Scripture Scribbles: June 8, 2025 - Pentecost Sunday
The calm after the turbulence. The quiet after all the chaos. The solace after all the anxieties.
Today’s gospel is a very good reminder to us that the Holy Spirit is powerful and special. Jesus bestowed it to his friends after His resurrection. Upon receiving the Holy Spirit, we know what happened to Jesus’ apostles. On Pentecost, the followers of Christ were filled with the Holy Spirit that they turned courageous to become witnesses of Christ. They were on fire. They became steadfast, focused, renewed, and passionate.
Scripture Scribbles: June 1, 2025
Hardness of heart is something that I have always struggled with. I wasn’t born with a heart of stone. My sensitive nature, easily hurt by family member infractions, caused my heart to harden as I constructed protective barriers. A memorable confession 20 years ago began the break down of these walls. “You need to forgive and love,” my confessor said gently and calmly. “I can’t!” I responded stubbornly, somewhat shocked by my audacity to challenge a holy priest’s guidance. Undeterred by my childish response, he leaned closer, looked me straight in the eye, and slowly, clearly, and firmly intensified the words, “Yes, you can.” He leaned back and continued, “With God’s grace, you can do anything.”
Scripture Scribbles: May 25, 2025
As I leave my little one in the arms of another, tears flow down her cheeks in hysterics. My two-year old gives me a concerned look as I reassure him I will return to the nursery. My five year-old clings to me, trying to hide as I drop him off in his classroom. My older two, trusting I will return, flee to their classrooms, carefree and happy.
Reading this Gospel, reminds me of a theory I learned about healthy attachments. Small children get upset when their parents, their safe haven, leave. Eventually, they calm down because they trust their parents will return.
Scripture Scribbles: May 18, 2025
‘I give you a new commandment; love one another.’
What word stood out to you? While I attempted to unpack this short and sweet Gospel, wanting desperately to pull out the Good News, my eyes lingered on one word……commandment!
Jesus didn't make a suggestion to His disciples, he gave them a new COMMANDMENT.
He made it very clear what he expected of them; love one another. Not as we love ourselves, but ‘As I have loved you.’ Do you think the disciples were questioning, ‘well, how much do you love us Jesus?’ They very well may have. He had not yet died on the cross, He had not yet
Scripture Scribbles: May 11, 2025
I remember when I encountered these verses in John’s gospel in the early days of my conversion. By that point I had intellectually concluded that Jesus lived, died and was raised from the dead and that he very likely was who he claimed to be in the Gospels. I was reading about the lives of the saints and listening to podcast after podcast all describing intimate relationships with this man and the joy and peace relationship with him brought, regardless of circumstance. But I felt trapped in my own head. I didn’t know how I could have a relationship like that.
Scripture Scribbles: May 4, 2025
have always loved mornings.
And breakfast.
And the sea.
So, in a special way since my conversion, I’ve felt that this Scripture was especially for me. My heart glows in a unique way each time I read these words from today’s Gospel.
Scripture Scribbles: April 27, 2025
They “saw and believed.” Jesus is risen! Believe in the Resurrection, the most important mystery of our faith, the central teaching of Christianity. More than 500 people saw Jesus alive and were willing to undergo torture and die rather than deny this truth. When challenged to investigate Jesus’ Resurrection, once skeptic Sir Lionel Luckhoo (the most successful attorney in the world) after his extensive investigation concluded, “I say unequivocally that the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leads absolutely no room for doubt.”
Scripture Scribbles: April 20, 2025 The Resurrection of the Lord
They “saw and believed.” Jesus is risen! Believe in the Resurrection, the most important mystery of our faith, the central teaching of Christianity. More than 500 people saw Jesus alive and were willing to undergo torture and die rather than deny this truth. When challenged to investigate Jesus’ Resurrection, once skeptic Sir Lionel Luckhoo (the most successful attorney in the world) after his extensive investigation concluded, “I say unequivocally that the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leads absolutely no room for doubt.”
Scripture Scribbles: April 13, 2025
We have arrived. Holy Week. A week of contemplation as the greatest love story unfolds and spirals. We begin Mass with Jesus entering Jerusalem and everyone praising him as the Messiah. Quickly turning sour, the Pharisees influence the people and we encounter Jesus’ Passion. We know the ending and it grieves us and then gives us Hope.
This season of Lent has shown me a particularly intense lens on suffering. Not just my own suffering, but the witness of other people’s sufferings. My heart ached as I went to two funerals in a week. The news of multiple friends whose families were ill for months on end while other families await a miracle to heal very sick children rattled my being…
Scripture Scribbles: April 6, 2025
This Gospel is showing us how His mercy is offered to us, all of us!
We are infinitely loved, by God the Father. This woman caught in adultery was infinitely loved. Her accusers were infinitely loved!
Has this passage become too familiar?? Has it lost the heaviness that we should be feeling when we read it? I think it did for me. Is it because we know the end? We know Jesus shows her mercy, and we don’t let ourselves feel the weight of this moment? For me, this week, there it is, my assigned Gospel for my Scribble reflection. It is different when I am attempting to share my feelings about what the Gospels are saying to me.
Scripture Scribbles: March 30, 2025
I have been wrestling these past couple of weeks. In my prayer journal, I’ve scribbled page after page of prayers, thoughts and questions about things that have been hard and things I don’t understand. I have wondered, in my prayer scribbles, about God’s mercy for me, about the temporal consequences of sin and about his will, among other things.
It has been a time of deep honesty and closeness with the Lord (see Rachel’s beautiful devotion from last week’s first Scrutiny Gospel). It has been exhausting, too, because alongside the heart-to-hearts with Jesus, I have also been trying to figure it all out.
Scripture Scribbles: March 23, 2025
It’s okay to wrestle with God.
I am not sure where or how this lie originated in my heart, but I have found myself continually falling back into this trap in different ways throughout my spiritual journey and walk with the Lord.
It is okay to openly, honestly, have it out with God. Not only is it okay, it is good.
You can tell Him things don’t make sense. When things are hard, when you are confused, when you’re struggling with a Church teaching, or seeking the next step in a difficult situation—Tell God!
Scripture Scribbles: March 16, 2025
The gospel today is about Jesus’ transfiguration. It is among my favorite Biblical accounts and yet it never ceases to baffle me each time it is read in the yearly liturgical cycle. But then I realized something essential today. I don’t need to understand everything. We, as God’s children, don’t need to discern, comprehend, decipher, decode, or grasp every single word we read in the Bible. The others, we only need to know and acknowledge them as God’s miracles and mysteries. This is how our faith works.
Scripture Scribbles: March 9, 2025
Lucifer’s greatest ammunition: those that don’t believe he exists. Demons are everywhere, and they hate you. There are demons assigned to closely watch each and every individual and tempt at your weakest point. My eyes widened as I listened to Father Mark Beard’s homily – “Interview with an Exorcist.” Solidly aware of Satan's existence, how do I fight?=
Scripture Scribbles: March 2, 2025
Recently, my students and I have been reading Venerable Fulton Sheen’s Victory Over Vice, which focuses on the seven deadly sins, the last words of Christ, and the virtues that overcome these vices. We landed on Pride this past week. Whew! How prideful we can all be! What struck me in the chapter was the danger of intellectual pride - a pride that assumes we know all we need to know…
Scripture Scribbles: February 23, 2025
Imagine living this way…Imagine the freedom we would feel if we could start from this moment on, living with radical mercy? The way Jesus lived, the way Jesus loved. Would this set us apart? Would people notice if our love for others was radical and forgiving? What stings a little when I read these really hard words, is Jesus saying,
“And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?”
It's easy to love our family, it's easy to love those who love us….that's the easy part. One of the things I like to remind my kids is, we were made to do hard things, I was made to do hard things. We were not made to only do the easy, the comfortable, the “expected.” We were made to do hard things, and this “thing” that Jesus is asking us, is HARD!
Scripture Scribbles: February 16, 2025
Mother Teresa said, “Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus—a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you.” And his kiss is the sweetest. Even as the horror of the crucifixion unfolds. He invites me to be with him there. To open my own sufferings to him. In the nakedness is total trust. In the agony is redemptive power. In his death my belovedness is sealed. And in the resurrection my joy is complete.
Scripture Scribbles: February 9, 2025
He gets into Simon’s boat, but He continues to preach to the crowd nearby. Notably, not to Simon directly. I can’t help but laugh at this, as I realize the ways God speaks to me in my life. Is he trying to get your attention somehow, maybe by being in your boat but speaking to the “crowd”? Close enough so you can hear, but not a direct ask of you just yet?
Scripture Scribbles: February 2, 2025
Simeon, a devout and righteous man and Anna, a prophetess, foretold the future of the child Jesus and oh, how accurate were their prophecies!
Now we don’t need to be devout, righteous, or gifted with fortune-telling abilities to talk so beautifully about Jesus or God. We only need to look at our lives and God’s blessings. These are enough reasons to praise, glorify, and adore our Lord through our words and our deeds…
Scripture Scribbles: January 26, 2025
Jesus came “to bring glad tidings to the poor … to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…” I am poor, continually in need of being replenished with spiritual nourishment. I am captive by worldly attachments, categorized by Bishop Barron as wealth, power, honor, and pleasure. Wealth: my desire for things and financial security. Power: wanting to be in control of my life and others. Honor: my desire to be loved and affirmed by family. Pleasure: desiring comfort, avoiding self denial, mortification, and sacrifice; having an inordinate desire for sensual delights, good food, ice cream, and sweets…