Mary M. McGlone

Scripture for Life: The parable we call the prodigal son describes an incurably philanthropic God who responds to a little love with overwhelming, unrelenting, unrepayable generosity and joy.

Scripture for Life: Today’s readings offer us an invitation to break open our biggest ideas about God. Moses tells us that God, the mysterium tremendum, is a fire that burns without destroying.

Scripture for Life: The Gospels preserved the story of the Transfiguration not to prove that Jesus was divine, but to lure us toward believing in what God offers us human beings.

Scripture for Life: Anyone who lives with passion, deeply committed to the cause of Jesus, will be tempted in the same ways he was. The trickiest thing is that temptations arrive in the camouflage of good ideas.

Scripture for Life: We can begin to create a different world by speaking less and listening more. The very act of listening is an admission that we need to see through others' eyes as well as our own.

Scripture for Life: Which is harder to give up, our excess goods or our resentments? Do we care enough about the poor to forfeit some comfort? Are we willing to try to understand people with whom we strongly disagree?

Scripture for Life: Speaking to a humanity that tends to equate good fortune with God's blessing, Jesus draws the map to happiness by a different route. His description of blessed happiness reorients our imagination.

Scripture for Life: Today's Gospel reminds of what Isaiah says: The Lord of hosts calls us, not because we are like the glorious seraphim, but because we recognize our inadequacies. 

Scripture for Life: Luke's Gospel emphasizes the Spirit's movement in Jesus and in the life of the people. Every one of Jesus' actions and decisions flowed from what he believed the Spirit was leading him to do.

Scripture for Life: "My hour has not yet come." Jesus' reply was not enough for Mary. Representing her needy world, she told the servants to do what Jesus bid them, knowing that when that happened, all would be well.

Scripture for Life: After allowing himself to be baptized, Jesus heard the divine voice say, "You are my beloved Son." Jesus had received not just a baptism, but an affirmation and a naming.

Scripture for Life: As a synodal people, let us be on the move, discerning the signs of our times while refusing to be awestruck by self-important leaders. Let us share the Magi's humble curiosity. 

Scripture for Life: Today, we celebrate God's entry into our everydayness. Our Nativity scenes remind us that God has taken flesh like ours as one of the humblest. Luke invites us to enter into the scene with both the shepherds and with Mary.

Scripture for Life: Today's liturgy offers the little ones of history the promise that God truly works through them and a challenge to risk allowing that to happen while the privileged are challenged to remain silent enough to perceive where God is working in spite of them. 

Scripture for Life: This feast day offers us individual and communal invitations to conversion. On the personal level, Zephaniah and Our Lady of Guadalupe invite us to hear the message of God's indomitable love and presence among us.

Scripture for Life: The thing about genuine conversion or metanoia is that we can't plan it. It is God's offer in a particular moment of history — a grace of insight that shakes us up and turns us around. All we can do is be open to it.

Scripture for Life: Scripture leads us to discover that prayer is like a boomerang: We launch it only to have it come back at us. When Jesus told people that their faith had saved them, he was saying that God works through us, never replacing human effort nor overriding our freedom.

Scripture for Life: We might wonder why the church should celebrate a solemn feast day honoring Jesus with a title that he avoided using for himself and that was the ultimate pretext for executing him as a seditionist.

Scripture for Life: We are living in apocalyptic times. Our moment calls us to a realistic assessment of our crises and a response that springs from the grace of believing that now is the time to lift up our heads and see that the Son of Man is at the gates. 

Scripture for Life: The widows of today's liturgy invite us to ask ourselves how we can allow our experience to lead us into solidarity. Rich or poor, we are all vulnerable, even if we are not courageous enough to admit it.