Homilies & Thoughts

N.B. This weekend was the annual Bishop’s Appeal.

Picture a small clay lamp on a rough table in a Galilean home. It is not a sealed lantern with glass and metal. It is an open flame, steady and exposed, giving light as long as it is fed. Jesus says, “Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket,” and the image lands with force in a world where fire is never merely decorative. A basket over a flame does not simply hide the glow. It catches fire, it smolders, it collapses into ash.

Most of us learned the faith with a checklist in hand. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not harm. Those commandments matter. They guard human dignity and teach what love refuses to do.

But a Christian cannot live only by asking where the line is. When the heart is trained to look for the minimum, it begins to treat God like a strict referee, watching for a foot out of bounds. That mindset shrinks the spiritual life into anxiety, as if holiness were mainly the art of avoiding mistakes.

News travels fast when a prophet is taken away. John had been preaching in the rough country across the Jordan, telling the truth plainly to the man who held power. Herod Antipas tried to solve a moral problem by putting the messenger in chains. The arrest was meant to end the noise; instead it became the spark that set everything in motion.

The moment Jesus hears of John’s imprisonment, he does something that looks, at first glance, like retreat. He leaves the wilderness and heads to Galilee. Yet Galilee is not a safe hiding place. It is Herod’s territory. Jesus steps straight into the same domain that just proved it is willing to silence God’s word.