MONEY The society that Jesus knew was very different from ours. Only the powerful Jerusalem families and the big land-owners of Tiberias would have been able to accumulate gold and silver coins. Farm-workers could hardly come across the occasional bronze or copper coin, of little valu

A PARABLE FOR OUR TIME In no other parable has Jesus desired to let us penetrate so profoundly the mystery of God and, in that mystery, the human condition. None other is so timely for us as that of the «good Father». The younger son says to his father: «Give me the share of the estat

RESPONSIBLE REALISM The examples Jesus uses may be multiple, but his teaching is the same: the one who begins an important project rashly, without studying ahead of time if he has the means and the energy to accomplish what he intends, runs the risk of ending up with a disaster on his

WITHOUT EXPECTING ANYTHING IN RETURN Jesus is at table, invited by one of the principal Pharisees of the region. Luke tells us that the Pharisees don’t let up spying on Jesus. Jesus, however, feels free to criticize those who are invited and who seek the places of honor, and he even s

NOT EVERYTHING COUNTS Jesus goes walking toward Jerusalem. His journey isn’t that of a pilgrim who goes up to the Temple to fulfill his religious obligations. According to Luke, Jesus goes around the cities and villages «teaching». There’s something he needs to communicate to those pe

FAITHFUL FOLLOWER OF JESUS The Gospel-writers present the Virgin with features that can enliven our devotion to Mary, Jesus’ Mother. This vision helps us to love her, meditate on her, imitate her, pray to her and trust in her with a new and evangelical spirit. Mary is the great believ

LIGHT A FIRE There are more than enough Christians who are deeply attached to a situation of well-being and tend to consider Christianity as a religion that invariably ought to be concerned with maintaining the law and the established order. That’s why it ends up so strange to hear sa

WE NEED THEM MORE THAN EVER The first generations of Christians quickly saw themselves obliged to ask themselves a decisive question. The coming of the Risen Christ was delayed more than they had thought at the beginning. The wait got long. How to keep their hope alive? How to not fal

UNMASKING FOOLISHNESS The protagonist of the little parable about the «foolish rich man» is a landowner like those known by Jesus in Galilee. Powerful men who ruthlessly exploited farm-workers, thinking only about increasing their own welfare. The people feared and envied them: doubtl

RELEARNING TRUST Luke and Matthew have gathered in their respective Gospels some of Jesus’ words that without doubt remain deeply engraved in the minds of his closest followers. They easily could have been words that were used while Jesus moved about with his disciples through the Gal