martha goes out to meet Jesus, she is meeting with a dear friend. Unsettled, with mixed thoughts and feelings, she tells the Lord, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It can sound almost as though she is reprimanding him. But her frankness over her frustration really shows how close she is to him, and him to her. More…
“Let us go back to Judea…”
Today’s Gospel (John 11:1-45) is the longest of the year, after the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. There is so much to consider in this Gospel passage that it would be too much to try and cover it in one post, which is why I decided to divide this reflection in two parts. Today and tomorrow, I invite you to slip your feet in a pair of dusty sandals and place yourself on scene with the other characters in the Gospel. Identify with them, be one of them, and ask yourself, “Who am I in today’s Gospel?” More…
The Gospels readings for the 3 Sundays leading up to Palm Sunday have something peculiar in common — unlikely emissaries of the Gospel. The Samaritan woman at the well, the man born blind, and this week’s spotlight guest in particular, a dead man, are not the first people we would choose to preach the Good News.
Yet these are the people God chose. Clearly, God can choose anybody he wants to be his messenger. More…
Fr Jason Smith
I went to Manhattan yesterday to get a wisdom tooth pulled. Thankfully the dentist was so adroit I was left with an hour or two of leisure to snap pictures of the city and Grand Central as I waited for the train.
As I snapped shots here and there I couldn’t help but observe the energy of the city. I kept thinking to myself, “No wonder it is so hard to stop and pray.” On the train ride home I put down the camera and picked up the pen to jot down a few notes–both to remind myself and to help others–on how to pray amid our busy life. More…
“While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
One of the reasons this Sunday’s Gospel reading is my favorite is all the little quirks you find in the original Greek text. This passage is full of them (John chapter 9).
Now people tend to get intimidated and annoyed when I start doing Greek on them, so I’m going to spare you that this time. I’ll just explain a couple of those issues without getting philological (i.e., getting geeky over nitty-gritty language details).
The first quirky Greek thing that strikes me when I read this passage is the repetition of the verb “open.” More…
This Sunday’s Gospel (John Chapter 9), Jesus’ healing of the man born blind, is my favorite passage of the whole Bible. I love the way this scene in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth captures the story’s full range of emotions and contrasts the self-absorbed pharisees with the exuberant joy everyone else feels, and should be feeling, over the blind man’s miraculous healing. This scene highlights the essence of Laetare Sunday Joy by juxtaposing it with the type of attitude we must overcome to experience the joy Christ wants for us. More…
By Fr Jason Smith
A few weeks back I was hearing confessions in an old, cold, and rather uncomfortable confessional, the kind that our forefathers once used with a screen and two wooden doors, one on either side, so that the priest can slide them closed and the person on the right can’t hear what the person on the left is saying, or vice versa. More…
People have one track minds, God wants us to see the big picture.
As I was reading the part about “Living Water” in today’s Gospel reading (John 4:5-42), I was reminded of something interesting. When I teach Baptism preparation classes, at one point I address the topic of the symbolism of water. I ask them, More…
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