Fourth Sunday of Lent. As with last week, I found both Year C and A, so opted for the former. Today’s Gospel is the famous prodigal son (Lk 15.1-3 & 11.32)…so famous that it deters me from making any comments. We’ve heard countless of sermons on it, so much that we’ve become inured to the message. One such hardening to its message is that okay, the prodigal son’s return might be fine up to around a few thousand people. However, for the past 2,000 years there have been millions of them. So, does it work? Same applies for comments on the obedient son who didn’t leave his father’s side, the parable’s real culprit. By the way, that’s a favorite theme of some preachers who think they’re sharper than others by pointing it out. With this impediment in mind I turned to the first reading (Jos 5.9-12) simply because at this time I was reading the book of Joshua as part of my daily “piano practice.” By that I mean my ongoing reading of Hebrew of about 20 minutes daily more to keep in shape as opposed to doing it for lectio purposes.

As for the first reading, it takes place just before the capture of Jericho and after the male Israelites had been circumcised. “And the manna ceased on the morrow” [vs. 12]. No word of divine intervention here, just a simple cessation. This terse observation must have contained a world of relief because that’s all the Israelites had to eat for 40 years! Now they could eat of the land’s produce which connected them more intimately with the place they were about to capture. Chances are they could not have taken Jericho and other towns subsisting on manna.

Yesterday and last night were full of more of those passing snow squalls. They were fine but now getting to be a nuisance. As for snow in Iceland, you have to move inland to see real accumulation, the coastal region (where most people live) being subject to the Gulf Stream’s warm current.

For some years now we’ve heard much about Islamic radicalism, and many people have come to the conclusion that Islam is a religion of violence. More thoughtful people might see beyond the surface, yet there seems to be a kernel of truth to this controversial observation. When I heard of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, automatically I think of Islam; the latter makes the former pale in comparison.