Joseph Osho

  Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)   Isa 55.1-3;   Ps 144;   Rom 8.35, 37-39;   Mt 14.13-21   "The eyes of all creatures look to you and you give them their food in due time."   We are all familiar with those very upsetting television news pictures which show people, often tiny children, cruelly ravaged by starvation. Such pictures are a powerful reminder that food and drink are our most basic human necessities. Without food and drink, we suffer intensely, and in the end, we die. In today's first reading, the prophet Isaiah was addressing a people who had known great suffering. They had been deported from their homeland, exiled to Babylon. Isaiah's message was one of consolation: their suffering would come to an end, and they would one day be able to return home. This return from Babylon would be a new Exodus, a reaffirmation of the covenant, the contract of love, between God and his people. Through the mouth of His prophet Isaiah, the Lord ...

  Saint Alphonsus Mary de' Liguori, Bishop, Doctor  Jeremiah 26:11-16,​24 Ps. 68(69):15-16,30-31,33-34 Matthew 14:1-12 Today, the Church commemorates St. Alphonsus Liguori, the Neapolitan lawyer who became a priest, bishop, and Doctor of the Church. His writings on moral theology earned him a title still used today: the Gentle Doctor. Alphonsus envisioned the confessor as a healer of souls—someone whose role was not to interrogate or overlook, but to heal. He spoke out against confessors who used the sacrament to shame rather than to restore, emphasizing that the law exists to help a person grow closer to God, not to crush them beneath it. Most of us will never sit in a confessional and hear another person’s sins. Yet, we are constantly called to be listeners and guides for others—a spouse, a friend, a coworker, or a struggling adult child. Alphonsus’s approach applies just as much to us as it did to his priests. Do we tell the people we care about what they need to hear in a ...