Monthly Archives: February 2025

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C

15 February 2025
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Sitting with my friend Gail, the parish president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, in a class today about these very beatitudes, she said something astonishing: “Look around this room. There are people here experiencing a greater poverty than some of the people who live on the street. We can’t see their poverty, because they carry it inside.” Ah. So true. But Jesus promises that the kingdom of God is theirs. I wonder if we’ll ever understand how.

Hunger, too, is a terrible experience, and manifests in many ways. I think of the many young people today who are crippled with anxiety. How they must hunger to be comfortable in the world, to have the confidence to drive a car or speak to a stranger. Oh, how I pray that their hungers might be satisfied.

Maintaining the depths of grief for years on end is an experience I dread more than hunger and poverty. It IS a blessing when tears finally subside, at least for stretches of time. Even though it seems impossible at the time, laughter will find its way back to us, and we certainly relish restored happiness more after we have cried what seemed to be endless tears.

And isn’t the experience of being hated, excluded, insulted, and denounced the very thing we would do anything to avoid? But Jesus tells us that’s okay, because people better than we are have been treated the same way. In truth, virtually every ethnic group that’s come to this country has experienced bitter exclusion and hatred. What each of these groups has in common is the promise that God will make things right. What a blessing that will be.

In what ways have some of the trials of your life been turned into blessings?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C

9 February 2025
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Reflecting on I Cor. 15:1-11

That famous second reading today—I Corinthians 15:1-11—always fills me with hope. This is the chapter where St. Paul, writing to the church in the port city of Corinth, Greece, sometime between 53-55 AD, gives an account of who the people were who were eyewitnesses to the Risen Christ.

Now, this is a MUCH longer list than any given in the gospels, and it’s also coming at least fifteen years before even Mark, the earliest gospel, was written. That’s what makes it so exciting. St. Paul is giving a list of the known eyewitnesses to the resurrection, many of whom, he says, “are still living today.”

He lists Cephas (St. Peter) as the first eyewitness, followed by the Twelve, and then five hundred, then James (who became the leader of the Jerusalem church in the years after the resurrection), then other apostles, and, finally, to St. Paul himself. Mysteriously, none of the women who are so prominent in the gospel resurrection stories were mentioned, or probably even known by Paul.

The reason this stirs my faith so much is that if this weren’t true, it could easily be found out. All it would take would be to ask any of the people Paul named to confirm it. But Paul is so confident in this that he names the eyewitnesses, many of whom were very much alive in the mid-50s.

At a distance of 2,000 years, it’s a matter of trusting this account by St. Paul, and the accounts of the gospels. But in St. Paul’s day, he confidently assured his readers that these eyewitnesses were alive on the day he wrote his letter, and available for interviewing. That’s so exciting.

Imagine interviewing Mary Magdalene about her encounter with the Risen Christ.

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord – Cycle C

2 February 2025
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Reflecting on Luke 2: 22-40

Simeon was ready to go. He’d longed to see the Christ of the Lord, and when he walked into the Temple that fateful day, he found him: an eight-day-old baby in his mother’s arms, ready to be consecrated to God.

Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, he cried. Everything he’d lived for and longed for was before him, and he was ready to go to God.

When we remember Simeon and the prophetess Anna on this Feast of the Presentation, it’s a good time to ask ourselves if we, too, will gratefully welcome our deaths.

What are we longing to see before we give Christ “permission” to dismiss us into the loving care of the Holy One? I have a whole list. Dismiss me, oh God, when everyone I love is healed of all the illnesses and sorrows that make their lives difficult. Dismiss me when the atrocities of all wars are finally, peacefully resolved.

And the list goes on. Can any of us possibly live long enough to be comfortable saying to God, “Yes, everything I’ve prayed for has been answered. Everyone I love is well and happy. The world is a safe and healthy place?”

There’s one thing, though, that we can do today. We can bravely recall the ways throughout our lives that we have “missed the mark,” when we have held back the fulfillment of our prayers by our behaviors. Simeon and Anna’s faithful lives led them to be present that day in the Temple. What disciplines can we adopt that will lead us to a peaceful death, when we, without regret,  give our lives back to the One who called us into being?

What are you waiting for before you are ready to go to God?

Kathy McGovern ©2025