desiring God … listening, waiting
Saturday, November 22, 2025 Memorial of Saint Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr Day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Heroes Now I am dying, in bitter grief, in a foreign land. Those words of Antiochus IV, Seleucidan descendant of Alexander the Great after being...
Friday, November 21, 2025 Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Bias Seeing is not necessarily believing. Or rather, we don’t see the same thing, even when it’s front of all our eyes. Brian McLaren says, “We may live in the same country,...
Thursday, November 20, 2025 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Give thanks In the prime of her life, Emily Dickinson wrote a poem. I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! They’d advertise – you know! Emily D did not...
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) One woman and her sons It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested and tortured with whips by the king, to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law. Mom saw her seven sons “perish in a...
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Three old men I suppose, at age 76, that I ‘m about midway between Eleazar, age 90, and the middle-aged man Zaccheus. Reflecting on my own imprecise Matins wakefulness, I imagine their late-night thoughts, as they each consider what will probably...
Monday, November 17, 2025 My 76th birthday Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Jasper’s house Blind man sat by the road and cried Blind man sat by the road and cried Blind man sat by the road and cried Oh, oh, oh, show...
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 16, 2025 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Now and not yet Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither...
Saturday, November 15, 2025 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Fourth and Walnut One more church calendar day with the book of Wisdom, a deutero-canonical book that many of us haven’t read. Thanks to the lectionary, I’m fascinated by the stories told here by the unnamed Hellenistic Jew in Alexandria, Egypt....
Friday, November 14, 2025 (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) No visible bottom From Wisdom 13: From the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen. And from Romans 1: Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities —his eternal power and divine nature—...
Thursday, November 13, 2025 Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures) Mobile beyond all motion The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is...
