Adult Initiation & Sacrament Preparation

With Pope Francis concluding his Apostolic Journey to the US by opening the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, our readings for this week are particularly appropriate as they focus on marriage. The Word for the 27tth Sunday of Ordinary Time Genesis 2:18-24 Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 Hebrews 2:9-11 Mark 10:2-16 Our first reading is from the second creation story in the Book of Genesis.  Wait… second creation story?  Most Catholics are aware that Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and most are aware that it begins with the story of creation, but unless they’ve engaged in any critical Bible reading or study, any details beyond that tend to get a little fuzzy.  So let me explain… The first chapter of Genesis does in fact give us the story of creation, starting with “In the beginning,” and very poetically proceeds to give us a day by day description of the events.  When we get to day six, we are told in verse 27, “God created mankind in his im...

God’s ways are not our ways.  This is one of the points Jesus was trying to make with his Apostles in last week’s gospel, and that theme continues be examined in our readings for this week… The Word for the 25tth Sunday of Ordinary Time Wisdom 2:12, 17-20 Psalm 54:3-4, 5, 6, 8 James 3:16-4:3 Mark 9:30-37 Our first reading comes from the Book of Wisdom.  By way of reminder, the Book of Wisdom was written about fifty years before Christ.  For Jesus and his followers, this was a contemporary work, and like most wisdom literature, served as a sort of catechism for the Jewish community.  In this case, however, the community wasn’t from Jerusalem, but from Alexandria, and was written in Greek (not Hebrew) while patterned on a style used in Hebrew verse.  For most Christians reading this passage, it sounds very much like how Jesus was treated.  It can be hard for us to remember that this verse comes to us a couple generations before he was even...