I AM the resurrection & the life

The eleventh chapter of the Gospel According to John (NABRE) contains the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. This event serves as the culmination of the signs Jesus performs in the Fourth Gospel, and it serves as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own Resurrection. The Gospel According to …

manifest / visible

The ninth chapter of the Gospel According to John (NABRE) contains themes of light and darkness, seeing and blindness, and the interrelationship of those elements. Congenital blindness appears in the readings as a metaphor for the human condition, and Jesus’ healing of the blind man represents the healing he came …

time in the Gospel According to John

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 …

breathe / breathing thing

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 …

perfect

The idea of becoming perfect and complete as a person is a spiritual goal for all Christians. Jesus’ instruction to his disciples found in the Gospel According to Matthew 5:48 (NABRE) to “be perfect just as your heavenly father is perfect” remains a call that applies to us all. What …

raqa / fool

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. …

redemption

This week we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, which commemorates the occasion in which Jesus was taken to Jerusalem to be dedicated in the temple according to the Law. This precedent originated with the tenth plague in Egypt in which God doomed all the firstborn and …

blessed

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 …

at hand

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 …

remain / dwell

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. …