Pat McCloskey, OFM

In homilies at funerals, priests often refer to the deceased person as already being in heaven. What happened to purgatory? I know the priest is probably saying this to bring comfort to the family.

The Catholic Church still believes in purgatory as a time of cleansing for those who need it. Deceased people are not ready for heaven until they have no objection to the persons sitting across from them or next to them at the eternal banquet or where they sit at the eternal banquet!

In different parts of the Old Testament, God is called by different names for example, sometimes El and at other times Yahweh. Why is that? Why did God change names?

God did not change names but is simply too great to be confined to a single name.

In Genesis 27:1–40, why did God permit Jacob to trick Esau out of his birthright?

In a patriarchal society, Jacob, as the younger twin brother, was always expected to defer to Esau. This story is told partly to challenge the idea that God acts exactly like any patriarch. The stories of Cain and Abel, of Leah and Rachel, and of Joseph as being favored over his 10 older brothers all make the same point.

Most of my family are members of Scripture-alone groups. They say that praying to Mary is fruitless and that the Eucharist is not really Jesus’ body and blood. How can I respond?

For 800 years before Martin Luther, Christians had clarified that they adore God but venerate saints; that’s a big difference.

Is there any humor in the New Testament? Everything seems extremely serious.

Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has a fair bit of humor, much of it rather subtle.

Isn’t there humor in Jesus’ image of a camel trying to go through the eye of a needle (Mt 19:24; Mk 10:25; and Lk 18:25)? Some Scripture commentators conjectured Jerusalem had an “eye of the needle ” gate, but no one has found any evidence of such a gate.

Where in the Old Testament do we find even a hint of humor as we know it? I’m guessing that there just wasn’t much humor in those days! Was everything taken seriously then?

In fact, there is a fair amount of humor in the Old Testament, which many Christians mistakenly think has only thunder, lightning, and punishment. What follows is only a sampling of humor in the Old Testament.