The Other Fr Steven Beatty Project

Paul wrote two long letters to the Corinthians; he clearly has a lot to say to them. But the very first thing he chooses to focus on - after some greetings and encouragement - the first thing Paul wants to write about is division within the Corinthian church. He’s just out of the gate, and he’s worked up, and he’s calling them out. “You have these slogans: ‘I am for Paul,’ ‘I am for Apollos,’ ‘I am for Cephas,’ ‘I am for Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?” I think you could pick any time and place in the history of the Church, and Paul could call us out on this very same thing. Staying together, staying united, is one of the hardest things the Gospel demands. It doesn’t sound like it should be, but I think history proves that it is.

I’ve been thinking about Carl Sagan. Some of you will remember him, sort of the celebrity scientist of his day, writer and great popularizer of science in the wider culture. A bit before my time but I met him in books. Sagan was famously agnostic, but in a much more thoughtful and wise way than the blowhards who seem to get all the attention today. He thought a lot about the sort of things we call spiritual. Maybe one of the reasons he came to mind is last week’s feast of Epiphany.  Those wise and learned men did not have the light of God’s revelation to Israel, but they did have the light of the star sent to them. It’s my hope that like those ancient astronomers, this more recent magus, so captivated and obsessed with the light of the stars, found the same unexpected and eternally surprising salvation at journey’s end. Sagan would be so annoyed by my suggestion: that he was far more right than he knew. Sagan’s most popular book is his only work of fiction, and he poured his

Only Matthew tells their story, and he tells almost none of it. People are sometimes surprised to learn that the Bible doesn’t actually say most of what they think they know about the Three Kings. Like, for example, that there were three of them. Or that they were Kings. Matthew does say that they came from the East following a star. I just keep thinking about that star. It’s always been fascinating to people. Astronomers have scoured the records and charts to see if they can find some trace of it in a supernova or some other astronomic event. Historians have looked for other reports from that time period that might give a clue. But that sort of thing is less interesting to me — because even pinpointing some supernova that everyone saw just wouldn’t go very far at all in explaining the journey of the Magi. I’ve seen unusual and surprising things in the sky before. None of them ever made me say, “I’d better get a few friends and pack some bags and start walking westbound until I get s

There are two main reasons people find it difficult to approach and honor and develop a great spiritual relationship with Mary. They are two mistakes, and they’re both mistakes about Jesus.