Mary M. McGlone

Scripture for Life: Today, we are called to remember who we are. We are the baptized. We have received the Spirit. Yet our temptation is to keep looking to heaven instead of trusting Christ's judgment.

Scripture for Life: Today's Gospel comes from Jesus' final testament to his disciples at the Last Supper. One key to this teaching is Jesus' solemn assurance, "It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you."

Scripture for Life: Today's readings remind us that we must continually choose who we truly want to be. God always offers us the option of being fruitful branches, receiving and giving divine life.

Scripture for Life: Be we friends or spouses, spending time together and repeatedly choosing to love one another molds us together such that we become who we never could have become without one another.

Scripture for Life: Reinterpretation is the task of every age. While Scripture consistently offers us transformation, each time and culture tend to make God in its image.

Scripture for Life: If the Easter disciples had done things really right, today's Gospel message about forgiveness would have been unnecessary.

Scripture for Life: While candles glow, bells ring, and we sing Alleluia, today's readings counsel us that there's far more here than we have begun to comprehend.

Scripture for Life: The anointing woman, the first among the women who stood by Jesus through his crucifixion, expressed her faith and faithfulness in a gesture of love that went beyond every verbal proclamation.

Scripture for Life: The most basic definitions of suffering indicate that it is something that must be endured. Suffering implies a lack of control.

Scripture for Life: Laetare Sunday invites us to take time out to bask in God's great love, to sing songs of joy in a minor key that blend with harmonies of humility and gratitude.

Scripture for Life: The heart of the scandal Jesus caused that day with the purification of the temple was not in driving away the money changers but his proclamation that he, a human being, was the new temple.

Scripture for Life: For a brief moment, the disciples perceived that Jesus was God's ultimate messenger, the culmination of everything in their tradition.

Scripture for Life: Noah saw creation receive a fresh start and a promise. Eons later, Jesus proclaimed that something utterly new was happening, something that was about to change everything.

Scripture for Life: If ever Jesus had wanted to demonstrate that popularity was not his goal, touching a leper did the trick. We hear this story and remember unusual saints like Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa who performed similar actions in their day.

Scripture for Life: In today's readings, Job and Peter's mother-in-law — we'll call her Penny — offer us vital perspectives for dealing with the crises of our time. 

Scripture for Life: Metanoia springs from a vision of how God's future is breaking into the present. It is a faith-filled certainty that communion with God and all of creation is the ultimate storyline and meaning of history.

Scripture for Life: Whether or not we think it through, whether or not we ever imagine Jesus asking us, everything we do responds to Jesus' question, "What do you seek?"

Scripture for Life: Just as Jesus needed to apply the words of Isaiah to his own time, we look at these Scriptures to interpret what they have meant across the ages.

Scripture for Life: As we begin this new year, the Magi might be inviting us too to read the stars, to look for epiphanies of God among us.

Scripture for Life: When we envision all that happens in this story, we begin to realize that the Feast of the Holy Family is really not about a nuclear family of two parents and an only child, but a celebration of human community.