Fr. Joe Dailey

Send us Fan Mail We too are asked to make a dwelling place for God; to put skin on God, making Christ present and living among us.

Send us Fan Mail I  learned this story from John Shea, who received it as a gift from an Hasidic Storyteller Reuven Gold. It is sometimes attributed to "unknown origin." This is M. Scott Peck’s version of the “The Rabbi’s Gift” as he tells it in the prologue of “The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace."

Send us Fan Mail “It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. (Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

Send us Fan Mail Mark's Gospel is just the beginning. After we have heard it, the Gospel continues in us. We won’t need pen and ink; we write the Gospel with our lives. In welcoming Christ among us, every home becomes a church, every child becomes the Christ-child, all food and drink become a sacrament. And God’s many faces are now everywhere.

Send us Fan Mail Advent means to come. We imagine that we are waiting for the coming of God into the world; but it is God who is waiting for us to incarnate divine love.

Send us Fan Mail Words and Music by Joe Dailey, ©copyright 1988

Send us Fan Mail Matthew 25 should not be read as a parable about the sorting of individuals in the afterlife according to principles of personal charity, but as a prophecy of how nations are measured in history according to a politics of caring for those on the margins, the least of Jesus’ family.

Send us Fan Mail The problem with the timid servant who buried his talent is not that he was an ineffective venture capitalist, but that he fundamentally misunderstood the nature of what he had been given. The divine mercy— received as a gift—is meant to be given to others as a gift. 

Send us Fan Mail The wise maidens are the ones who keep their lamps trimmed and burning, ready to lift a torch for anyone: the hungry, the poor, the stranger and the outcast.

Send us Fan Mail Our beloved dead are connected to God, and therefore connected to everything that God loves.

Send us Fan Mail "“The only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” (Léon Bloy)

Send us Fan Mail Hymn for the Feast of All Saints, reflection on the reading 1 John, 3:1-3

Send us Fan Mail When the Pharisees ask their last tricky question, Jesus does indeed out-trick them. But he doesn't do it by giving the right answer; he out-tricks them by actually being the right answer.

Send us Fan Mail On our best days, remembering that we are made In the image and likeness of God, we will make God present in our living and loving. On that day, the world will have a glimpse of what God looks like. 

Send us Fan Mail In his new encyclical, Pope Francis points to the worldwide tragedy of the Covid-19 pandemic that momentarily revived the sense that we are a global community, all in the same boat, where one person’s problems are the problems of all.

Send us Fan Mail Jesus authority and power is shown quite clearly: Jesus is the one who gives life instead of taking it.

Send us Fan Mail "For Autumn and the leaves of death, we give you thanks O Lord."

Send us Fan Mail "We wanted our Bible to reflect life. In life you are not given the chance to erase your mistakes. Your only choice is to admit the mistake and then move on. In our Bible we wanted to show that, even with the mistake, the page remains a work of art.” (Fr. George Smiga, BuildingontheWord.org)

Send us Fan Mail The grumbling of the workers from the first hour reflects the grumbling of Jesus’ contemporaries who were outraged at the new thing he was beginning with his disciples: a common life that grew out of constant forgiving.

Send us Fan Mail Clinging to vengeance tortures us with our vengeance for as long as we are imprisoned by it. 

Send us Fan Mail When we forgive, we do not forget. Rather, we remember in a different way. 

Send us Fan Mail The cross is not just a singular event. It’s a statement from God that reality has a cruciform pattern.

Send us Fan Mail Jesus also calls Simon the son of Jonah. Jonah was the one who went the other way when God sent him to preach to the Ninevites, who are gentiles. Peter, like Jonah, will resist this mission to the gentiles.

Send us Fan Mail By the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the mission has changed: “Go, Make disciples of all nations." When Matthew is writing the Gospel, the Church has a mission to the Gentiles. Could it be that Matthew is making the point to his community that just as Jesus was able to understand his ministry in a more inclusive way – even of the hated, ancestral enemy of his people – the church,...

Send us Fan Mail From the FRIENDS Reunion concert at Christ the Redeemer, 2006. Words and music by Joe Dailey, copyright © 1975 Alba House Media, Canfield OH. Used with permission.