Monthly Archives: October 2025

Reflecting on Luke 18:9-14

There’s something so freeing about facing our deep character flaws. Don’t we all relate to the publican, hesitating outside the Temple doors? Isn’t it healing to be filled with shame sometimes? There’s nothing more painful than seeing ourselves as others see us, but isn’t that where true conversion occurs?

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart—these, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51:17).

I think that the Pharisee was putting on a show, pretending that his outward acts of piety put him on a higher rung than that of the filthy tax collector. I think he knew, in that hard place where truth lingers, that the humble publican was closer to the heart of God than he was.

How exhausting to keep up that pretense, and for whom? Certainly not the Almighty, who spoke through Isaiah to say, This is the one I will esteem: the one who is humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word (66:2).

I recently attended the most beautiful reunion of friends who ministered in the same parish years ago. Going from table to table, I was utterly uplifted to realize that these giants of my younger years haven’t let up one inch. Their lives still overflow with daily acts of kindness, and lifetime commitments to the good work they did so prodigiously over thirty years ago.

But you won’t hear any of that from them. It took listening to others talk about them to get the real picture. Ask any of them to tell you about the goodness of their lives, and they’ll be the first to tell you that they are unworthy servants.

What connections do you see between true humility and greatness?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 18: 1-8

One of the great delights of having lifelong friends is that, if we’re paying attention, they will surprise us. Just when we think we know them through and through, they say or do something that makes us look at them with brand new eyes.

The parables are like that. The widow and the judge are in our DNA. We know the hard-hearted judge (and may even have some people in our lives who remind us of him), and, of course, the widow is us, begging God every day for the things that we need, and begging God for peace on earth.

But a song, The Widow and the Judge, by Colleen Fullmer, (animated by Sr. Martha Ann Kirk, CCVI), shocked me into a new way of looking at this iconic story, and I’ve never seen it the same since. What if the needy widow isn’t us, begging God to give us what we need, but God? What if God is the widow, knocking on the doors of OUR hearts, and we’re the judge, withholding the good things needed for true peace on earth?

What if WE’RE not the ones seeking justice, but God, begging US to do justice? That then begs the question: if we hear the widow (God) knocking, do we finally give in and do real justice? Justice, justice shall you seek, says Deuteronomy 16:20

And let’s not domesticate that widow. Abraham Heschel writes that “God is raging in the prophets’ words.” It’s impossible not to hear her.

And that last line of today’s gospel section really hits home. WILL God find faith on earth when Christ returns? There are reports of an invigorated younger generation of Catholics. May it ever be so. 

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Luke 17: 11-19

What must that have been like, to have met Jesus, and beg him for healing, and then, lo and behold, to be healed! These ten lepers set off to show themselves to the priests, and on the way to see them, one of them realized he was healed. Can you imagine his joy?

Healing almost never happens like that. It’s slow, it’s painful, and sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. But for this man suffering the pain and loneliness of leprosy, the healing occurred not when he arrived at the Temple, but on his way.

In fact, this man never even made it to the Temple; halfway there, he realized that the true Physician was Jesus, and he rushed back to find him and thank him.

Think of the last bad cold you had. How long after it was gone did you finally realize you were better? We hardly ever realize  healing when it happens. Or think of a prayer that was answered. Did it occur to you to recognize at the time that this was, in fact, answered prayer? The best example is the healings that occur in our hearts over time. One day, if we’re paying attention, we sit up and say, “Wait. When did I stop being resentful? I can’t even remember why I was.” Healing works in us when we don’t even notice.

That’s why this man who noticed he was healed on the road is so exceptional.  We, too, should pay closer attention. And, for us, too, it’s never too late to notice that we’ve been healed, and to turn back to find Jesus, to thank him.

What have you forgotten to thank God for lately?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2: 2-4

That Habakkuk reading today is too close to home. The prophet writes, “How long, O LORD?  I cry for help, but you do not listen!”

I heard the cry of those brave Evergreen High School students who said, “My whole life, my whole childhood, was devoted to keeping me safe from a school shooter. And he came for us anyway.” And, of course, the horrific shooting during the first school Mass of the year at Annunciation grade school in Minneapolis is too terrible to recount, too tragic to remember.

How many of us, though, as we watched in horror, silently said to God, “I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’  but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin;  why must I look at misery?”

Habakkuk has a front row seat to the impending misery about to be visited upon Israel. He can see the Babylonian army marching towards Israel. He dreads the violence, the bloodshed, the loss of life that surely marches into Israel with King Nebuchadnezzar.

He demands that God give him an answer. WHY do you allow such violence, especially at the hands of evildoers? In fact, a third of the population died by the sword, a third by fire, and the last third was taken into exile. God tells Habakkuk to wait, that the vision written on the tablet will surely come. Seventy years later, long after Habakkuk’s death, the vision was realized. The captives came home.

But will it take seventy years for the vision of a nation where schools are havens of safety and learning to be realized? We can do better. That, I think, is what’s written on the tablet.

In what ways are you advocating for gun safety?

Kathy McGovern ©2025