Bob's Beanfield

Last week we heard a lot about plants. This week we will hear a lot about the sea and storms. Who doesn't experience storms in their lives? And as we hear the story of Jesus handling the storm for the disciples, they wonder then, Who is this that even the winds and seas obey? We know the answer to that, of course, but do we live like that is true? Note that Scripture readings are from the Lectiona...

Today we will hear all the readings first together, then the commentary, as they are all pretty well tied together by the theme of a plant. We'll hear the details about that in the commentary, but I am reminded of God's presence in nature here in my own area, where we are experiencing the emergence of two different cohorts of cicadas. That makes it a noisy time, and there are lots of cicada shells...

We now turn back to the Liturgical Season known as "Ordinary Time". It is not called that because it is routine and mundane, but because it is numbered, ordinal is another word for numbered. We skip some of the numbers because of the timing of the calendars, so today we are in the 10 th Sunday of Ordinary Time, and the readings seem very appropriate to the start of this season, now that we have co...

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. We celebrate something that we probably take a bit for granted, the daily miracle of the Eucharist. How we can consume God Himself is incomprehensible, and yet we believe it to be true. At least most of us do. I know many Catholics say they don't believe in the Real Presence, but it is an article of our faith that the bread and wine become...

The central mystery of our faith is the Holy Trinity. God is three persons, yet one God. How can that be? You might just as well ask how God could create the entire universe out of nothing. Both of those are facts of our faith, yet our ability to understand them is practically nonexistant. Yet, we somehow believe. And that is enough. That is what faith means…the hope of things unseen, or in this c...

Pentecost is commonly thought of as the Birthday of the Church. In some ways, it is, and in some ways, it is the birthday of the Holy Spirit, who came to the Church that day! Like Christmas is Christ's birthday, Pentecost is the start of something spectacular! There is so much symbolism in both the day and in the readings, so let's listen now to what the Scriptures and commentary have to say. Note...

We've been in the Easter Season for quite a while now. Today we begin to transition. Easter is the most glorious and mysterious event in all of history, but what happens next continues to be important. Jesus ascends back to heaven to His and Our Father, and commissions the disciples to go forth, but not until the coming of the Holy Spirit, which we will hear about next week at Pentecost. So let's...

The Easter Season continues, and this week could easily be mistaken for Valentine's Day. Why? Because all the readings are about love! The reflections talk a LOT about love, and they delve deeply in to what love is, the various kinds of love, and they then help us to understand what the Scriptures are talking about, especially when they tell us that God IS love.  Note that Scripture readings are f...

Today as we continue in the Easter Season, we hear about a dramatic change of heart, namely, that of Saul, who becomes the great Apostle Paul. Have you ever been on the wrong path? Barreling down the road only to realize you were heading in the wrong direction? I sure have. And typically when I do, I turn around as soon as I can, and then start heading the correct way, as fast as I possibly can. O...

We have all heard the parable of the Good Shepherd many times, and the 23 rd Psalm which starts out "The Lord is my Shepherd". We've probably all done a little bit of thinking about what this means, especially since none of us listening to this podcast are probably literal shepherds (but I guess you never know!). Today, we hear in our Old Testament readings and Psalm about how God is often very su...

I have always wondered what it would have been like to be an Apostle or Disciple in the days after the Resurrection. Those days, viewed from 2000 years in the future, seem like they would have been both very confusing and very interesting. Jesus understands our confusion, and His actions between the Resurrection and the Ascension help us to have a better grasp of exactly what it is that is happeni...

The celebration of the Easter Season last far beyond the actual day of Easter itself, just as Christmas is celebrated long after December 25. Today, we also have the joy of celebrating a relatively new feast, that of Divine Mercy. If you are not familiar with the devotion to Divine Mercy, I would encourage you to read more about St. Faustina Kowalska, to whom Jesus appeared to give us assurance th...

Today we celebrate the most Holy Day of the Liturgical Year. It has always been confusing to me how much less we celebrate Easter compared to Christmas. Both are high holy days, to be sure, but Easter is the culmination of thousands of years of God's preparing the human race for heaven. I suppose that part of it is that Christmas is in the winter, and we probably need something stronger to raise u...

Today we continue the Sacred Triduum with the liturgy of Good Friday of the Lord's Passion. Let us continue to be prayerful as we walk with Jesus. Note that Scripture readings are from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition, Copyright Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., used with permission. Commentary copyright Peter Kreeft,...

Today we begun the Sacred Triduum. The liturgies for the next three days are technically considered one liturgy: Holy Thursday is the beginning, and it ends with the Easter Vigil Mass. We will do the readings and commentaries for Holy Thursday and for Good Friday. The Easter Vigil has nine Scripture readings, and as Dr. Kreeft comments in the book, those who designed this Mass did not intend it to...

When we think about Palm Sunday Mass, we probably think about two things: the Palms, and the LOONNGG gospel reading. Both are part of the liturgy every year. But I would challenge us to think about some other things today as we hear the reading and commentary. First, how can we possibly understand God? It doesn't seem to make sense for Him to save us by having Jesus die on a cross. How does that m...

We describe the books of the Bible as being divided in to two sections. We typically call them the Old Testament and the New Testament. But another name for Testament is Covenant. I think that may be worth considering as you hear Scriptures…some of the readings come from the Old Covenant, which is not completely in effect any longer, and some come from the New Covenant, which we celebrate at each...

You know that relationships are hard. Of all the relationships humans enter in to, the most intimate, the most satisfying, and the most challenging, is marriage. How about our relationship with God? Well, guess what? God wants our relationship with Him to be even deeper than our human marriages. How have we responded to that proposal so far in our lives? How did the people of the Bible respond? Ho...

Creation can be described as God bringing order out of chaos. A symbol of chaos in the Old Testament was the Sea, or the Waters. Out of the waters, God calls land and life and humanity. Similarly, the chaos of anarchy can be made orderly by rules. Yet in today's world, we often hear about how rules are not really absolute. While there are many rules that are flexible, there are also others that ar...

As we continue our Lenten journey, today we hear some familiar stories from the Bible. First, the story of Abraham and his son Isaac, and how Abraham did not withhold his only son from God. That one is a little hard for us to understand, so Dr. Kreeft's explanations will be a great help. We also hear the same story we hear every year on the second Sunday of Lent, namely the story of the Transfigur...

As we begin this Lenten season, it is a good thing to consider why Jesus came in the first place. He came to suffer the Passion, and to die, in order that we might live. How does that work? We might be tempted to think of God as having a need to be satisfied for our sins, but that doesn't quite work. It has more to do with His love. He has, from ancient times, established covenants with humans. Co...

This week we hear again about something that very few of us in this day and age have ever witnessed, namely leprosy. It shows up both in the first reading and in the Gospel. And of course, we typically realize that it is in Scripture for us primarily as an allegory, a symbol of sin. So on this final Sunday of Ordinary Time before Lent, it seems particularly appropriate to reflect on how sin impact...

One of the age old questions man has faced for time immemorial is, why do bad things happen to good people? Many of those who profess to be atheists even use that as an argument against the existence of God…how could a good God allow such terrible things? The answers are not simple, nor are they what we would necessarily expect. Along with these questions, we have to also ask what God does about t...

We all face temptation in life. Sometimes temptation becomes more of an obsession, and in extreme cases, we believe that it can even lead us to be possessed by evil, by the devil himself. The good news, though, is that the Word of God, who is a person, can stop evil, whether simple temptation, or full blown possession. How does God send us His word? In so many ways…in Mass, in Eucharist, in Script...

We know that the Bible is true, because it is the Word of God, and God does not lie. What do we do when we come across a seeming contradiction? How do we know when the stories or words are literal, and when are they allegorical? There are several different senses in which we read the Sacred Scriptures, and how do we know when to think one way or the other? We'll hear about that today, and also a b...