1. The hardest thing you and I will ever be called to do is to believe that it is done already, that it really and truly is finished.
  2. Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
  3. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  4. Christ our Word, as with a two-edged sword, burst the devil's belly.
  5. I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
  6. All of Scripture, every last syllable of it, is meant to drive us to "consider Jesus," the One who comes to "make us right" by gifting us his righteousness.
  7. Jesus not only healed her daughter, but he also gave himself to her. Wherever she went from then on, he was with her.
  8. We assert, we herald, the truth about God becoming King of the world in and through Jesus of Nazareth alone. It is our public announcement.
  9. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
  10. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  11. Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.