Posts by Fr Dino Vanin (Page 3)

The Gospel passage for the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Mark 3:20-35) mentions what is needed, in Jesus’ eyes, to turn a house into a home.  Jesus came home with his disciples. Mark 3:20 Jesus and his disciples had been on a mission to preach the good news of God’s Kingdom in many villages and towns. At home, in Capernaum, they were in urgent need of recovering and re-energizing themselves before the next mission. However, the crowds had even more pressing…

It is patently clear that the word “blood” is the most revealing word in all three readings of this liturgy. We immediately associate blood with life; while we recoil from the sight of spilled blood as, right away, it conjures up the specter of a violent death. The significance and the message conveyed by blood are evident in the sealing of the covenant between the community (the twelve tribes of Israel represented by the twelve pillars) and Yahweh God (Exodus…

The feast of the Most Holy Trinity is providential in more ways than one. The statement I am about to make about it might sound outlandish and preposterous: this feast is providential because a good number of believers tend to reduce God to a manageable size which would make our brand of religiosity convenient and God somewhat “controllable.” Let us put this unwise thought to rest right away: Our God is in heaven; whatever God wills is done. (Psalm 115:3) Already in…

Fierce attacks have been, and are, directed mostly against the Catholic Church by those who are hellbent on replacing reality, nature, truth, decency, and common sense with crazy ideologies inspired by the prince of darkness. Satan’s minions know that the Catholic Church might be the last standing bulwark of morality based on natural law and on the Gospel. Hence, it should not be surprising that often we get upset, deeply concerned, and even become apprehensive and frightened just watching the…

The Ascension of the Lord Jesus is a Solemnity because for Jesus, as Head of the Body, it marks the crowning of his complete triumph over all our enemies, death included, and his full glorification by the Father. As far as we, members of the Body are concerned, this Solemnity comprises all that the Risen Lord said and did after his Resurrection to prepare all his disciples, across the millennia, to abide in him, to relate to him and to…

As I prepared this homily, I realized that all three readings are building on last Sunday’s readings by insisting on the vital importance of loving. I became thoroughly scared, with an awful knot in my stomach, because it was difficult for me to come up with verifiable evidence of loving not in word or speech but in deed and truth. (cf. 1 John 3: 18) You might want to check your love level and see if you get the same feeling I got.…

Here is an official invitation to get a spiritual tune-up. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. John 15:4 It is about daily life lived while being supernaturally grafted to Christ, the way a branch is naturally attached to its vine. Hence, we shall assess our spiritual condition in relation to Jesus as the…

“I am the Good Shepherd.” This simple, yet most powerful statement, reveals the uniqueness of Jesus’ shepherding. Compelled by the realism imposed by life itself, we do not want to dwell on the fact that in countries where there are real shepherds, they raise sheep for profit. The most benevolent aspect of such profit is usually wool and milk. But eventually, sheep would have to be sold and butchered for human consumption. From what Jesus tells us about himself, we…

Almost every day the news media bring into our living rooms immediate images of harrowing pain, hardships, and death from our country and from other parts of the world. We love Jesus too much to be able to turn away from those horrible scenes unfazed, unaffected. The most painful aspect of our empathy for these unfortunate people must be our powerlessness to do something tangible and concrete to alleviate their suffering besides our thoughts and prayers, and the occasional donation. Our…

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) The first thing that might strike us as relevant in this passage from our gospel passage for the Second Sunday of Easter could be that the doors of the Upper Room were locked. Yet also in this environment of defeatism, fear and…

The Book of Genesis tells us that, at the end of each creation day, the Lord God, stepped back to admire his handiwork and declared it “good.” However, at the end of the sixth day in which he created male and female human beings, stepping back, the Lord God declared his masterpiece “very good.” This must have been the reason why, St. Irenaeus (130-202), bishop of Lyon, wrote this famous phrase: “Man fully alive is the glory of God.” St.…

In the days when Christ Jesus was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death… (Hebrews 5:7) This powerful statement underlines forcefully how close to our flesh, to our predicaments, to our fears, to our anguish God made himself in the flesh of his only begotten Son, Jesus. We must be heartened by Jesus’ loud cries and tears to ponder existential questions that we might…