Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Easter

  • The Ascension of the Lord

    The Ascension of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    For the early Apostles and disciples, today’s feast had to be a kind of “now what?” experience for them. Think about what they’ve been through. Their Lord had been betrayed by one of their friends, he had been through a farce of a trial and put to death in a horrible, ignoble way, they had been hiding in fear thinking they might be next, they had questioned what they were supposed to do without their Lord, and then they witness the Resurrection: Christ walks among them for a time, appearing to them and making himself known. They had seen redemption of a way of life they almost had abandoned, and now, on this feast of the Ascension, their Lord is leaving them again. In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, you can almost feel the amazement and desperation they are experiencing as they stare up into the heavens, incredulous that their Lord is gone, again.

    So once again, God sends two messengers, two men in white garments, to set them straight. God had sent two men in dazzling garments to the women at the tomb on the day of the Resurrection as well. That time, the men reassured the women that the Lord had not been moved or stolen, but had risen from the dead. This time, the men appear to the Apostles, assuring them that the Lord would return in the same way as he had just departed from their sight. Both times, it was the same kind of messengers, with the same kind of hopeful message. Go forward, don’t worry, God is in control.

    One of the great themes of Catholic theology is the idea of “already, and not yet.” Basically, that means that we disciples of Christ already have a share in the life of God and the promise of heaven, but we are not yet there. So we who believe in Jesus and live our faith every day have the hope of heaven before us, even if we are not home yet. And this hope isn’t just some “iffy” kind of thing: it’s not “I hope I’ll go to heaven one day.” No, it’s the promise that because of the salvation we have in Christ, we who are faithful will one day live and reign with him. This gives us hope in the midst of the sorrows that we experience in this world.

    Another great theme of Catholic theology is that our God is transcendent, but also immanent. Transcendent means that our God is higher than the heavens, more lofty than our thoughts and dreams, beyond anything we can imagine. Whatever we say about God, like “God is love” or “God is good” – those things only begin to scratch the surface of who God is, because God is transcendent beyond anything our limited words can describe. But our God is also immanent. God is not some far off entity that has brought the world into existence and set the events of our lives in motion and then drops back to observe things from afar. No, our God is one who walks among us and knows our sorrow and our pain and celebrates our joy. Saint Augustine said that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. Our God may indeed be mysterious and beyond us, but he is also the one we can reach out and touch. If that weren’t so, the Eucharist would be pretty meaningless.

    As you can see, Catholic theology is generally speaking not exclusive. We are not either already sharing in the promise or not yet sharing in it, but we are “already and not yet.” Our God is not either transcendent or immanent, but both transcendent and immanent. These two great theological themes come to a kind of crossroads here on this feast of the Ascension.

    Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, our share in the life of God and the promise of heaven is sealed. We have hope of eternal life because our Lord has gone before us to prepare a place for us. If he had not gone, we could never have shared in this life. So, although Jesus has left the apostles yet again, they can rejoice because they know that the promise is coming to fulfillment. We do not possess it yet, because we are not home yet, but we share in it already, because Christ is our promise.

    Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, he once again, with the Father, is transcendent, because we, along with the Apostles, can no longer see him. But he remains immanent by his promise to be with us always. Again, I will quote St. Augustine who said of Christ that “He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” St. Augustine teaches that the notion of time is that everything is present to God all at once. This explains how our celebration of the Eucharist in a few minutes brings us to Calvary at the moment when Jesus gave his life for us. And it explains how Jesus can ascend into heaven and yet remain among us. Time is a limitation for us humans, but not for God who created time in the first place.

    All of this theology can be heady stuff, but what it boils down to is this: because Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, we now have the hope of heaven and of sharing in the very life of God. Even though we do not possess heaven yet, we know that it belongs to all who have faith in Christ and live that faith every day. And even though we do not see Jesus walking among us, he is still absolutely present among us and promises to be with us forever. The preface to the Eucharistic prayer which I will sing in a few minutes makes this very clear; it says:

    Mediator between God and man,
    judge of the world and Lord of hosts,
    he ascended not to distance himself from our lowly state
    but that we, his members, might be confident of following
    where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.

    Jesus, having explained the Scriptures to his Apostles yet again, tells them “You are witnesses of these things.” And so they don’t have the luxury of just standing there, staring up into the sky for hours, dejected and crushed because the One who had been their hope had disappeared. No, as the Gospel tells us today, they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.” They are witnesses, “clothed with power from on high,” and they must be filled with the hope and joy of the resurrection and ascension of the Lord.

    We disciples are witnesses of these things too. We must witness to a world filled with violence and oppression and sadness that our God promises life without end for all those who believe in him. And we have that hope already, even though not yet. We must witness to a world languishing in the vapidity of relativism and individualism and New Age Oprah and Dr. Phil philosophy that it is Jesus Christ, the Lord of All, who is one with us in heaven, and present among us on earth, who fulfills our hopes and longings and will never leave us. We must be witnesses to all these things, living with great joy, continually praising God because Christ’s ascension is our exaltation. We too might hear those men in dazzling white garments speak God’s words of hope to us: go forward, don’t worry, God is in control.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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  • Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter

    Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Petty jealousy is a pernicious thing. Paul experienced it, directed against him by those Jews who were jealous of Paul’s effective preaching and suspicious of the Christian Way. In their fear and jealousy, they appeal to Gallio, a Roman official, complaining that Paul stirred up the people to worship God contrary to the law. What they were trying to do was get Paul and the others arrested for worshiping God at all, in violation of Roman law, even though they do the same thing. But Gallio sees through their very thinly veiled patriotism and throws them all out, turning a blind eye as they beat a synagogue official who was a supporter of Paul.

    Neither those troublemakers nor Gallio were at all virtuous. The troublemakers weren’t so much concerned about the laws of the land as they were quibbling about following Jesus. And Gallio wasn’t so concerned about defending the Christians as much as he wanted them all to go away and leave him alone. Through it all, Paul was able to see the fulfillment of God’s promise in the vision he had: “Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack and harm you.” And that’s exactly what Paul did.

    It is up to us to witness to our faith courageously too. We might face opposition, and even petty jealousy. But the message is too important to bury for fear of what might happen. We must trust that the Lord will preserve us too, in the same way he guarded Paul in his efforts to proclaim the Gospel.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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  • The Sixth Sunday in Easter

    The Sixth Sunday in Easter

    Today’s readings

    Our readings today revolve around the theological virtue of hope. Hope is the virtue that recognizes our desire for happiness in this life and the next, which is an aspiration placed in our hearts by God himself (CCC 1818). According to the Catechism, the virtue of hope causes us to “desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). During this year, Pope Francis, of blessed memory, instituted the Jubilee Year of Hope. He recognized the challenges faced in our particular time and wished to call attention to the hope that we have in Christ.

    So hope is that virtue that gets us through the difficulties of this life with a view toward what is to come. I like to say that it’s the light at the end of the tunnel, and not the light of an oncoming train! The theological virtue of hope is an eager longing for that which is absolutely certain: it’s not a wish and a prayer, as most people use the word “hope.” Hope is so necessary in every moment of history, in every society and in every person’s life. Hope holds fast to the belief that we are travelers in this world, that we are not home yet, and that the best is yet to come. In these Easter days particularly, the Resurrection is our hope, testifying that we have the invitation to life eternal, and the abiding presence of our God who made us for himself.

    Our second reading today is, and has been through the season of Easter, from the book of Revelation. This revelation to John and his community was meant to foster hope among a people who were being persecuted. Because they believed in Christ, they were being expelled from the synagogues, and then, because they had no other religious affiliation, they were being forced by the Romans to worship their pagan gods or face death. They definitely needed hope! To them, John prophesies of the new heavenly Jerusalem, the Holy City, which would need no light from the sun or stars or even lamps, because its light was the light of Christ himself. Indeed, that very City was Christ, and all of the community could hope for the day when they would be caught up in it and all would be made right.

    Our Gospel today, even though we are in the season of Easter, finds us just before Jesus’ death. John’s Gospel always portrays Jesus as being fully in charge: he does not have an agony in the garden, but instead willingly lays down his life for us. So in this reading, fully aware that he is about to give his life, he seeks to give hope to his disciples who will surely grieve his loss and be filled with despair and even fear for their own lives. In order to prepare them, he offers them peace, and the abiding presence of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will remind them of Jesus’ words and help them to integrate all that he has taught them. In many ways, absent this hope, we would not have Christianity today.

    Hope was necessary for the first disciples, hope was necessary for the early Christian community, but it is also necessary for us today. Think of the many ways that our society beats us down. We can point to war, terrorism and unrest in so many parts of the world, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and violence in our own cities. We can look at traditional values degraded and open hostility to anything remotely Christian. We can see the bitter hatred of the pro-choice movement toward any advance of a culture of life. We see it, too, in bitter hatred of those on the margins: immigrants, the LGBT community, the poor, and so many more. Add to that inflation like we haven’t seen in decades and an economy that is uncertain. We can also find distress in our own families, at our places of work, in our communities, and in our schools. We may even be dejected by our own sinfulness, and the many ways that the world seems to take us away from God and family and community. We always need that same abiding hope that the early community found in Christ and in John’s vision.

    And let’s be clear about this, friends: we always have it. Always. Every time we gather here for the celebration of Mass, for the proclamation of the Word and the saving sacrifice of the Eucharist, we can see that this world is not all there is. We can see that God is with us, in good times and in bad. We can find comfort in the Word and the Sacraments, and in the others assembled with us, journeying together to the Kingdom of God. We can see that Our Lord is leading us to our true heavenly homeland, where all will be made right, and every sadness put to an end.

    We are encouraged during this Jubilee year of hope to be hope for others. As a parish, we are symbolizing that with our “Holy Door” that you can see in the south end of the ambulatory, on your way to the Commons. We invite you individually or as a family to complete some act of hope, then write in on a key and hang it on the door. Those keys will open the doors of hope to us and our fallen world, knowing that entering through that door we encounter others, and in those others, we encounter Jesus.

    And so we Christians press on as an Easter people, confident in God’s promises and filled with his abiding presence. We shed light on a world that can be dark at times, and we beckon all the world to receive the peace that can only come from our Risen Lord. We live those first words of today’s Gospel reading: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” We have hope in these Easter days, because Christ is our hope and he has overcome the sting of death and sin and all their sadness. The victory has been won. We just have to hold on to that.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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  • Friday of the Fifth Week in Easter

    Friday of the Fifth Week in Easter

    Today’s readings

    Perhaps the essence of living a Christian life is one that Jesus presents in today’s Gospel reading, and that of course is to love. But Jesus isn’t asking for just any kind of love: nothing superficial, not mere infatuation, and certainly not lust. Jesus insists that his disciples love one another in the exactly same way that he loves them. And he showed them, and us, what he meant by that when he suffered and died on the cross. The disciple is expected to love sacrificially, unconditionally, just as Jesus has loved him, or her.

    Perhaps this can be a kind of examination of conscience for us. In this Easter season, we need to be moving closer and closer in relationship with our Lord. So we have to look at our relationships, and see if the love that we show our brothers and sisters is sacrificial and unconditional, the same kind of love that we have received abundantly from our God. We are reminded that we did not choose Christ, he chose us, and gave us gifts we never deserved. Our thanksgiving for that great grace must be total devotion to him.

    Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

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  • Thursday of the Fifth Week in Easter

    Thursday of the Fifth Week in Easter

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading this morning, Saint Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, tells us about a very important, defining moment for the early Church. In these days, the Apostles were really trying to figure out how the Church was supposed to work, because there wasn’t a rule book or a roadmap on how to make a Church happen. But Jesus did tell them to make disciples of all the nations, and that’s what’s at stake in today’s reading. The Gentile nations didn’t observe all the laws that the Jews did, that wasn’t their culture or custom. And so admitting non-Jews to the Church meant deciding whether they had to be circumcised, and whether they had to observe all the other laws of the Old Testament, as they had.

    So they held this little meeting that we hear about in our first reading today. During that meeting, the Apostles were swayed by the great stories of Paul and Barnabas, hearing all the wondrous deeds that God was doing among them. So they realized that the Holy Spirit could call anyone God wanted to be disciples, and they decided that they shouldn’t get in the way. So they decide to impose very little upon the non-Jews, just requiring them to avoid idol worship and unlawful marriage.

    And then what we sang in the responsorial psalm, “Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations” was a prophecy that came to pass. Think about it: because the disciples agreed to allow the Gentiles to come to Christianity in their own way, the spread of the Gospel was put into warp speed. If it weren’t for this little meeting, we very well might not be Christians today. Praise God for the movement of the Spirit!

    And now, friends, the command comes to us: we have to be the ones to proclaim God’s deeds to everyone, and not to marginalize other people. God’s will is not fulfilled until every heart has the opportunity to respond to his love. So we who have been learning about Jesus, now need to help others to know Jesus. When we learn about Jesus, when we learn about our faith, it’s not just so that we know some good facts and can recite them. We have to go beyond what we know in our head and bring it to our heart, so that we can love other people the way he has loved us. Remember, the only Jesus people see today might be Jesus in you or Jesus in me. We have to encourage others to be disciples just by the way we live when we are disciples. If we are loving, if we are joyful, then others can see that in us and want to be like that too. That’s the easiest way to preach the Gospel, and in many ways, the most effective way to preach the Gospel. It’s something all of us can do. When others experience God’s love in us, they will be attracted to come to know about God too.

    That’s how it happened in the early Church. That’s why Paul and the others were so successful. That’s why the Gentiles couldn’t get enough of the faith. We can reignite that fire in our world today if we bring what we have learned in our school classrooms, and take it from our head to our heart.

    Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

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  • The Fourth Sunday in Easter

    The Fourth Sunday in Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today’s brief Gospel reading begins with the wonderful line, “My sheep hear my voice.” Reflecting on that line caused me to wonder: how are the sheep to hear the shepherd in this day and age? There are so many things that vie for our attention, so many circumstances that distract us from everything important, that it would be easy to miss the call of the shepherd altogether.

    So that’s what I want to preach on today: What will it take for us sheep to hear our Master’s voice? We who are so nervous about any kind of silence that we cannot enter a room without the television on as at least background noise. We who cannot go anywhere without our cell phones and/or ear buds implanted firmly in our ears? We who cannot bear to enter into prayer without speaking all kinds of words and telling God how we want to live our lives? In a previous parish, we were praying before our worship commission meeting. The chairperson of the commission was leading prayer, and part of that prayer called for some silent reflection. I could see the uneasiness on his face, and pretty quickly, he moved on from the prayer. That’s not uncommon: we often find silence awkward. If even our prayer and worship are cluttered with all kinds of noise, how are we to hear the voice of our Shepherd who longs to gather us in and lead us to the Promise? Yet Jesus makes it clear today that entering into the silence and listening for his voice is the only way we can survive spiritually, the only way we can come at last to eternal life.

    Here’s a deeper question: how are we to hear the Shepherd’s voice if there are no shepherds to make it known? Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. And I want to talk about all vocations today, but in a special way, I want to talk about vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Because these vocations, and especially the priesthood, are called upon to be the voice of Christ in today’s world. This is a special, and wonderful challenge, and I know there are young people in this community that are being called to it. We hear in today’s Liturgy of the Word that this task is not always easy because it is not universally accepted, as Paul and Barnabas found out. But it is a task that brings multitudes of every nation, race, people and tongue to the great heavenly worship that is what they have been created for.

    We know that every person has a vocation. Every person is called on by God to do something specific with their life that will bring not only them, but also others around them, to salvation. Parents help to bring their children to salvation by raising them in the faith. Teachers help bring students to salvation by educating them and helping them to develop their God-given talents. Business people bring others to salvation by living lives of integrity and witness to their faith by conducting business fairly and with justice and concern for the needy. The list goes on. Every vocation, every authentic vocation, calls the disciple to do what God created them for, and helps God to bring salvation to the whole world.

    On this Mother’s Day, we can see in our Blessed Mother, the model of living our vocation. Through her fiat, she embraced the Father’s will for her, and put her life in his service. Just this past week, we saw a Cardinal priest from our own metropolitan area become the successor to Saint Peter, our new pope. I don’t think that he would have seen that coming when he was studying for the priesthood in the Augustinian order, and I don’t know if any of us foresaw ever having an American pope, but his vocation called him to that service, and he said yes, his own fiat to God’s will.

    What about you? Are you doing what God wants you to do with your life? Maybe your answer won’t require a radical change; it certainly won’t require you to become the pope! Maybe it just means you renew your commitment to your family, your work, your life as a disciple. But if you’re a young person out there and have only been thinking about what’s going to make you successful and bring in lots of money, maybe God is today asking you to stop thinking only of yourself and put your life’s work at the service of the Gospel. Maybe you’ll be called on to be a teacher, or a police officer, or a health care professional. And maybe, just maybe, God is calling you to enter the priesthood or religious life. On this day of prayer for vocations, I’m just asking you to pray that God would make his plans for your life clear to you, and that you would promise God to do what he asks of you. I can tell you first hand that nothing, absolutely nothing, will make you happier.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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  • Friday of the Third Week in Easter

    Friday of the Third Week in Easter

    Today’s readings

    Saul and Ananias are proof that God has an interesting sense of humor. I think we saw a little bit of that out of Rome yesterday as well. How many of us grew up hearing “there will never be an American pope?” And God said, “Oh yeah? Hold my miter!”

    This is proof that God’s ways are not our ways. How is it that God would pick for one of his chief Apostles a man who imprisoned and murdered the followers of the Christian Way? That had to surprise even, and perhaps especially Saul, whose life was turned completely upside-down. Poor Ananias had to be quaking in his boots to carry out this command of the Lord. But thankfully both Paul and Ananias were obedient to the Lord’s command, and we are the ones who have benefited from that. Not only has the Word of God been passed on through their faithfulness, but we see in their lives that obedience to God’s will, while it may not always make sense, is the way that true disciples live.

    And true discipleship is beginning to be an issue in the Bread of Life Discourse from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. We’ve been hearing it all week. Jesus has fed the five thousand, and they continue to clamor after him. Only he’s not giving them bread and fish the last few days. Now he’s challenging them to eat his Flesh and drink his Blood – this is Saint John’s version of the giving of the Eucharist. They aren’t able to understand what that means and they’re not going to stick around and hear much more of it – many of them are getting ready to leave.

    But God’s ways are infinitely richer than our little intelligence and inadequate imagination and faltering faith. God wants so much more for us than we’re ready to ask for – he wants to give us his very self to fill us up and make us whole and bring us to heaven. The question is, will we let him obscure our vision so that we can see clearly (as he did for Saint Paul), or put us in the firing line so that we can really live (as he did for Ananias), or die for us so that we can live with him, as he did for his disciples and for us? Are we ready to have our lives turned upside-down so that we can get back on track?

    Because that’s the only way we’re really going to live.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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  • Thursday of the Third Week in Easter

    Thursday of the Third Week in Easter

    Today’s readings

    In the spiritual realm, there aren’t coincidences. God puts us where we need to be, when we need to be there. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. We see that played out in today’s first reading. Here, an angel directs the Apostle Saint Philip to be on a road at the very same time as the Ethiopian eunuch passed by, reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah that referred to Jesus. Seizing the moment, Philip proclaims Jesus to him in a way that was powerful enough and moving enough that, on seeing some water as they continued on the journey, the eunuch begged to be baptized.

    The same is true for those who were fortunate enough to hear Jesus proclaim the Bread of Life discourse that we’ve been reading in our Gospel readings these past days. Having been fed by a few loaves and fishes when they were physically hungry, they now come to find Jesus who longs to fill them up not just physically but also, and more importantly, spiritually. Their hunger put them in the right place at the right time.

    What I think is important for us to get today is that we are always in the right place at the right time, spiritually speaking. Wherever we find ourselves is the place that we are directed by the Holy Spirit to find God. Wherever we are right now is the place where the Holy Spirit wants us to find God and to proclaim God. That might be in the midst of peace, or chaos, or any situation. We never know how God may feed us in those situations. Because we never know when there will be someone like an Ethiopian eunuch there, aching to be filled with Christ’s presence and called to a new life.

    It is no coincidence that we are where we are, when we are. The Spirit always calls on us to find our God and proclaim him as Lord in every moment and every situation.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

    Alleluia!

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  • Tuesday in the Third Week of Easter (Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Tuesday in the Third Week of Easter (Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Today’s readings

    Names are important. They help us to know who someone is, and gives us a way to call on them. Very often names have meaning, saying something about the person or her or his family, or what they do.

    In the Scriptures, we sometimes see that God changes someone’s name when he has a special ministry or task for them to do. That was true of Abram way back in the book of Genesis. He and his wife Sarah were old, and they never had any children, but God provided him with a son, and promised that he would be the father of many nations, and have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. He changed his name to Abraham, and made a covenant with him that he would be Abraham’s God, and be with him always.

    In the Gospels, Simon met Jesus after an unsuccessful fishing expedition. He called him to become a fisher of men, bringing in souls for the kingdom of God. He changed his name from Simon to Peter. The root word of Peter means “rock” and he said that Peter would be the rock on which Jesus would build his Church.

    Today, in our first reading, we have one of our first glimpses at Saul. In this episode, Saul isn’t such a great guy. Here, the deacon Saint Stephen is talking to the people and he lays it on the line for them. He tells them that they sinfully rejected the Lord Jesus and were responsible for his death. He said they were just like their ancestors who murdered the prophets that God had sent to proclaim his message of salvation and repentance. The people heard that and were enraged and decided to put Stephen to death by stoning. And it’s Saul, one of the leading members of the Jewish religion, zealous for God, who consents to this stoning and keeps watch over the belongings of the men who were doing it.

    But down the road a bit, God has plans for Saul. He’s going to call him to be not just a believer in Jesus, but an apostle, an apostle to the Gentiles. It’s going to be his task to bring the message to people who were not Jews. And to inaugurate his new mission, his name will be changed from Saul to Paul, a name which means “small” or “humble,” perhaps showing how he was changed from an arrogant persecutor of Christians, to being a servant of God.

    We’re going to see that play out in the coming days as the Cardinals of the Church come together in Rome beginning tomorrow to pick the next pope, the successor of Pope Francis. When a Cardinal receives the required majority, he is asked if he will accept the role. When he says that he will, he is asked by what name he wishes to be known in his new ministry as pope.

    And as you all continue your preparation for Confirmation, you too will have the opportunity to pick a new Christian name. That will symbolize the fact that, having received the Holy Spirit, you now have a new ministry in the world, a task that leads to your life’s vocation.

    But there are other important names, too. There is the name of “Christian” which we share, indicating that we are followers of Jesus Christ. But perhaps the most important name that we have is “Child of God” acknowledging our dependence on our loving God who will do anything for us to come to know him more deeply.

    Jesus himself was known by many names: “Jesus,” “Christ” (or Anointed One), “Messiah,” and in today’s Gospel reading “Bread of Life.” That name indicates that he came to feed us – not just physically – but our spirits most of all. It’s a name that we can depend on knowing that those who follow him will never hunger or thirst for anything worthwhile, but will always have strength in him.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

    Alleluia!

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  • The Third Sunday in Easter

    The Third Sunday in Easter

    Today’s readings

    What Satan wants is a community of disciples so mired in their sins, that they do nothing to foster the Kingdom of God and live the Gospel. Bookmark that thought, because I’ll come back to it in a bit.

    I love today’s Gospel because it features one of my favorite characters, Saint Peter. Saint Peter has been inspirational to me because, despite being called to do great things for God, he does a lot of messing up and often has to pick himself up and start all over again. Today’s Gospel reading has him trying to figure things out. He’s very recently been through the arrest and execution of his Lord, only to find out that he is risen, and has appeared to various disciples, including Peter himself. I think today’s story has him trying to make sense of it all and figure out where to go from here. But he’s trying to figure it out in the midst of having fallen again, since he denied even knowing the Lord three times on the night of Holy Thursday.

    So, in an effort to figure things out, he goes back to what he knows best, which is to say he goes fishing. And he takes some of the others with him. And, as is very typical of Peter’s fishing expeditions recorded in the Gospels, he catches nothing even though he’s been hard at it all night long. It’s not until the Lord is with them again and redirects their efforts, that they eventually pull in an incredibly large catch of fish. Jesus then invites them to dine with him, using one of my favorite lines in all of Sacred Scripture, “Come, have breakfast.”

    Then we have this very interesting, and in some ways tense, conversation between Jesus and Peter. Jesus takes him off to the side after breakfast, and just as he redirected Peter’s efforts while they were fishing earlier, now he redirects Peter’s efforts in his life. There are a couple of points of background that we need to keep in mind. First, just as Peter three times denied his Lord on the night of Holy Thursday, so now Jesus gives him three opportunities to profess his love and get it right.

    Second, the Greek language has a few different words that we translate “love.” Two of them are in play in this conversation. The first is agapeo, which is the highest form of love. It’s a love that always wills the best for the other person, a love that is self-sacrificing and enduring. It’s the love that God has for us. The other kind of love that is used here is phileo, a bit lower form of love that is something like a strong affection for someone else. Where agapeo is an act of the will, phileo is more of a feeling. Many scholars don’t see this as an appreciable difference and say John in his Gospel just uses two different words to mean the same thing. But I think John is careful with language, and the two uses mean something, as we will see.

    So the conversation begins, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” That’s literally a loaded question, so let’s look at it. First of all, Jesus calls Peter “Simon, son of John.” But Jesus is the one who changed his name from Simon to Peter. So this seems to be a bit of a rebuke: Okay, Peter, if you’re just going to revert to your former self and pretend you haven’t known me the last three years, then I’ll just use your old name. I’m sure Peter didn’t miss the inference. Then at the end, “do you love me more than these?” Scholars have a lot of opinions on what “these” are: Do you love me more than you love these other guys? Do you love me more than these other guys love me? Do you love me more than this fishing equipment, the tools of your former life? It doesn’t matter what he meant by “these,” the effect is the same: Peter is called to a higher love, which is evidenced in the word Jesus uses for love, which is agapeo. Peter responds, acknowledging Jesus’ omniscience, “Lord you know that I love you.” But he uses phileo, perhaps acknowledging that he is not capable of the agapeo kind of love. And he’s probably right about that, since sin does diminish our capacity to love. He receives the response “Feed my lambs,” of which I’ll say more later.

    The conversation continues in the same manner, using the same forms of the word “love” in both the question and the response, and ending with the injunction, “Tend my sheep.” But the third question is interesting. Jesus asks the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” But this time Jesus uses the word phileo, as much as to say, “Okay, Peter, do you even have affection for me?” And Peter seems to get the inference, because he responds emotionally: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And he’s right: Jesus does know. But Jesus needed Peter to know it too. Jesus, in his Divine Mercy, has healed Peter, forgiven his sins, and helped him to remember his mission, redirecting his efforts to “Feed my sheep.”

    Because if Jesus hadn’t done this, Satan would have won. He would have had that community of disciples so mired in their sins, that they do nothing to foster the Kingdom of God and live the Gospel. And then we wouldn’t be here today, would we?

    And let’s be clear about this. We, like Peter, all have a mission to accomplish. We all have some part of the Kingdom to build. We may not be the rock on which Jesus will build his Church, but we are indeed part of it. And we are all, sadly, affected by our sins. We have all denied our Lord in one way or another by what we have done and what we have failed to do. And so the Lord, in his Divine Mercy, says to us today: “Patrick, do you love me?” “Susan do you love me?” And we respond with whatever love we’re capable of. In that moment, Jesus redirects our life’s efforts too, so that we can do what we’re called to do. We, who have been purified by our Lenten penance, are now called to the life of the Resurrection, in which all God’s lambs are cared for, and all his sheep tended.

    So here’s the question to ponder and pray with this week: “Do you love me more than these?” “These” can be anything that is part and parcel of your life day in and day out. Do you love me more than your work? Do you love me more than your busyness? Do you love me more than your sins? Do you love me more than your addiction? Do you love me more than your improper relationships? Do you love me more than your poor self-image? Do you love the Lord more than “these”? Then hear our Lord say to you: “Tend my sheep.” Those sheep are whoever in your life are the ones who make up your life’s vocation, those people God has given you to love and care for. Tend them with renewed authenticity. Tend them with the same love our Lord has for you. Tend his sheep.

    Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

    Alleluia!

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