Reflecting on Romans 5: 5-11

Hope does not disappoint. I believe this with all my heart. And St. Paul believed it, even as he wrote to the many Christians in Rome who longed for his visit. Those same Christians may have suffered the same martyrdom as Paul, who had been a prisoner in Caesaria before being taken in chains to Rome.

From whence do those who suffer from painful illnesses, or devastating losses, summon the faith and joy to say with confidence that hope does not disappoint? Their witness to this most basic tenet of faith fills us with hope, too, and then our witness strengthens those around us.

This is the scripture to take to the cemeteries today as we remember our beloved dead. As you drive around, take in all the love of those who buried their precious loves there. We assent to St. Paul’s exhortation, and believe that all these believers found their hope realized, in ways they could never have imagined.

The souls of the just are in the hand of God. Imagine being held, carefully and lovingly, in the hand of God. And cast that vision over the cemetery, over all the graves, many of them hundreds of years old. Pray for each person there, and announce Paul’s words: Hope does not disappoint.

We don’t have to wait until death to experience hope satisfied. There is some tiny glimmer of hope for peace in the Middle East. There are victories over headaches, severe colds, and even once-fatal diseases. There are restored relationships that once seemed terminal. In each of these, we have reason to hope.

Hold fast to hope. It’s your entrée into the heart of God.

In what area of your life do you need the grace to hope?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 18:9-14

There’s something so freeing about facing our deep character flaws. Don’t we all relate to the publican, hesitating outside the Temple doors? Isn’t it healing to be filled with shame sometimes? There’s nothing more painful than seeing ourselves as others see us, but isn’t that where true conversion occurs?

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart—these, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51:17).

I think that the Pharisee was putting on a show, pretending that his outward acts of piety put him on a higher rung than that of the filthy tax collector. I think he knew, in that hard place where truth lingers, that the humble publican was closer to the heart of God than he was.

How exhausting to keep up that pretense, and for whom? Certainly not the Almighty, who spoke through Isaiah to say, This is the one I will esteem: the one who is humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word (66:2).

I recently attended the most beautiful reunion of friends who ministered in the same parish years ago. Going from table to table, I was utterly uplifted to realize that these giants of my younger years haven’t let up one inch. Their lives still overflow with daily acts of kindness, and lifetime commitments to the good work they did so prodigiously over thirty years ago.

But you won’t hear any of that from them. It took listening to others talk about them to get the real picture. Ask any of them to tell you about the goodness of their lives, and they’ll be the first to tell you that they are unworthy servants.

What connections do you see between true humility and greatness?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 18: 1-8

One of the great delights of having lifelong friends is that, if we’re paying attention, they will surprise us. Just when we think we know them through and through, they say or do something that makes us look at them with brand new eyes.

The parables are like that. The widow and the judge are in our DNA. We know the hard-hearted judge (and may even have some people in our lives who remind us of him), and, of course, the widow is us, begging God every day for the things that we need, and begging God for peace on earth.

But a song, The Widow and the Judge, by Colleen Fullmer, (animated by Sr. Martha Ann Kirk, CCVI), shocked me into a new way of looking at this iconic story, and I’ve never seen it the same since. What if the needy widow isn’t us, begging God to give us what we need, but God? What if God is the widow, knocking on the doors of OUR hearts, and we’re the judge, withholding the good things needed for true peace on earth?

What if WE’RE not the ones seeking justice, but God, begging US to do justice? That then begs the question: if we hear the widow (God) knocking, do we finally give in and do real justice? Justice, justice shall you seek, says Deuteronomy 16:20

And let’s not domesticate that widow. Abraham Heschel writes that “God is raging in the prophets’ words.” It’s impossible not to hear her.

And that last line of today’s gospel section really hits home. WILL God find faith on earth when Christ returns? There are reports of an invigorated younger generation of Catholics. May it ever be so. 

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Luke 17: 11-19

What must that have been like, to have met Jesus, and beg him for healing, and then, lo and behold, to be healed! These ten lepers set off to show themselves to the priests, and on the way to see them, one of them realized he was healed. Can you imagine his joy?

Healing almost never happens like that. It’s slow, it’s painful, and sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. But for this man suffering the pain and loneliness of leprosy, the healing occurred not when he arrived at the Temple, but on his way.

In fact, this man never even made it to the Temple; halfway there, he realized that the true Physician was Jesus, and he rushed back to find him and thank him.

Think of the last bad cold you had. How long after it was gone did you finally realize you were better? We hardly ever realize  healing when it happens. Or think of a prayer that was answered. Did it occur to you to recognize at the time that this was, in fact, answered prayer? The best example is the healings that occur in our hearts over time. One day, if we’re paying attention, we sit up and say, “Wait. When did I stop being resentful? I can’t even remember why I was.” Healing works in us when we don’t even notice.

That’s why this man who noticed he was healed on the road is so exceptional.  We, too, should pay closer attention. And, for us, too, it’s never too late to notice that we’ve been healed, and to turn back to find Jesus, to thank him.

What have you forgotten to thank God for lately?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2: 2-4

That Habakkuk reading today is too close to home. The prophet writes, “How long, O LORD?  I cry for help, but you do not listen!”

I heard the cry of those brave Evergreen High School students who said, “My whole life, my whole childhood, was devoted to keeping me safe from a school shooter. And he came for us anyway.” And, of course, the horrific shooting during the first school Mass of the year at Annunciation grade school in Minneapolis is too terrible to recount, too tragic to remember.

How many of us, though, as we watched in horror, silently said to God, “I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’  but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin;  why must I look at misery?”

Habakkuk has a front row seat to the impending misery about to be visited upon Israel. He can see the Babylonian army marching towards Israel. He dreads the violence, the bloodshed, the loss of life that surely marches into Israel with King Nebuchadnezzar.

He demands that God give him an answer. WHY do you allow such violence, especially at the hands of evildoers? In fact, a third of the population died by the sword, a third by fire, and the last third was taken into exile. God tells Habakkuk to wait, that the vision written on the tablet will surely come. Seventy years later, long after Habakkuk’s death, the vision was realized. The captives came home.

But will it take seventy years for the vision of a nation where schools are havens of safety and learning to be realized? We can do better. That, I think, is what’s written on the tablet.

In what ways are you advocating for gun safety?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 16:19-31

Has there ever been a time in our lifetimes when the words of today’s gospel were more desperately needed, or more thoughtlessly unheeded? The Church has written so many encyclicals about the right use of wealth, and today those words are about as popular as the Ten Commandments, of Amos’ railing against the corrupt rich in his day, or of the story of Lazarus and Dives.

We all have our theories of how bitter lies are somehow taken for truths, especially lies about those who are poor, and how they got that way.

When St. John Paul II defended the primacy of labor in his encyclical “Laborem Exercens” (1981), he was derided by a columnist in Fortune magazine for being “wedded to socialist economics and increasingly a sucker for Third World anti-imperialist rhetoric.”

As John McKenzie, SJ wrote, reflecting on St. John Paul II’s prophetic voice, “They saw him as a benighted Pole who failed to understand the sanctifying grace of consumerism.”

Are we guilty of the crimes that Amos attributed to his own people: self-indulgence, frivolous distraction, willful ignorance, and cruel neglect of the poor?

Paul’s first letter to Timothy—that beautiful second reading today—reveals the kind of persons we might be: people of integrity, kindness, piety, steadfastness, and love, people who fight the good fight of faith, people of true nobility.

Conservative commentator and Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro asked atheist Bill Maher this question: “Why do you and I agree on morality like 87.5%? We both grew up in Western society, which has thousands of years of Biblical morality behind it.”

We are the inheritors of this morality. Dives is not the hero of this story.

In what ways are you taking care of Lazarus at your door?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Luke 16:1-13

Ah, football season. Is there anything more exciting? Is there any assembly more joyous than the community of believers who gather at the altar of football, wearing the liturgical robes bearing their team’s logos?

Did you hear the fight song the nearly 70,000 Philadelphia Eagles fans sang, somehow all on pitch, (thanks to the recording playing to keep everyone together) at the season opener? The unity and fervor of that huge audience shook the stadium. Now THIS is the shared faith, almost worth dying for, that unites all believers..

Huh. How is it that the singing at Sunday Mass isn’t as robust, as heartfelt, as joyous as the cheers and songs routinely chanted at NFL games? Why does a text like Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim! not inspire the same ear-piercing singing as Hit ‘em low, hit’em high, and watch our Eagles fight!—which, by the way, is pitched five notes higher than the average hymn?

I think the answer lies in today’s curious parable. The secular world has found delightful ways to build community, and Jesus applauds the unjust steward for recognizing what works out there in the world, and using it to his advantage.

This wily servant bets on the (corrupt) financial savvy of the Master’s debtors.  They know he’s cooking the books in their favor, and, by siding with them, he’s betting that they will be good to him after the Master dismisses him. Now that’s using your talent to ensure your retirement plan!

Like so many, my heart soars when I hear huge crowds singing and chanting for their team. How can we capture that joy when singing the texts of our faith?

What successful secular strategies can you adapt for growing your spiritual life?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on John 3:13-17

This feast is especially precious to me because Denver’s radiant and godly Bishop George Evans died on the vigil of the Triumph of the Cross forty years ago. As the years have passed, the warm memories of this great man have become stronger, and his mission of reconciliation comes into even sharper relief.

I knew him because he lived in the rectory of the parish where I worked. In those heady days of the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t uncommon to walk into the rectory, where the parish offices also resided, and see the governor, the mayor, and many of the most prominent people from the Justice and Peace offices gathered at Bishop Evans’ dining room table. I recall that numerous maps were displayed on the walls. Downtown Denver, and, in particular, the university catering primarily to working adults, was undergoing a makeover, and Bishop Evans was committed to ensuring that the university would be accessible to all.

One day, when Bishop Evans was a young, overworked monsignor, he visited a low-income housing project with a friend who would become his great partner in housing, Sr. Lucy Downey, SCL.  He was utterly stunned at the poverty and lack of resources in the projects. When he returned to the Cathedral that night, he had an announcement. “For the rest of my life,” he said, “housing will be my #1 priority.”

What a huge dream that was, to provide housing for Denver’s low-income residents in seven apartment buildings around town. Today, Archdiocesan Housing, Inc. manages thirty properties that house up to three thousand residents. And that’s just a drop in the bucket of housing needs today.   

Lift high the cross today.  Bishop George Evans processes with us.

What people have you known who continue to inspire you?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 14: 25-33

What charisma did Jesus possess that he was able to draw The Twelve, as well as many dozens of unnamed disciples, into mission with him? I imagine him as this young, warm, kind rabbi, whose very presence compelled James and John to drop their nets (and thus to evaporate the family business) and follow him.

But at what cost! They would have to love their families “less”—the proper translation of “hate” — than they loved him. They would have to love their own lives less than they loved him! They would have to be willing to “take up the cross”— surely the most dreaded image for anyone living in an occupied country–and follow him.

What kind of recruitment poster is that? Leave your families and vital love them less than you love this highly controversial man whose promises are sacrifice, privation, death, and eternal life?  Apparently, those who chose a life of hardship with him did it with great joy. They were utterly devoted to him.

It’s good to be cautious when you make a commitment, of course. You need to make a list of pros and cons. You need to determine whether you can succeed before taking on a new project or job. But the cost of this discipleship? To be a faithful follower of Jesus, you must renounce all your possessions!

What an impossible call this is. The Catholic tradition reserves this particular sacrifice for those who embrace poverty in Religious life. But all of us are called to love Jesus more than possessions, family, or even our own lives.

Do I do this? The answer is: sometimes. And those times have brought me my greatest joys.

When have you found deep joy in following Jesus?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Luke 14: 1, 7-14

It’s shocking, the number of life lessons I’m still learning. Aren’t we supposed to reach a point where we know enough to get through the day without making huge, embarrassing mistakes?

My most recent revelation is that I must always assume that every person in the room knows at least as much, if not much more, than I do. I’m noticing this about the great friends I’m making in my Senior Exercise Class at the gym.

We’re all around the same age, with the same aches and pains. But ask just any random person how she completes a particular exercise so effortlessly, and chances are she’ll share about her award-winning college career in soccer, or softball, or where she ranks in the neighborhood pickleball league.

I have a little job, speaking to medical students about how to diagnose ovarian cancer. This disease strikes women of every background, yet every woman I’ve ever been on a panel with is as comfortable speaking in front of large audiences as I am. It’s a huge mistake to think that we are more important, more experienced, more knowledgeable about anything than anyone in the room.

Jesus was swaddled in humility from the day of his birth. Though he was in the form of God, even when confronted by the terrifying Roman soldiers, he did not deem equality something to be grasped at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil. 2: 6-11).

How embarrassing to take a place of honor at a banquet and find out that other, more accomplished people were meant to sit there. If we’re honest, we admit that being humble isn’t a virtue; it’s just acknowledging the obvious.

How is humility the most valuable trait in your spouse or friends?

Kathy McGovern ©2025