Scripture Scribbles: July 27, 2025
Prayer. What a loaded word.
What does it even mean? I spent years wondering that myself.
Maybe you can relate. I wonder if the disciple in today’s reading, the one who asks Him to teach them to pray, was struggling with some of these same things.
But then he saw the Lord pray.
And something awakened in his heart.
Scripture Scribbles: July 20, 2025
How often do we have guests? How hospitable are we?
Today’s gospel reminds us that preparing for and serving our guests is a good thing. However, God wants us to look at the bigger picture. The main reason we’re having guests is because they want to be with us, isn’t it? By this, I mean they want to spend quality time with us by sharing meals, exchanging stories, updating one another about minor or major changes in one’s life, going somewhere together, and the like.
Scripture Scribbles: July 13, 2025
A burly, disheveled man holding a torn cardboard sign with faded lettering stands as a seemingly permanent fixture at the intersection. He’d be a monthly budget item if I gave him something every time I passed by. At times, my response to him has been less than charitable—my judgmental mind quickly recalling 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “If anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.”
Scripture Scribbles: July 6, 2025
What a rich Gospel for today! So much to unpack! As I grow in deeper conversion, boldly living my faith comes a little easier; however, reading the Gospel for today reveals to me an invitation to expand more and allow God to further transform my heart. Am I confident enough to proclaim in front of a crowd of people hostile to the Faith and shake the dust off my feet if they reject me? I’m not so sure. I would like to be, so I pray for that grace.
Scripture Scribbles: June 29 - The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
I love this, I love when the Gospels open up to me like a door, a door I can spiritually walk through. Peter spoke the truest words he knew, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”
Jesus’ reply, that His heavenly Father revealed this to Peter, is stunning and at the same time it's the only thing that makes sense.
It’s the only thing that makes sense today.
If you have faith, and you believe that Jesus is the son of the living God….then do you know who revealed this to you? The living God!
Why? I don’t know.
Scripture Scribbles: June 22 - The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
“As the day was drawing to a close…”
This line catches me today. It is a little detail in the account of the spectacular miracle of the loaves and the fishes on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
The day was drawing to a close.
The expected time for ministry was drawing to a close.
The expected time for Jesus to heal and teach was drawing to a close.
Even Jesus’ best friends were confining his work to their own expectations, timelines and limitations that day.
Scripture Scribbles: June 15 - The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
He will guide you to all truth.
Full. Stop. Go back and read that again.
Do we really believe these words? Like, to the core of our being?
I wonder how different our lives would be if we truly did believe them.
Because these words, if they are actually true, change everything.
I think we often understand Jesus, but I wonder if we actually believe Him.
Today’s Gospel is one of those passages of Scripture that can knock the wind right out of me if I actually slow down enough to receive the words Jesus is speaking and let them sink into the depths of my being.
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.