The Lamb of God John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said: “Behold the Lamb of God.” That’s how the gospels introduce us to unexpected images of God, a total revolution: no longer the God who demands sacrifice, but the One who sacrifices Himself. And it will be like this throughout the gospels:…
Epiphany, the feast of the faraway seekers of God The Magi’s journey is full of mistakes: Their journey resembles every Christian’s life, full of hits and misses; little by little, they start tuning their hearts to God’s frequency. They have infinite patience to start again. Our biggest challenge is not falling but to stop trying…
Fr. Ricardo Chinchilla, CJM Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Angel coming from heaven revealed the coordinates to find the savior on Christmas; he said: “This is the sign for you; you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” A child? A child savior? How strange; in our society, every…
Among the guardians of those who wait is Joseph, a man of dreams and calloused hands, the last patriarch of ancient Israel. He tells a story of love, and his doubts about receiving the woman he loved, a human story of expectations and crises. Before they moved in together, Mary found herself pregnant; then Joseph…
This Sunday, we have three announcements in one:1 – There is a Kingdom: new heavens and a new earth, a new world pressing to come into being. The two prophets (first readings and gospel) do not say what the Kingdom is, but where. Softly they reveal: “near.” God is near; he is here. His journey lands…
On Calvary, among the three condemned to the same torture, Luke places his last parable of mercy. It bursts out of a man’s soul, indeed of a thug, one who, in his helplessness, as a man nailed to death, squeezes out from his crucifixion pain, the honey of compassion for his fellow neighbor, who happens…
Fr. Ricardo Chinchilla, CJM Where is the good news about God and man in this Gospel of catastrophes, in this flashing of swords and falling planets? The reading starts by reassuring us. Beyond deceitful prophets, beyond wars and betrayals, even when hatred should be rampant everywhere, there is that poignant expression: “But not a hair…
Fr. Ricardo Chinchilla, CJM The Sadducees in our Sunday Gospel want to ridicule Jesus and the belief in the resurrection, describing a woman seven times widowed and never a mother (Luke 20:27-38). Perhaps we imagine eternity as duration rather than intensity. We all know the wonder of the “first time”: the first time we traveled,…
Fr. Ricardo Chinchilla, CJM The art of the encounter, according to Jesus. First scene: characters on a quest. There is a rabbi who fills the streets with people and a curious little man, a thief as he suggests, the leader of the unclean in Jericho, a tax collector, rich to prove business is good, which…