Word of Life Church Podcast

One of the reasons that after nearly fifty years of following Jesus and after over forty years of full-time ministry that I’m not bored, burned out, jaded or cynical, is that many times and in many ways—including by dreams—I’ve been warned and wooed...

Mary is the Theotokos whose womb was "more spacious than heaven." The more we meditate on this mystery the more profound it becomes. This holy mystery draws our attention not only to the Logos who became flesh but to the Virgin who gave...

Christmas Eve Homily (Audio)

The Word joined us in humanity that we might have power to become the sons and daughters of God. God in Christ became a child of woman that we might become children of God. What Jesus Christ is by nature, we are called to become by grace.

"You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness...

Long before the birth of Christ the poet-prophet Isaiah of the Exile gave lyrical expression to Israel’s longing for God to decisively intervene when he sang, “O that you would rend the heaven and come down!” And in the fullness of time God did rend...

The eyes of the heart enlightened by the Holy Spirit to perceive the present and eternal reign of Christ is the kingdom imagination.

Divine Encounters (Audio)

We live in an epoch of rage and fury—even to the extent that rage and fury are often esteemed as virtuous. We’re regularly told by the self-righteous priests of rage and fury what we must be enraged and furious about, lest we be accused of complicity...

If the world cannot see in the church the hope of a better way and aspire to it, we have no business trying to force our way upon the world. So we can stop trying to change the world. That’s not our job. Jesus is the savior of the world, not us. Our...

Prayer is to our soul what breathing is to our body. But we don’t need to learn how to breathe; our bodies do that automatically. We do need to learn how to pray. One prayer we can quickly learn is the Jesus Prayer—Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have...

"On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food..." With these words Isaiah begins to paint a vivid picture of a salvation feast prepared for all. The early church would come to embrace and enact this...

What we need right now in this cultural moment is a fresh imagination of Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of all we do as followers of Jesus. The image of Jesus as the Lamb at the center comes to us from Revelation 7:17, "For the Lamb at...

Ours is an age of acute empirical perception that affords spectacular scientific and technological developments, but our age is also an epoch of dire spiritual dullness leading to a deep poverty of the soul. This lack of spiritual perceptivity...

Being so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good is not our problem. The problem of the disenchanted Christian soul is a result of the exact—we're so enthralled by the material world that we have ceased to believe in any other. The soul...