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Jesus' Hard Sayings

Jesus’ Hard Sayings Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B August 19/20, 2021 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082221.cfm Good morning / afternoon, St. Agnes. It’s been a long first full week of classes for me—and I am sure for all of you who are parents, teachers, and students. I just started my 17th year as a teacher. [This is my first at Assumption High School where I teach Theology]. I have been reflecting this month on an early experience I had as a student teacher preparing for my first classroom. I was up at the University of Notre Dame in an Education class. The professor was legendary educator named Dr. Thomas Doyle who everyone called “Doc.” He grouped all of us student-teachers by subject matter around tables. So, I was working on a problem with several other new Theology teachers when Doc came to talk to us. He said something I’ll never forget: “You The...

His Eye is On the Sparrow

Why should I feel discouraged / Why should the shadows come / Why should my heart feel lonely / And long for heaven and home / When Jesus is my portion / A constant friend is He / His eye is on the sparrow / And I know He watches over me / I sing because I'm happy / I sing because I'm free / His eye is on the sparrow / And I know He watches me “His Eye is On the Sparrow,” Civilla D. Martin and Charles H. Gabriel For several years I was a parishioner at a predominately Black Catholic parish in Oklahoma. Of the many things I loved about this community, the gorgeous music sung by the Gospel choir every Sunday stood out. They sang a range of songs from Negro spirituals to contemporary hymns more familiar in predominately white parishes. My favorite is the hymn above, “His Eye is On the Sparrow.” The house sparrow is one of the most common animals in the world—so familiar and so small that it is easy to ignore. ...

Envisioning a World that Has Never Existed

“In every age, no matter how cruel the oppression carried on by those in power, there have been those who struggled for a different world. I believe this is the genius of humankind, the thing that makes us half divine: the fact that some human beings can envision a world that has never existed.” ~ Anne Braden (1924-2006), Louisville racial justice activist Anne Braden was a local white advocate in the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s. She and her husband Carl are most famous for purchasing a house in the then exclusively white neighborhood of Shively for a Black couple. Both Bradens were arrested as “Communists’ for their act and the house was dynamited after irate neighbors shot it up and burned a cross in the front yard. Anne was not deterred and continued the fight for the remaining fifty years of her life, founding a newspaper and several antiracist organizations. Anne provides an exce...

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