The fourth chapter of the Gospel According to John (NABRE) includes a description of the encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well. One of the more interesting interpretation questions in this text concerns the correct translation of when this all occurs. The Gospel According to John 4:6 …

Transfiguration and transubstantiation are two words with the same prefix. Both describe religious mysteries that are difficult for us to understand. The Transfiguration of Jesus occurs on a mountain where Moses and Elijah also put in appearances. There are a couple of related words deriving from Latin that are especially …

The book of Genesis 2:7–9 (NABRE) contains an account of the Creation of the first person. In this account, God forms man out of clay and breathes into him as the means of giving him life. This passage is tremendously significant from a theological perspective, and much has been written …

The Sermon on the Mount contains a fascinating but unclear comparison in the Gospel According to Matthew 5:22 (NABRE). Jesus offers two different insults, one in Greek and one in Aramaic, that seem to have a similar meaning, but he also attributes a much harsher punishment to one of them. …

The Gospel According to Matthew 5:13 (NABRE) offers a difficult issue for translators. The tricky part falls in the section I think is best translated as “If salt becomes insipid, in what respect will it be salted?” The word I translated as insipid is from the Greek verb μωραίνω (moraino). …

This Sunday’s reading from the Gospel According to Matthew 5:1–12 (NABRE) contains the Beatitudes, which are an especially profound and difficult section of the New Testament. Each begins with the phrase “blessed are…”. (I might choose to render this as “prosperous are…”.) The grammatical structure of the Beatitudes comes into …

We see the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in the Gospel According to Matthew 4:12–23 (NABRE). We learn that this ministry follows the arrest of John the Baptist, and Jesus picks up where John left off with a call to repentance. In addition, in the Gospel According to Matthew 4:17 …

In the first chapter of the Gospel According to John (NABRE), Jesus’ cousin John bears witness to Jesus as the one sent by God. In the Gospel According to John 1:32 (NABRE), John describes how he was able to identify Jesus because he saw the Holy Spirit remain on him. …

As we celebrate the baptism of Jesus by John we reflect on the word baptism, which comes from the Greek word βαπτίζω (baptizo) and means “dip” or “plunge.” Baptism as it’s usually mentioned in the Bible is a dipping or submerging of the person being baptized into water. John’s baptism …

Epiphany occurs as a part of the Church’s celebration of the Christmas season. During this solemnity, we contemplate the three magi coming to Jesus and, by extension, the manifestation of God in human form to the Gentiles. The concept of Epiphany, however, has a broader meaning, and there is perhaps …