The fifteenth chapter of the Gospel According to John (NABRE) describes the work of Jesus Christ building his Church using the image of pruning a vine. This powerful and significant image addresses the idea of qualifying or earning a place in God’s kingdom. Within this image, the Greek text contains …

The First Letter of John 3:2 (NABRE) is a fascinating verse that hints at our future relationship with God in the statement: “We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” This is an especially interesting phrase because …

In the twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel According to Luke (NABRE), Jesus appears to his disciples for the first time after he has been raised from the dead. In the Catholic lectionary and the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), the Evangelist records that at Jesus’ appearance, the disciples were …

The Gospel According to John 20:19–31 (NABRE) focuses on issues of faith and trust in the well-known context of the disciple Thomas’ doubt and pathway to belief. Jesus calls all Christians also to believe, and we well might ask what that belief looks like. The Greek word πίστις (pistis) is translated …

Passion Sunday celebrates the entry into Holy Week as the Church prepares to commemorate the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus. We refer to this event a great deal during Holy Week, but how well do we understand what the word passion means? The word and concept enter English in a …

In the Gospel According to John 12:25 (NABRE), Jesus presents a paradox: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” This seems like a challenging and even contradictory proposition, though looking at the original Greek does help to …

The Gospel According to John 3:16 (NABRE) is possibly the most frequently quoted summation of God’s love for humanity: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” For good reason this …

In the Gospel According to John 2:13–22 (NABRE), Jesus chases from the Temple area those conducting commerce there. He then is confronted by the Jewish leaders and asked for a sign. As seems typical in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’ response only seems to aggravate the religious leaders more because they miss the …

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 …

In the book of Genesis 9:8–15 (NABRE), God makes a covenant with Noah that he never again will seek to destroy humanity and all other creatures by means of flood—perhaps not the most comforting of promises considering how many other options God has available. As a sign of this covenant, …