Reflecting on Sirach 27: 4-7

There’s a lot to think about in the readings this weekend regarding what we reveal when we start talking. Since our words betray what’s really going on in our hearts, it’s enough to make us all take a vow of silence! I suppose the safest way to talk is to stop after every word and carefully consider your next syllable, but think how tedious an actual conversation would be if both speakers were too terrified to speak.

So, like the fruit of a tree, people’s words disclose what’s really going on in their minds, and we’re advised not to evaluate people until we hear what they say. But, really, isn’t the only way to really know someone is by observing his or her actions?

I think of those two sons in the gospel parable of Matthew 21: 28-32. The father asks both sons to go work in the vineyard. The first says, “No! I’m not going,” but goes, and the second says, “Sure, I’ll go,” and he never does. “Words! Words! Words,” sang Eliza Doolittle. “Show me!”

Our acts flow from our being, from who we are. In his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The just person justices.”  We might say, “Hurt people hurt, healed people heal.”

But time gives us the opportunity to become more of who we want to be, and the son who ended up not going out into the vineyard might very well have gladly gone out a few years later. The Church, says a cardinal in the film Conclave, is not only what we did yesterday, but what we’ll do tomorrow.

Please, God, give me time to be the person I’ll be tomorrow.

Who do you most hope to be tomorrow?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 6: 27-38

I think I have some idea of how Jesus’ astonishing commandment to stop judging (lest you shall be judged) works. Have you ever made a large pronouncement about a particular person’s behavior, confident that your audience agreed with you, only to be humiliated when someone in the group simply and quietly reminded you to stop judging? I have, and it was painful.

The result, though, is that I am very cautious now about in whose company I make derogatory remarks about people. Since I thought it was safe to be condemnatory, and found out that, just as scripture warns, I ended up being condemned myself, I definitely look both ways before I open my mouth. And guess what? Over time, that practice of being VERY careful to whom I say ugly things about people has made me less judgmental, if only because I don’t get enough practice.

A body in motion stays in motion, and that’s good advice for our hearts. But a tongue in motion also stays in motion, and that’s very bad for our hearts. The discipline to guard our tongues against gossip, slander, or even just joining in with the crowd disparaging someone, is a strength that can go the distance throughout our lifetimes.

Looking back, how grateful are you that you held your tongue when you were angry with a teacher, your boss, your spouse, or your kids? I can think of so many uncharitable things that have floated across my brain at different times, but that, through God’s grace alone, I never said out loud. And Jesus’ math works: if you are kind, you will receive kindness. The Master Teacher shows us how to live.

What memories do you have of holding your tongue, and being grateful that you did?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

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

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

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

Reflecting on Luke 1: 1-4; 4:14-21

Imagine this. You’re at your high school reunion. Much of the competition and insecurities of high school have faded, and you can truly enjoy renewing the friendships you had all those years ago. Each of the attendees is invited to give a one-minute reflection on who they are now, and who they hope to become.

When it’s your turn, all eyes turn to you, and you say: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, who has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.

The same look of confusion you imagine on the faces of your old friends was very probably the look on the faces of those in the synagogue that day when Jesus, the famous rabbi who had returned to his hometown and was attending services, read those words from Isaiah and then announced that those words were talking about him.

They were shocked because Jesus was announcing that he was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s long-beloved words about a Messianic age, when captives would be set free, and those who were blind would see. But why would our old friends be shocked to hear any of us say, “The Spirit has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor”? Isn’t that precisely what each of us —what every human being, actually—is supposed to be doing? If we’re enjoying the endless gifts of being alive, aren’t we all “anointed” to share as much good news as we can?

Imagine some of those reunion reflections: I work with those who are blind. I work with the Innocence Project to set captives free. I bring good news to those who are poor. Now that’s a reunion.

What would you say about yourself at this reunion?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on John 2:1-11

Water, of course, is vital to every organ in our bodies. But I’m willing to bet that those wedding revelers, even in a land of intermittent and dangerous drought, would NOT have been happy to see their wine cups filled with water, even if, as was often the case, the wedding feast had already gone on for a week.

Can you imagine the riot that might have ensued if they had seen the servants pulling up water from those six stone water jars? What? They expect to entertain us with 180 gallons of water? Sure, we expect the next rounds to be the inferior stuff, but water? Wait ‘til word gets out about this!

But what? The water has now become the finest wine of the wedding! Water has been transformed into intoxicating wine. How can this be?

In this new year, take a few moments to reflect on the miraculous transformations in your character and spiritual life. How can the resentments and grudges we’ve nourished for years have long since disappeared? How can the destructive habits we allowed to go unchecked for years have been replaced with healthier and more life-affirming lifestyles?

God is always about the work of transforming us and giving us the grace to be better. But I ask us all to resolve this year to pray for all those in the grip of addiction, the most complex transformation of all. O healing Christ, we beg you to touch all who struggle to maintain sobriety of any kind. Turn the water of their cravings into the new wine of confident and secure recovery. And we will do whatever you tell us.

Readers, imagine those who need this healing, and remember to pray for them this year.

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 3: 15-16, 21-22

Here’s an interesting tidbit. The ancients believed that conception of a child happened this way: the man deposited a miniature, fully formed human being into the woman’s uterus. She served only as the carrier. This connects with this powerful gospel event of the baptism of Jesus by John. Since paternity could never be proven—which is why, traditionally, the mother is the parent who passes on Jewish identity to the child—this event, where the Father opens the heavens and claims Jesus as his beloved son, is treasured by those who were there to hear the Voice, and to those who would hear of it.

A Father claiming his Son as his own had a receptive audience in that day and ours. How many sons today take dangerous risks, or achieve impossible goals, in order to hear their father say, “This is my son! I’m so pleased with him.” Pleasing the father is still an enormous goal (and often an impossible challenge) in many families.

What a joy for Jesus to hear his Father’s voice. We know that he was a man of deep prayer, but it’s only this event and the moment of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor that we know for sure that Jesus heard the Father’s voice.

But WHY did he request the baptism of forgiveness of sins? Recall any friend of yours who excels in everything, including humility. Recall that feeling of relief that poured out of you when that friend laughingly recounted how she can’t put down a bag of potato chips. Oh! She’s human like me! I can be her friend.

Oh! The onlookers must have said. Jesus is human, like me! I can be his friend.

In what ways have you sensed friendship with Jesus because of the stories about him in the gospels?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Stardust. It turns out we are all made of it. Almost every element on Earth was formed at the heart of a star. How? When a massive star explodes, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen are released into the universe, providing the building blocks for planets, plants, and human life. Everything in us is formed from residual stardust, and here’s the best part: you have stuff in you as old as the universe.

So, consider this: when those passionate astrologers saw that Star, might it have been the stardust in them, routed into them through eons, from the day God spoke the world into being, that shouted out, “We recognize You! We are made from You! We have literally longed for You, in every cell of our being, from the beginning of time!”

Each of us carries those Wise Men in our own DNA. We, too, are made of the stuff that sees the Star and says, “Yes, I was made to seek You and find You. Nothing in my life will ever satisfy me until I do.”

And so I ask you, Star gazers: where do you feel the most completely yourself, the most utterly at home? Allow yourself this epiphany: only by knowing what you know for sure will you ever truly find the peace that comes from God, who formed the world from the beginning of the beginning. If you are breathing, you are stardust, and you won’t feel at home until you find the Star.

Joni Mitchell had it right: We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden.

In what ways do you sense that you belong to God?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 2:41-52

Don’t you wish we knew more about the Holy Family?  We’d love to know about Joseph, the silent protector of Mary and Jesus.  He utters not a word in scripture, yet his humility in accepting God’s miraculous work and his divine role in that unfolding makes him the perfect model for all fathers who strive to protect and defend their children.

The earliest artistic rendering of Mary is a fresco, c. 150 A.D., in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome.  It’s so touching to see her protectively cradling Jesus on this ancient wall upon which the martyrs of Rome carved their faith. At this time, a book appeared, The First Gospel of James, which was immediately beloved by the Christian communities in Rome.  Though never accepted as part of the canon of the New Testament, it contrived to give background stories of Mary and Joseph that we crave to know even today.

In this popular second-century book, for example, we discover the names of Mary’s parents. Can you name them? If you are—ahem—of a certain age, you can jump up with, “Yes! They are Anna and Joachim!” And HOW do you know that? Well, it’s nowhere in scripture, but it IS in this First Gospel (or Protoevangelum) of James, which practically no one has read, but it was so important to the tradition of the Church that their names are even preserved in the Catechism.

We have so many questions about them. When we see them in heaven, we can get all the answers.

What would you most like to ask Joseph or Mary?

Kathy McGovern c. 2024