The Narthex

Acts 4:32-35 speaks of the spiritual and temporal unity of the early Christian Church, exemplified in the common holding of property. The text no doubt makes visions of socialist sugar plums dance in some “social justice-plus” types' heads. I hate to wake them up from their dreams. The Church in…

I’ve regularly criticized the contemporary Church’s generous toleration of cremation. I’ve voiced many reasons why this indulgence of cremation is wrongheaded, but one reason that I think gets too little attention is the symbolic confusion that cremation generates. Man is a symbolic creature, one who is prone to see, recognize,…

The story of the three Magi from the East following the star to Jerusalem is told during the Christmas season (Matt. 2:1-18). It is not like the heart-warming aspects of Christ’s birth, with an angel speaking to shepherds and angels singing. Rather, it is a story that ends with weeping…

The First Reading and Gospel for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, focus on leprosy. The reading from Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46 (one of the few times that Old Testament book appears in the Lectionary) prescribes procedures for determining if one is a leper and how he was to…

Last Sunday’s Gospel for the Solemnity of Christ the King is Matthew’s Last Judgment account. I have to admit I’m partial to that text because, prior to the 1969 Calendar Reform that inserted Christ the King as the last Sunday of the liturgical year, there was a kind of eschatological…

The November issue of Commentary, a monthly magazine of conservative Jewish thought, features a great essay, “Psalms They Have, But They Know Not.” Rabbi Meir Soloveichik ponders American Biblical ignorance, especially among its “educated,” and its implications. The immediate impetus for his article was an incident last summer on the…

“Keep on doing what you have learned and received” (Phil 4:9). St. Paul's sage advice, in last Sunday’s Second Reading, seems particularly apt for those gathered in Rome for the Synod on Synodality. In recent weeks, we’ve heard some interesting, some bizarre interpretations of how the Church’s Tradition relates to…

Last Sunday’s readings focused on the corrosive effect of unjust anger and its ability to choke off -- as in the case of the wicked servant’s debtor, literally -- mercy. There is, of course, the danger of thinking that all anger is always bad. That’s not true. Anger is an…