McKenna

Past Filling Present (I Corinthians 15:1-2) At this jubilee time we come to celebrate so many years of Vincentian service and gospel witness, years that number up into the hundreds. And as with any anniversary it’s a time to look back to all that’s happened, but also...

Framing The Scene  (John 11:1-45) I remember a wise person once telling me that there’s no such thing as an un-interpreted fact. Everything you see out there you see through some kind of frame, some angle of approach that not only affects how you see, but more...

Letting Truth Appear (John 8:31-42) It’s not often I get stunned by the cover of a magazine, but the one on Time in late March accomplished that. In dark letters set against a darker background was the question, “Is Truth Dead?” The phrase caught a feeling I only half...

The Defining Backdrop (Gen. 17:5-9; Jn. 17) In the middle of Genesis, we come across the classic phrasing of a central theme running all through both Testaments of the bible, the Covenant. After telling Abraham He will make him the father of nations, Yahweh says, “I...

Vincentian Discernment: Following The Leader (Genesis 11:1-9) One of the keys to the story of the tower of Babel is the contrast in it between two lines of thought, one in the incident itself and the other coming a few chapters later in Genesis. In the first the...

Gospel Stretching (Mark 6:1-6)  There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the Sea.  So begins the famous hymn written by Frederick Faber two centuries ago. Freeing and refreshing and life-giving and promising as it sounds, wideness can...

Talk, Speech, Deed (1 Cor 2: 1-5) In one of the many commentaries on the quality of the rhetoric in the recent campaign, I came across a distinction I had never thought of – the difference between talk and speech. Talk, whatever comes to you on the spot, or from off...

       Repenting From Fear to Trust (Matthew 4: 17) In Matthew’s fourth chapter we come across what you might call the very first word in Jesus' very first sermon, Repent! Which means at base “to turn around.” And so the gospel, “From that time on, Jesus began to...

A Family Gift: Practical Integrity (Mk 3:1-6) If you were hired as the Public Relations director for the Jerusalem Pharisees and Scribes mentioned in Mark, you wouldn’t want this section of the gospel to get too much circulation. In their confrontations with Jesus,...