We hear today one of the many times that the Scripture says “do not be afraid”. In the context of the readings today, this is directed toward our needs. Do we need to be healed? Do we need forgiveness? Are we physically or spiritually blind or deaf? We can be confident that God can and will work miracles in our lives, so we need not fear. And those…

The readings today will all come before the single reflection, as they all relate to each other nicely. We are hearing about God’s law, and man’s law. We have spent a fair amount of our time in this podcast on studying God’s law, and some also on keeping God’s law. Today, we hear about how the two must go together; neither by itself is sufficient. …

Who do you serve? Who is the real boss of your life? Who is it that you turn to when things get hard? Do you find the easy answer and go the way of the majority, of the opinions and whims of the current social norms? Or do you follow the Lord, and like Peter, realize that He has the words of eternal life? Will we follow Him even when it seems hard?…

Wisdom and Joy are the subjects of our readings today. Who doesn’t want those? So how do we obtain wisdom, and from where do we get our joy? Of course, for Christians, the answer is from Jesus Christ himself. And He gives us Himself in the Eucharist, so we hear more of the Bread of Life discourse in John’s Gospel today. The Eucharist should be the …

We continue to hear in our readings this week about bread. Many Catholics today have some doubts about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We can take heart in knowing that even in Jesus’ own time, people had a hard time understanding or believing what He was telling them. Let’s take this opportunity to hear more from Scripture about the B…

Last week we heard a lot about food. This week, Scripture takes us further, deeper in to the Spiritual Food that we touched on last week. Part of the Bread of Life discourse is today’s Gospel, and other readings refer to it as well. Let’s pray that Jesus’ words sink deeply in to our souls today! Note that Scripture readings are from the Lectionary …

Are you hungry right now? Is it meal time, or near meal time? Today we hear stories about food. Elisha and Jesus both multiplying small amounts of food to feed large numbers of people, though Jesus’ miracle far eclipses that of Elisha. But miracles are meant to point beyond themselves. What is it we are to learn from these examples? How do we apply…

It’s no secret that the world today is very divided. We tend to think of ourselves as Catholic or Protestant, Conservative or Liberal, and we often emphasize our differences. The readings today call us to be more self giving in love, and call us to reach to God as our primary focus, not our secular identity. This is not new. Back in the early Churc…

Do you know that God has called you? Every one of us is called for something specific, something no one else is called to. Have we heard that call? Are we following it? And whether we are or not, has it made our lives more challenging? We hear today about an Old Testament Prophet who was called and was persecuted. We also hear about the call of Jes…

Do you have something in your life that you consider a thorn in your side? Or perhaps someone? Do you complain about it? Perhaps you’ve asked the Lord to deal with it for you. Have you ever thought about thanking God for it? Today we hear about St. Paul’s thorn in his side, and we also hear about some people that Jesus, at least His human nature, m…

I have had the privilege of being in the Holy Land twice. There is a place there that has been recently excavated on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and that place is Magdala. A shrine and conference center has been built there, and it is an amazing place to visit. One of the Chapels has a large mural of a large number of feet, with one hand reach…

Last week we heard a lot about plants. This week we will hear a lot about the sea and storms. Who doesn’t experience storms in their lives? And as we hear the story of Jesus handling the storm for the disciples, they wonder then, Who is this that even the winds and seas obey? We know the answer to that, of course, but do we live like that is true? …

Today we will hear all the readings first together, then the commentary, as they are all pretty well tied together by the theme of a plant. We’ll hear the details about that in the commentary, but I am reminded of God’s presence in nature here in my own area, where we are experiencing the emergence of two different cohorts of cicadas. That makes it…

We now turn back to the Liturgical Season known as “Ordinary Time”. It is not called that because it is routine and mundane, but because it is numbered, ordinal is another word for numbered. We skip some of the numbers because of the timing of the calendars, so today we are in the 10th Sunday of Ordinary Time, and the readings seem very appropriate…

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. We celebrate something that we probably take a bit for granted, the daily miracle of the Eucharist. How we can consume God Himself is incomprehensible, and yet we believe it to be true. At least most of us do. I know many Catholics say they don’t believe in the Real Presence, but it is an ar…

The central mystery of our faith is the Holy Trinity. God is three persons, yet one God. How can that be? You might just as well ask how God could create the entire universe out of nothing. Both of those are facts of our faith, yet our ability to understand them is practically nonexistant. Yet, we somehow believe. And that is enough. That is what f…

Pentecost is commonly thought of as the Birthday of the Church. In some ways, it is, and in some ways, it is the birthday of the Holy Spirit, who came to the Church that day! Like Christmas is Christ’s birthday, Pentecost is the start of something spectacular! There is so much symbolism in both the day and in the readings, so let’s listen now to wh…

We’ve been in the Easter Season for quite a while now. Today we begin to transition. Easter is the most glorious and mysterious event in all of history, but what happens next continues to be important. Jesus ascends back to heaven to His and Our Father, and commissions the disciples to go forth, but not until the coming of the Holy Spirit, which we…

The Easter Season continues, and this week could easily be mistaken for Valentine’s Day. Why? Because all the readings are about love! The reflections talk a LOT about love, and they delve deeply in to what love is, the various kinds of love, and they then help us to understand what the Scriptures are talking about, especially when they tell us tha…

Today as we continue in the Easter Season, we hear about a dramatic change of heart, namely, that of Saul, who becomes the great Apostle Paul. Have you ever been on the wrong path? Barreling down the road only to realize you were heading in the wrong direction? I sure have. And typically when I do, I turn around as soon as I can, and then start hea…

We have all heard the parable of the Good Shepherd many times, and the 23rd Psalm which starts out “The Lord is my Shepherd”. We’ve probably all done a little bit of thinking about what this means, especially since none of us listening to this podcast are probably literal shepherds (but I guess you never know!). Today, we hear in our Old Testament …

I have always wondered what it would have been like to be an Apostle or Disciple in the days after the Resurrection. Those days, viewed from 2000 years in the future, seem like they would have been both very confusing and very interesting. Jesus understands our confusion, and His actions between the Resurrection and the Ascension help us to have a …

The celebration of the Easter Season last far beyond the actual day of Easter itself, just as Christmas is celebrated long after December 25. Today, we also have the joy of celebrating a relatively new feast, that of Divine Mercy. If you are not familiar with the devotion to Divine Mercy, I would encourage you to read more about St. Faustina Kowals…

Today we celebrate the most Holy Day of the Liturgical Year. It has always been confusing to me how much less we celebrate Easter compared to Christmas. Both are high holy days, to be sure, but Easter is the culmination of thousands of years of God’s preparing the human race for heaven. I suppose that part of it is that Christmas is in the winter, …

Today we continue the Sacred Triduum with the liturgy of Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion. Let us continue to be prayerful as we walk with Jesus. Note that Scripture readings are from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition, Copyright Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., used wi…

Today we begun the Sacred Triduum. The liturgies for the next three days are technically considered one liturgy: Holy Thursday is the beginning, and it ends with the Easter Vigil Mass. We will do the readings and commentaries for Holy Thursday and for Good Friday. The Easter Vigil has nine Scripture readings, and as Dr. Kreeft comments in the book,…

When we think about Palm Sunday Mass, we probably think about two things: the Palms, and the LOONNGG gospel reading. Both are part of the liturgy every year. But I would challenge us to think about some other things today as we hear the reading and commentary. First, how can we possibly understand God? It doesn’t seem to make sense for Him to save …

We describe the books of the Bible as being divided in to two sections. We typically call them the Old Testament and the New Testament. But another name for Testament is Covenant. I think that may be worth considering as you hear Scriptures…some of the readings come from the Old Covenant, which is not completely in effect any longer, and some come …

You know that relationships are hard. Of all the relationships humans enter in to, the most intimate, the most satisfying, and the most challenging, is marriage. How about our relationship with God? Well, guess what? God wants our relationship with Him to be even deeper than our human marriages. How have we responded to that proposal so far in our …

Creation can be described as God bringing order out of chaos. A symbol of chaos in the Old Testament was the Sea, or the Waters. Out of the waters, God calls land and life and humanity. Similarly, the chaos of anarchy can be made orderly by rules. Yet in today’s world, we often hear about how rules are not really absolute. While there are many rule…

As we continue our Lenten journey, today we hear some familiar stories from the Bible. First, the story of Abraham and his son Isaac, and how Abraham did not withhold his only son from God. That one is a little hard for us to understand, so Dr. Kreeft’s explanations will be a great help. We also hear the same story we hear every year on the second …

As we begin this Lenten season, it is a good thing to consider why Jesus came in the first place. He came to suffer the Passion, and to die, in order that we might live. How does that work? We might be tempted to think of God as having a need to be satisfied for our sins, but that doesn’t quite work. It has more to do with His love. He has, from an…

This week we hear again about something that very few of us in this day and age have ever witnessed, namely leprosy. It shows up both in the first reading and in the Gospel. And of course, we typically realize that it is in Scripture for us primarily as an allegory, a symbol of sin. So on this final Sunday of Ordinary Time before Lent, it seems par…

One of the age old questions man has faced for time immemorial is, why do bad things happen to good people? Many of those who profess to be atheists even use that as an argument against the existence of God…how could a good God allow such terrible things? The answers are not simple, nor are they what we would necessarily expect. Along with these qu…

We all face temptation in life. Sometimes temptation becomes more of an obsession, and in extreme cases, we believe that it can even lead us to be possessed by evil, by the devil himself. The good news, though, is that the Word of God, who is a person, can stop evil, whether simple temptation, or full blown possession. How does God send us His word…

We know that the Bible is true, because it is the Word of God, and God does not lie. What do we do when we come across a seeming contradiction? How do we know when the stories or words are literal, and when are they allegorical? There are several different senses in which we read the Sacred Scriptures, and how do we know when to think one way or th…

We are back in Ordinary Time now. Today’s first reading is one of my favorites. It talks about Samuel hearing the voice of God and not recognizing it. To myself, I wonder how often I may have missed hearing God trying to tell me something, and Him saying to Himself, I have to keep calling Bob 3 and 4 times; maybe I’ll just hit him upside the head w…

This episode includes the readings and commentary for the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. While not a Holy Day of Obligation, it is a good way to end the Christmas Season and begin that time of the year we call “ordinary”, meaning numbered, not plain. It is the beginning of the Ministry of Jesus, and from here we begin to learn about His life and…

What is it that we seek? What are we looking for? How do we know when we find it? These questions are things we might want to think deeply on. Jesus asks his first disciples that question when they see him being baptized by John the Baptist. And we can ask ourselves that also about the Magi, the Wise Men. What were they looking for? Note that Scrip…

Today’s episode is for the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, which is always on January 1. Since this year, that falls on a Monday, and is the day after the Feast of the Holy Family, it is NOT a Holy Day of Obligation this year. Other years it is, so I am reading the Scriptures and Commentary. Personally, I think it’s a good thing to start…

Today we celebrate the Holy Family. Over and over again, history shows us that as the family goes, so goes society. We may be feeling like families in our world are struggling right now, and we’d be correct. How can we correct this trend? By following the example of the most perfect family ever, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. In light of confusion over t…

Today we have not one, but 4 Christmas Mass readings! I will read each of them separately so you can choose which one you plan to attend, and listen to that one, or, feel free to listen to one of the others, or even all of them if you so choose! If you’ve been following along during Advent, you will remember that the reflections for the last few we…

Today we have not one, but 4 Christmas Mass readings! I will read each of them separately so you can choose which one you plan to attend, and listen to that one, or, feel free to listen to one of the others, or even all of them if you so choose! If you’ve been following along during Advent, you will remember that the reflections for the last few we…

Today we have not one, but 4 Christmas Mass readings! I will read each of them separately so you can choose which one you plan to attend, and listen to that one, or, feel free to listen to one of the others, or even all of them if you so choose! If you’ve been following along during Advent, you will remember that the reflections for the last few we…

Today we have not one, but 4 Christmas Mass readings! I will read each of them separately so you can choose which one you plan to attend, and listen to that one, or, feel free to listen to one of the others, or even all of them if you so choose! If you’ve been following along during Advent, you will remember that the reflections for the last few we…

This is the final Sunday of Advent, and the final DAY of Advent, all in one. The shortest week of Advent this year is just one day! Today is not only the 4th Sunday of Advent, but it is also Christmas Eve. Let’s not shortchange this Sunday, though, because today we hear about the dwelling places of God. Think for a minute…if you knew where God live…

This episode is for the Third Sunday of Advent. This week, it is the Gospel reading that has two separate reflections. The first is more practical and personal, the second more historical and theological. Feel free to listen to whichever appeals to you more. Or, if you are feeling really interested, listen to both! Time marks are as follows: 0:00 I…

This episode is for the Second Sunday of Advent. Like last week, there is a lot here, and Dr. Kreeft has two separate reflections on both the Responsorial Psalm and on the Second Reading. For the Psalm, he mentions that the two reflections are on two different parts of the psalm, and that they can be combined but they do not have to be. For the sec…

In this episode, we review the story of how this podcast came to be, and why it’s called the Bean Field. This story has inspired me in so many ways, and I hope you find some blessing in it as well!By Robert Sawicki

Today, we listen to the readings and commentary for the First Sunday of Advent. I want to give you a heads up that Dr. Kreeft has a LOT to say about these readings, to the point where he actually has two separate reflections on the first reading. The first is about the problem of pain, the second is a bit more pastoral. Feel free to listen to both,…