Praying and Running

I love it when the a daily reading from Mass is one that has a special meaning. But today both the first reading and the Gospel were passages that have meaning for me. The first reading , 2 Timothy 2:8-15 contains our Bishop's Episcopal Motto "The word of God is not chained" and the Gospel Mark 12:28-34 included the "Two Great Commandments", "The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these." The first is meaningful because it is our Bishop's Episcopal Motto. If it means enough to a "Successor to the Apostles" to make it his motto then it should probably be a passage that I contemplate, perhaps I would learn something. The second from the Gospel is a great passage that I...

I am always interested in how the readings at Mass come together to form a cohesive teaching and theme. All though most of the time I try to find it on my own by reading them before Mass the connection is more often than not lost on me. That is when I rely on either the Missal (or some form of it) or the priests homily to point it out. I always get it, I just sometimes need some help. After all, I am not a biblical scholar and let's be honest there is a whole lot of background, cultural anomalies and "you had to be there"'s going on most of the time to make the connections. So when I do make that connection, when I can see the cohesiveness on my own, I get kind of excited.  That happened  this Sunday and because this last Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Trinity the homily focused on the mystery of the Trinity. Almost any commentary to be found on Sunday's Mass was focused on that as well.  There was also an underlying c...