Ecumenical Catholics live and celebrate the Catholic tradition in contemporary ways.

In my church's Gospel reading for the week of Nov. 3, Luke 19: 1-10, Jesus encounters Zacchaeus. Who was this man, Zacchaeus? The text tells us that he was "a chief tax collector, and a wealthy man."

The apostles of Jesus say to him, "Increase our faith." He replies that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed (which is quite small), we could say to this tree "be uprooted" and it would obey us.

Luke 16:1-13, commonly referred to as the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, is taken from a section in the Gospel of Luke that includes a series of parables. In the text immediately preceding this passage, for example, we had the Parable of the Lost Sheep,  the Parable of the Lost Coin  and the Parable of …

Luke 11:1-13 invites us to reflect on our mental image of God. A mental image is an internal representation of the world. We form these internal representations over time based upon our perceptions and experiences. For example, we all have mental images of "summer" and "winter," formed over many years of experiences of the naturally occurring patterns in the weather.

Much has been made of this reading over the years. If one were to do a historical review of commentaries on this reading, one would find a wide variety of interpretations that often contradict one another. Some have viewed this reading as a criticism of traditional female roles (meal preparation in the kitchen) as compared to more traditional male roles (education, learning at the "feet of the master").