Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the prison camps of Siberia. Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The…

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. Let us look again at the scene described in the Gospel story, for it is riveting. This encounter with Jesus has a unique quality that must be examined closely. Jesus was a great walker. He covered…

Often parishioners come to their clergy or spiritual advisors seeking help with issues of deepening or increasing their faith or of overcoming doubts and uncertainty. This is not surprising because most of us experience such needs. It is a mark of strength of faith to want to grow spiritually. Today’s Gospel reading relates a similar…

A lot of older immigrants routinely offer table scraps to a happily waiting dog under the table. When asked why they don’t simply buy dog food they frequently will answer something like, “This is how we fed pets in the old country. We didn’t have an entire industry devoted to manufacturing food for pets. Look…

Oh, the cleverness of this fellow in today’s Gospel! OK, so he wouldn’t have scored well in the honesty department, but you must admit he was quite clever. It seems that he was dishonest many times over. He worked for a rich man, managing his property. Probably he was well enough paid for this service,…

As we get closer to the general election, it is more and more common to hear someone suggesting that because Candidate X once thought this, and now says that, he or she isn’t being honest! Changing one’s mind may be thought to be a sign of insincerity or weakness. Imagine God changing God’s mind! The…

Born in 1496, John Colet was an English priest on the cusp of the English Reformation, the son of the Lord Mayor of London. He took an M.A. degree at Oxford before traveling to Italy to study canon and civil law, patristics, and Greek. He belonged to a group at Oxford known as the Platonic…

These days the idea of “centering” ourselves—our spiritual life, our prayer, the way we live our lives—has become a popular concern. People join helpful groups and learn to meditate; they learn to remove from their consciousness everything that is not helpful to the ultimate goal of touching at least the edges of the eternal. People…

The 13th chapter of Luke’s Gospel includes two texts offered for today’s Gospel: the account of The Bent Over Woman and at the close of the chapter, the dialog where Jesus engages the question of the number to be saved. “Strive to enter by the narrow door.” Binding these are images of the Kingdom of…

A favorite prayer for “birthday blessings,” in churches where people’s birthdays are publicly celebrated, begins: “O God, our times are in your hand…” (Prayer #50, BCP p.380) Isaiah would recognize the phrase, and being a daring and confrontational prophet, he would no doubt ask if we lived, not just on our birthdays, but every day…