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The Fifth Sunday of Easter
Today’s readings Often when I was growing up, our family would trim the numerous shrubs on the grounds of our home. When we were pruning the shrubs, I often thought about the fact that this process could not be all that painless for the shrub. It involved cutting away branches, some of which were dead,…
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Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Today’s readings So pretend you are Paul or Barnabas or one of the other apostles. Think about all the things they went through in that first reading. Paul hasn’t even been a Christian for very long, and already he is being hounded and persecuted. Maybe that makes sense because some people probably viewed his conversion…
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Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Today’s readings “It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.” You know, I think the name Christian is so common to us that we take it for granted. For those first disciples, there had to be a mix of emotions that came with being called Christians for the first time. They may have been…
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The Fourth Sunday of Easter
Today’s readings World Day of Prayer for Vocations Jesus uses an image in today’s Gospel that would have been very familiar to his hearers, and with it, he illustrates the significance of following one’s vocation in life. In a basically suburban place in the modern world, this image loses some of its immediacy, but I…
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Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
Today’s readings Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus is a perplexing one, to be sure. But in the light of Easter, we can see that Jesus was proclaiming that God is doing something new. Not only that, but God wants us all to be part of that new thing. Addressing Nicodemus, Jesus said that the old ways…
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The Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)
Today’s readings Today, on the eighth day of Easter, which we still celebrate as Easter Sunday, we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, which was instituted by Pope Saint John Paul II, of blessed memory. On this Sunday, we remember that the resurrection of our Lord was an act of intense mercy for us sinners, obliterating the…
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Easter Friday
Today’s readings “Come have breakfast.” These are some of my favorite words of Holy Scripture! I say that in jest, but I truly think these are significant words in Scripture. Here Jesus appears to his disciples, and just like the appearance on the way to Emmaus, the disciples recognize him in the breaking of the…
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Easter Tuesday
Today’s readings Letting go of things is harder than we can sometimes even admit. I think that’s what was going on with Mary Magdalene. And we are just like her: we want to hold on to things and people as they are, because what is familiar is so very comfortable to us. I think sometimes…
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Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord
Today’s readings “Do not be amazed!” – I just love that line in the Gospel. We have to get behind the sentiment of that statement today if we are to really understand what this day is all about. We believe in a God who is very surprising. All through the Bible, we can read stories…
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The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter
Today’s readings Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! We English-speakers have just one word for time, but other languages have more; those languages recognize the different kinds of time. Most notably for us, because it is reflected in the New Testament, the Greek language has two kinds of time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is the kind of…
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