Theme: For the sin of this one man, Adam, cause death to rule over many. But even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.

Text: To the ancients, sloth can have as much to do with busyness as idleness. Acedia as Thomas Aquinas called it, has to do with 'not caring'. According to the ancients, the antidote for sloth, not caring about what really matters, is hope. Christian thought defines hope as longing for something which God has promised to fulfill in the future.

Theme: But Martha, the dead man's sister, protested, "Lord, he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.

Text: Anger really gets deadly when it tethers us to both past and future, constraining our movement in the present... the antidote for such anger is faith. Faith is trust - namely, trust in God to transform whatever challenges we face in the future.

Theme: If we allow him to go on like this, soon everyone will believe in him.

Text: Greed finds its origin in a feeling of deficiency... Being generous makes us supremely aware of the abundance we have but rarely notice.

Theme: That perfume was worth a years wages. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Not that he cared for the poor - he was a thief...

Text: Thomas Aquinas taught that at the center of gluttony is the concept of "too," as in "too soon, too expensive, too much" it is the urge to overindulge in anything. Temperance, by contract is the habit of letting go of our compulsion to overindulge by developing a mindfulness. Gluttony is about enslavement. Temperance is about freedom.

Theme: we understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever. How can you say the son of many will die? Just who is this son of many, anyway?

Text: Lust is ultimately about control, not sex. It's the desire that wells up inside us to have everything go our way, on our terms, all the time. Lust comes into play whenever we try to bend another’s will to do our bidding, no matter how high and lofty our goals. To love God is to seek to God’s will for what God has created rather than our own.

Theme: Then the Pharisees said to each other. 'There's nothing we can do. Look, everyone has gone after him.