By Keith A. Russell

Beginning with the third Sunday of February and going through the month of March, the church enters the Lenten season. The challenges to the preaching during the Lenten season are several. First, we need to overcome the tendency to equate Lent with personal self-denial as in “what are you giving up” for Lent. Secondly, we need to examine our own needs as we move toward the Holy Week/Easter period. Can we help other to experience something fresh about God? Can we deepen our hunger for the reign of God? Can we focus our need away from consuming to searching or desiring in such a way to reflect the psalmist’s plea “that as a hart longs for cooling waters, so my soul long for God.”?

By Megan L. Stivison

Quotations that deal with Globalization

By Luis Rivera-Pagan
Migration and xenophobia are serious social quandaries. But they also convey urgent challenges to the ethical sensitivity of religious people and all persons of good will. The first step we need to take is to perceive this issue from the perspective of the immigrants, to pay cordial (that is, deep from our hearts) attention to their stories of suffering, hope, courage, resistance, ingenuity, and, as so frequently happens in the deserts of the Southwest, death.

By Keith A. Russell

We are certainly impacted by globalization as was dramatically demonstrated in the recent economic collapse both here and around the world. Do we or can we also have an impact on the reality of globalization. How does this global reality affect our preaching and teaching? Hopefully we can become more informed about this complicated world view and begin to understand the implications it presents from the simplest sermon on stewardship to the more complicated focus on community building and loving our neighbor.

By Keith A. Russell

Epiphany of the Lord, Baptism of the Lord, Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Third Sunday after Epiphany, Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

By Marian E. Ronan

From The Christmas Cycle to the Beginning of Lent: The Last Sunday of the Christmas Cycle, Transfiguration of our Lord, The Easter Cycle – Lent, First Sunday in Lent, Second Sunday in Lent

Reviewed by Marian Ronan

Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants .By Alyshia Gálvez. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Paper. 237 pp. $23.