Sunday Bible Reflections
This Sunday
Heads Up: Scott Hahn Reflects on the First Sunday of Advent
Every Advent, the Liturgy of the Word gives our sense of time a reorientation. There’s a deliberate tension in the next four
weeks’ readings—between promise and fulfillment, expectation and deliverance, between looking forward and looking back.
In today’s First Reading, the prophet Jeremiah focuses our gaze on the promise God made to David, some 1,000 years before
Christ. God says through the prophet that He will fulfill this promise by raising up a “just shoot,” a righteous offspring of David, who will rule Israel in justice (see 2 Samuel 7:16; Jeremiah 33:17; Psalm 89:4–5; 27–38).
Kingdom of Priests: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
The words God speaks to Israel in today’s First Reading are intended for us as well.
The Church is the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises to Israel—a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (see Deuteronomy 26:19; Isaiah 62:12).
In the Church, we have been gathered as the new “Israel of God” (see Galatians 6:16). He has made us His own people, the flock He tends, as we sing in today’s Psalm.
Word of the ‘Living Father’: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
The Eucharist is given to us as a challenge and a promise. That’s how Jesus presents it in today’s Gospel.
He doesn’t make it easy for those who hear Him. They are repulsed and offended at His words. Even when they begin to quarrel, He insists on describing the eating and drinking of His flesh and blood in starkly literal terms.
How God Loves: Scott Hahn Reflects on Trinity Sunday
We often begin Mass with the prayer from today’s Epistle: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” We praise the God who has revealed Himself as a Trinity, a communion of persons.
Communion with the Trinity is the goal of our worship—and the purpose of the salvation history that begins in the Bible and continues in the Eucharist and sacraments of the Church.
A Mighty Wind: Scott Hahn Reflects on Pentecost Sunday
The giving of the Spirit to the new people of God crowns the mighty acts of the Father in salvation history.
The Jewish feast of Pentecost called all devout Jews to Jerusalem to celebrate their birth as God’s chosen people, in the covenant Law given to Moses at Sinai (see Leviticus 23:15–21; Deuteronomy 16:9–11).
The Good News: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Ascension of the Lord
In today’s First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke gives the surprising news that there is more of the story to be told. The story did not end with the empty tomb, or with Jesus’ appearances to the Apostles over the course of forty days. Jesus’ saving work will have a liturgical consummation. He is the great high priest, and He has still to ascend to the heavenly Jerusalem, there to celebrate the feast in the true Holy of Holies.
The truth of this feast shines forth from the Letter to the Hebrews, where we read of the great high priest’s passing through the heavens, the sinless intercessor’s sacrifice on our behalf (see Hebrews 4:14–15).
Knowing God: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Seventh Sunday of Easter
Jesus has been taken up into heaven as we begin today’s First Reading. His disciples—including the Apostles and Mary—return to the upper room where He celebrated the Last Supper (see Luke 22:12).
There, they devote themselves with one accord to prayer, awaiting the Spirit that He promised would come upon them (see Acts 1:8).
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