Monthly Archives: July 2025

Reflecting on Genesis 18: 2-32

Should not the judge of all the world act with justice? Abraham is cajoling God, trying to manipulate God into sparing the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah because of the innocent citizens who live there (including his nephew Lot and his family). And you know what? It worked!

This odd story from the 18th chapter of Genesis is hard to hear. Is God really that petulant and out of control? God is the victim of anthropomorphism here. Humans are vengeful and violent, and so their God is made in their image. But God can be walked off the ledge with flattery, and so the towns are saved.

What an unsettling image of God. Our own experience of God, incarnate in Jesus  and radiating from the works of the New Testament, is so different. Jesus implores us to keep asking, keep knocking. Then we remember Abraham, whose love for his family living in those towns compelled him to continue in that Oriental bargaining so common in his time. He asked, he knocked, and God acted.

I’m thinking of the First Baptist Church in Kerrville, Texas. This church has become the north star for the town, the place where they come to grieve, to bring food, comfort, and prayer. One of their members is still unaccounted for. Twenty-eight of their children have died.

The whole world is asking, seeking, and knocking, begging  God to intervene in this horror. We all need to ask for the Holy Spirit. That’s the promise, that no one who asks for the Spirit will be denied.

Come, Holy Spirit, and bring Divine comfort to all the grieving in the Hill Country of Texas.

When have you asked, and been given the Spirit?

Kathy McGovern © 2025

Our lives are full of mystery. How did our future spouses happen to be in the grocery store, the bookstore, or the same class we were taking, at the exact moment when we “bumped into them,” all those years ago? How did all those moments line up to put us in the right place at the right time? It’s a mystery.

Is our solar system unique? Until as recently as the 1990s, the answer would have been “yes.” But today, we know that we are not alone. And then a million new mysteries confound. Is there “conscious” life outside planet Earth? That’s the question that informs every science fiction book and movie. Will some of those mysteries be solved in our lifetimes?

I think that Jesus was mysterious. His birth was announced by angels, and a STAR in the heavens. Two elderly prophets recognized him when his parents brought him to the Temple, and, twelve years later, teachers in the courtyard of that same Temple were amazed at his questions.

Years later, surrounded by the hungry and the sick, he promised that everyone who asks will receive, and everyone who seeks will find (Lk. 11:9-10). With what assurance? It’s a mystery. And then there was the time he encouraged his friend Mary to sit at his feet and learn, and nudged her sister Martha to leave her work to join him (Lk. 10:38-42). How did this first-century Orthodox Jew understand what would take another two thousand years to finally enter the culture?

But the greatest, and most indelible mystery? Christ in you, your hope of glory (Col. 1:27). He lives in you. He is in you every moment. Be at peace.

What mysteries most fascinate you?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

“For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you.”

Whenever I read that beautiful passage from Deuteronomy 30, I remember my friend Becky, who wandered into the parish where I worked many years ago and immediately fell in love with the whole “Catholic Thing.”

She’d never been in a Catholic Church. She stared at the statues of the saints. When the Bread and Cup were elevated, she could scarcely breathe.

She became the most devout student. She could sit with the missalette for hours, asking questions about why we do what we do.

She was baptized, confirmed, and received her First Communion one Holy Saturday night. She was a true convert, joyfully brought into the Church she loved.

One day she said to me, “Catholics are so sophisticated. They know all about all the sacraments, and the saints, and all about the Mass. I never thought I was smart enough to be a Catholic. It’s so intimidating.”

Are we sophisticated? Intimidating? Of course not. But our rituals and traditions seem mysterious and remote to those joining us for the first time.

When you notice someone new in the pews, think about sitting next to them. Ask if they’d like some help following the Mass. Take a missalette and show them how to follow it.

Help a newcomer navigate the missalette. Explain those remote and mysterious parts of the Mass. I bet they’ll join us next Easter, grateful for the gifts we often take for granted.

Remember that Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the book of Isaiah when Philip asked him if he understood it. “How can I understand, if no one explains it to me?” (Acts 8).

Are there still some mysterious and remote parts of the Mass for you?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

What an interesting gospel.  Apparently, those 72 disciples were doing “advance work” in the towns Jesus planned to visit. Maybe they were sent to assure people that what they had heard about him was actually true.

Yes, they might have said, he truly did say that he was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies! And when they tried to push him over the cliff he just passed right through them! And yes, he told his friends to cast their nets back in the water after they had fished all night, and the catch was so great they couldn’t haul it in! And yes, he did raise the widow’s son from the dead!

Imagine yourself on that mission. You don’t have anything to comfort you on the dusty road. No cell phone to stay in touch with family. No band aids for blisters. No extra jacket for the cold nights. It sounds, to my wimpy ears, like a miserable experience.

And yet, imagine being the first person to announce the kingdom of God to a city longing for that message. What joy. What grace. Oh yeah. I’d sign up for that.

Speaking of signing, those who bravely signed the Declaration of Independence agreed with Thomas Jefferson that “all men are created equal.” Some of them believed that so deeply that, if they owned slaves, they set them free. Jefferson himself, owned 175 slaves on the day of his death, the Fourth of July, 1826.

The kingdom is at hand, Jesus said. As we celebrate freedom this weekend, let’s consider how we are building the kingdom, and declaring our independence from the hypocrisies which dilute our witness to Christ.

What inconsistencies in your life keep you from truly experiencing freedom?

Kathy McGovern ©2025