Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-being-a-neighbor/
Jun 24 2015
A couple of weeks ago my parish priest said another homily on the joy of being adopted children of God. It is a frequent sentiment in the church and a concept older than Christianity itself, and yet these days, whenever I hear it, I find that something about it doesn’t sit right with me. I …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-being-adopted-by-god/
Apr 17 2015
We are uncertain. Much of the time we are afraid. We endure pain and grieve, mourning for lives unlived. We huddle in rooms that feel safe with our loved ones, and there we thread through our fingers the most precious of our memories and the most fragile of questions. Sometimes we are desperate, sometimes hopeful. …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-peace-with-us/
Mar 18 2015
Trust in the Lord with all your heart And lean not on your own understanding. — Proverbs 3:5-6 These are not easy times. Every day we open our eyes to a world of bad news, a struggle for survival, and apocalyptic expectations. Mid-century-style Stalinism is taking over Russia, the Seventh Century is taking over the …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-lent-of-life/
Feb 23 2015
What does a three-thousand-year-old murder have to do with a 20th-century revolution? What does a queen of ancient Israel have to do with Stalinism, slavery, or internment camps? The interplay of two eternal questions humanity has asked, nurtured, abused, distorted, ignored, and bounced off each other since the dawn of its consciousness: When something goes …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-who-is-to-blame/
Jan 26 2015
Hello again, my friends. Some of you, my precious regular readers, have noticed that my blog has been on hiatus for the past few weeks. I have been insanely busy, as have all who work in the Church during the Christmas season, and I have been insanely tired, and I’ve been unwell – but I’d …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-jonah-and-me/
Nov 04 2014
Continued from “On serpent and the cross. Part I.” You must admit, one can hardly keep from eisegesis when one is a Christian holding Numbers 21. “Eisegesis” is reading meaning into the text rather than out of it. The authors of the bronze serpent story didn’t have the Christ in mind, but we discern the …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-serpent-and-cross-part-2/
Oct 18 2014
It’s been a while since I’ve engaged in pure, unadulterated biblical commentary, but it is time. So much of life’s chaos and din has been converging on me without pause for so many weeks that I must put it all away—for today—and open the Bible and immerse myself completely in the questions that seem to …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-serpent-and-cross-part-1/
Aug 04 2014
Last Sunday’s gospel was one of the best known of Jesus’s miracles, one that has crossed the boundary between religious and popular discourse and inspired discussion on compassion and charity as much as the meaning of Sacrament, on a holistic approach to the person—body and soul—as much as the malleability of natural laws. It is …
Permanent link to this article: https://onmounthoreb.com/on-whence-loaves-and-fishes-come/
Jul 25 2014
My regular readers know that I spent the last month and a half at St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth, Minnesota, working and thinking and losing myself among the meadows, and losing my senses to the quiet ecstasy of the northern forest and the poignant little wild northern flower. And praying. Losing myself in the chapel. …
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Jul 14 2019
On being a neighbor
July 14, 2019
Today’s Gospel is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Everybody knows it, and if you’re a Christian and happened to go to church today, you most likely also heard a sermon on the subject. And chances are, that sermon included some sort of reference—direct or obscure, scholarly or passionate, reflection on conciliation or call to …
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