The Nazareth Page - A gospel meditation for your home

May 17, 2026 – Seventh Sunday of Easter - John 17:1-11

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
Download this simple process to Prepare for Sunday using the Observe, Judge, Act Method

Sometimes we must focus all our attention on the present moment. If we don’t, we may miss something important that is passing by. I recall a wonderful account of an elderly woman who was standing roadside in the hot Texas sun waiting for St. John Paul II to pass by in a motorcade. A TV reporter noticed her and on live TV inquired why she is doing this? He said that she would likely get a much better view of the pope on her home television set and would also be in a more comfortable setting.  

She looked at him and immediately dismissed his suggestion. She said that she was staying right where she was. In brief she responded, “I am not standing here just to see the pope. I want him to see me!”  What a great response!

The Nazareth Page - A gospel meditation for your home

May 10, 2026 – Sixth Sunday of Easter - John 14:15-21

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
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Today’s gospel offers a spiritual roadmap on how to connect with God. But instead of indicating how distant God is from us, it reverses the search to telling how close God is.

Regular readers of “The Nazareth Page” know that I have a deep interest in cosmology and astronomy. We live in a great age of discovery for mapping (or trying to understand) the full dimensions of our cosmos. I won’t offer here a lesson on all that we have learned from the amazing discoveries of our time, the most well-known being from the Hubble telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. To gaze ever outward is to look back in time as it takes time for the early light of the expanding galaxies and stars to reach us. Literally, we can see what constituted the universe in the first centuries of its existence.

The Nazareth Page  - A gospel meditation for your home

May 3, 2026 – Fifth Sunday of Easter  - John 14:1-12

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
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Today’s gospel offers us a great summary of the mission of Jesus. We might assume that in this address to the apostles, he was offering a major reason for his becoming human and living among us.  He embodied the “personality” of God, the creator of all good that exists in the universe. In seeing and experiencing Jesus we are assured that we are also seeing God. Especially God’s attitude and relationship to all of us.

In a very real sense, Jesus impersonates God. At least that is how he would have been initially understood by those he met in his public life. Of course, later, after the Resurrection, he was understood more as God in human form.

So, while he had all the characteristics of being fully human, he also revealed the personhood of God. This is obviously one of the great mysteries of our faith. We cannot fully explain what exactly constituted the Incarnation. As the Catholic Church teaches, it is a mystery of faith.   

The Nazareth Page - A gospel meditation for your home

April 26, 2026 – Fourth Sunday of Easter  - John 10:1-10

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
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The gospels are filled with many noteworthy and important passages. In today’s gospel, it concludes with a verse that should make most top-ten lists of great sayings of Jesus. Here it is. “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” What might this mean?

The Nazareth Page- A gospel meditation for your home

April 19, 2026 – Third Sunday of Easter - Luke 24:13-35

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
Download this simple process to Prepare for Sunday using the Observe, Judge, Act Method

Sharing a meal is one of the most common expressions of our shared humanity. From earliest times of human habitations archaeologists search for ancient remains that indicate sites where humans sat around a fire preparing and consuming food that was needed for their survival. In literally countless ways this custom of eating together represents more than just “refuelling” for life’s continued journey. It captures something essential to our lives. Sharing food with others contributes to human joy and solidarity. It strengthens relational bonds and provides moments of joy and gratitude.

The Nazareth Page- A gospel meditation for your home

April 12, 2026 – Second Sunday of Easter - John 20:19-31

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
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I have a special place in my heart for the apostle, Thomas, who is often known as “doubting Thomas.” (We share a name.) Not that I doubt that much, but he appears in John’s gospel as one who held doubts about the risen Christ. Doubting is, if course, a very human trait. I doubt all kinds of things. I doubt that many of my favored athletic teams will be national champions. I doubt that I will ever receive a Nobel prize. I doubt that I will ever run a marathon. I doubt that an asteroid will land in my backyard. But some of those things might happen.  I just doubt they will.

The Nazareth Page - A gospel meditation for your home

April 5, 2026 – Easter Sunday- John 20:1-9

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
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No question is more on the minds of most of us than what happens after we die. We think about this when someone close to us dies, especially if they are members of our own family. As Christians, we are given the clearest answer to this question in today’s celebration of Easter.

The Nazareth Page - A gospel meditation for your home

March 29, 2026 – Palm Sunday - Matthew 26:14-27:66

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
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We are now entering the holiest week of the year, our celebration of the death of Jesus. It is described in all four gospels, something that is unique in the New Testament. And no doubt, it was the most important week in the life of Jesus. The culmination of all four gospels is the death of Jesus, what preceded it, what then happened and how it ended.

As we listen to or read Matthew’s account of the passion and death of Jesus, we do well to ask whether this awful sequence of events, this terrible suffering on the part of Jesus, this humiliating and painful death Jesus experienced was necessary. Crucifixion was a kind of death reserved mostly for enemies of the Roman state or criminals accused of terrible crimes. It was not for people who, like Jesus, lived good lives. Who were kind and compassionate and no real threat to anyone.

The Nazareth Page - A gospel meditation for your home

March 22, 2026 – Fifth Sunday of Lent - John 11:1-45

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
Download this simple process to Prepare for Sunday using the Observe, Judge, Act Method

Nothing is more fascinating, more something to wonder about and more mysterious than the fact of our being alive. We may not think about this often because daily life can be so distracting as we think about what’s for dinner or what causes that nagging pain in our lower back or the state of the world or how are we going to pay all our bills.

Speaking just for myself, while these distractions come and go all through the day, I try to occasionally take note that I am alive and that I have experienced countless highs and lows through the years. But, of course, eventually I will die. We all will. That thought leaves me with somewhat fearful, but also with hope for more.

The Nazareth Page- A gospel meditation for your home

March 15, 2026 – Fourth Sunday of Lent-John 9:1-41

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
Download this simple process to Prepare for Sunday using the Observe, Judge, Act Method

One of the more common miracles Jesus worked was the curing of blindness. And with today’s gospel drawn from John’s always profound gospel, we do well to think about this event not only literally, but also symbolically. Look for a deeper meaning of seeing clearly and spiritually in John’s narration about the life of Jesus.

In the previous Sunday gospel, I focused on the role of water in the gospels and in our own lives. Water is needed for life to exist as we know it, ourselves certainly included. Here follows a few thoughts about “seeing” as part of our spiritual awareness. I begin with a comment about how much more we see these days, especially through the lens of the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).