Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day, a day on which we remember all the saints who have gone before us in the faith and who now rest in the presence of the Lord. When we think of saints, we often picture extraordinary people, men and women who lived particularly holy lives, performed great works, or demonstrated exceptional faith. But today’s readings invite us to look more deeply and ask ourselves: Who are the saints, really? And what do

(October 24, 2026) Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, Today we celebrate the commemoration of the Lutheran Reformation, and as every year, I find myself asking what relevance the Reformation has for modern times. This is especially true in a country like Italy, which has always been deeply connected to the Vatican. What is the point of talking about the Reformation? There are many answers, most of them wrong. Some emphasize the importance of Luther’s thought for the devel

The words of the prophet Isaiah that we have before us today are beautiful, full of comfort, hope, and promises of God’s mercy. The Lord invites the thirsty to come to the waters, promises abundant forgiveness to sinners, and reminds us that His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. But before considering what these words mean for us, we should look at what comes before them. In the preceding chapters, Isaiah speaks to a people who have turned away from God and who will hav

In 325 AD, a council of bishops gathered in the city of Nicaea, in what is now Turkey, for a council of fundamental importance. At the heart of the discussion was a fundamental question: Is Jesus God, just like the Father, or is He merely a “lesser god,” a secondary being, a creature who had a beginning? A few years earlier, an Egyptian presbyter named Arius had begun insisting that Jesus was merely a creature. The bishops at Nicaea, however, saw that Scripture clearly teache

Sometimes the simplest questions are the ones that reveal the most about us. Someone asks us, “What does God really want from me?” And perhaps we immediately begin thinking about all the things we should do: pray more, read the Bible more, be more patient, help others, forgive. And all of these things can be good. But in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses gives us a much simpler answer. He says, “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you?” And then he tells us t

The Psalm for today begins with a question: “Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing?” It is not a difficult question to understand. We only have to look at the world around us and we see nations in conflict, people divided, leaders fighting for power, and individuals trying to assert their place and protect what belongs to them. And this is not something that happens only among nations. We see the same struggle much closer to home. We want to b