Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Easter

  • The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    Today’s readings

    The Paschal Triduum, as you may know, is a long, three-day liturgy that begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, continues with the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, and concludes tonight, here, as we celebrate the Great Easter Vigil in the Holy Night.  So right now, we are more or less three-quarters into the celebration, and we’ve covered a lot of ground.  Back on Thursday night, Father John urged us not to be mere spectators of these events, not to observe the celebration from 500 feet, but to put ourselves in the story and experience that evening with the disciples.  He spoke of the various movements in that celebration: the eating of the Passover meal at the Last Supper, the washing of the feet, the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist.  And finally, the agony in the garden that culminated in the arrest of Jesus.

    This entering into the events is well-taken, and very much part of our Catholic tradition.  Saint Ignatius of Loyola taught his brothers to enter into the scriptures that way, and to make an active meditation placing oneself in the story as primary in their prayer lives.  The Society of Jesus continues to teach and observe that spirituality.  But antecedent to that, we have as a primary part of Catholic theology, liturgy, and spirituality something called anamnesis.  One could translate anamnesis as memory, remembrance, or commemoration, but none of those is especially adequate.  Anamnesis is a remembering in the sense of entering into the event as if it were in the present, of being part of the event itself.  So yes, Deacon Greg, we were there when they crucified my Lord!

    If you’re a cook or baker, maybe you’ve had the experience of making a family recipe, and it brings to mind the loved one who taught it to you, and then you remember a story you shared when that person made it, and then that loved one is almost present to you, and you shed a tear mixed with a smile and a tug at your heart.  That’s a little bit of what anamnesis is like.  Placing oneself at the Last Supper, in the Upper Room, at the Garden of Gethsemane, and even at Golgotha and the Empty Tomb and letting those events change you as Father John suggested, that’s anamnesis.  It’s realized most perfectly in the celebration of the Eucharist, where we don’t just recall the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, but are spiritually present there with all the people of every time and place in every church in the world, on earth and in heaven; where we don’t just receive a symbol of the Lord, but actually receive his body, blood, soul and divinity in the consecrated host.  Anamnesis is powerful because it catches us up in the divine life of our Lord, who came to gather up and redeem our broken humanity.

    Father Ramon continued the anamnesis yesterday afternoon as we gathered to continue the Triduum Liturgy with the Commemoration of our Lord’s Passion.  He invited us to call to mind the ways we’ve failed the Lord, which moves us to silence in what was a somber celebration.  We then venerated a cross, which symbolized that Cross that was the Altar of Our Lord’s Sacrifice, and finally we were fed with the Eucharist, consecrated on Thursday night, which nourished us with the Lord’s strength to find true contrition and Divine Mercy.

    The anamnesis continued during this evening’s extensive Liturgy of the Word.  In it, we have heard stories of our salvation, God’s saving action in the world throughout all time.  Each of our readings has been a stop in the history of God’s love for us.  God’s plan for salvation began back at the beginning of it all.  Each of the days was hallowed with precious creation, and all of it was created and pronounced good.  Then Abraham’s faithfulness and righteousness earned us a future as bright as a zillion twinkling stars.  Later, as Moses and the Israelites stood trapped by the waters of the Red Sea, God’s providence made a way for them and cut off their pursuers, making the future safe for those God calls his own.  The prophet Isaiah calls us to seek the Lord while he may be found, not spending our lives on things that fail to satisfy, but investing in our relationship with God that gives us everything.  The prophet Ezekiel foretells the re-creation all humanity will experience as they come to know Christ and are filled with the Spirit.  Saint Paul rejoices in the baptism that has washed away the stains of sin as we have died and risen with Christ, and has brought us into a new life that leads ultimately to God’s kingdom.  And finally, our Gospel tonight tells us not to be afraid, to go forth into the Galilee of our future and expect to see the Risen Lord.  And in all of it, we are present, if we accept our Lord’s invitation to enter in.

    “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:28).  I love that last line from the last of the Old Testament readings we heard tonight.  There is a covenant, there has always been a covenant, there always will be a covenant. God created us in love, and he loves us first and best.  No matter where we may wander; no matter how far from the covenant we may stray, God still keeps it, forever and always.  We will always be his people and he will always be our God.  If I had to pick a line that sums up what we’re here for tonight, what we’ve been here for these last 40 days of Lent, that would be it.

    And that covenant is pivotal truth in this time of apathy, falsity, and general disinterest.  In all of that, the Church serves as a beacon of truth and grace and mercy as she reflects the glory of our Risen Lord.  Our world may indeed be jaded by corruption, hatred, violence, crime, war, racism, lack of concern for the lives of the unborn and the vulnerable, neglect of the poor, and so many other maladies.  But when we accept the covenant in our lives, we can be transformed, and become that beacon, and lead those disaffected by the world to the glorious light of God’s redeeming presence.

    We have journeyed with our Lord for three days now.  We ate with him, we prayed through the night with him, we saw him walk the way of the Cross and tearfully recalled his crucifixion.  We reverenced the Cross, joining our own crosses to his.  Now we’ve stayed up all night and shared the stories of our salvation, with eager excitement at the ways God has kept that covenant through the ages.  A roaring fire shattered the darkness, and a candle was lit to mingle with the lights of heaven.  Then grace had its defining moment as Christ shattered the prison-bars of death and rose triumphant from the underworld.

    It’s so important that we enter into Lent and the Triduum every year.  Not just because we need to be called back from our sinfulness to the path of life – yes, there is that, but it’s not primary here.  What is so important is that we see that the Cross is our path too.  In this life we will have trouble: our Savior promises us that.  But the Cross is what sees him overcome the world and all the suffering it brings us.  We will indeed suffer in this life, but thanks be to God, if we join ourselves to him, if we take up our own crosses with faithfulness, then we can merit a share in our Lord’s resurrection, that reality that fulfills all of the salvation history that we’ve heard in tonight’s readings.

    Our birth would have meant nothing had we not been redeemed.  If we were born only to live and die for this short span of time, how horrible that would have been.  But thanks be to God, the sin of Adam was destroyed completely by the death of Christ! The Cross has triumphed and we are made new!  Dazzling is this night for us, and full of gladness!  Because our Lord is risen, our hope of eternity has dawned, and there is no darkness which can blot it out.  We will always be God’s people, and he will always be our God!

    And so, with great joy on this most holy night, in this, the Mother of all Vigils, we rightfully celebrate the sacrament of holy Baptism.  Our Elect will shortly become members of the Body of Christ through this sacrament which washes away their sins.  Then they will be confirmed in the Holy Spirit and fed, for the first time, on the Body and Blood of our Saving Lord.  It’s a wonderful night for them, but also for us, as we renew ourselves in our baptismal promises, and receive our Lord yet again, to be strengthened in our vocation as disciples.

    We are and always will be God’s people.  God has made new his glorious covenant through the resurrection of our Christ.  And so, having come through this hour to be sanctified in this vigil, we will shortly be sent forth to help sanctify our own time and place.  Brightened by this beautiful vigil, we now become a flame to light up our darkened world.  That is our ministry in the world.  That is our call as believers.  That is our vocation as disciples.  “May this flame be found still burning – IN US! – by the Morning Star. The one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns forever and ever.  Amen.”

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Todays’ readings

    Words contain a lot of power.  We know that well, because sometimes we say the wrong things, or these days, text the wrong things, and we see how it upsets people we love.  And equally we experience the power of someone saying just the right thing at the right time and we see how that expression of love changes everything.  Words can convey a range of emotions from love to hate, and everything in between.  Words can start an argument, but the right words can diffuse a really bad situation.  We’ve seen it so many times.

    Most of us receive the gift of speech at birth, and come into it during our childhood.  We develop the gift of speech throughout our lives, perhaps learning foreign languages, or become skilled speakers.  Speech is crucial to living in society.  Speech allows us to communicate with others, to develop relationships with them, and to understand their story.  But sometimes speech is used to demean others, to break relationship and marginalize them.  We have to be careful, really careful, how we use our gift of speech.

    So it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to say anything really good.  The only way that we can say “Jesus is Lord,” as Saint Paul tells us in our second reading today, is by the Holy Spirit.  The only way that we can witness to the faith, is by the Holy Spirit.  That was true of the first Apostles.  Remember what happened to them right after the events of Good Friday.  They scattered.  They were frightened, and they fled the opportunity to talk to anyone.  When they did speak, they put their foot in their mouths.  Peter used his gift of speech to deny that he even knew the Lord, let alone witness to the Lord’s power to save.  At that time, the Apostles couldn’t even fashion words to describe what they were experiencing, so they were never going to be able to spread the Gospel.

    Until Pentecost.  Receiving the gift of the promised Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus promised to send them, they are able not only to preach the Gospel, but to preach it in a way that people who spoke different languages were all able to understand it.  The outpouring of the Holy Spirit brings everything together for them, and now, only now, are they able to say that Jesus is Lord!

    The absence of the Holy Spirit is unparalleled sadness. We can’t say – or do – anything really good without the advocacy of the Holy Spirit to inspire – literally breathe into us – the goodness for which we were created.  The sequence today proclaimed it well:

    Where you are not, we have naught,
    Nothing good in deed or thought,
    Nothing free from taint of ill.

    So when we receive the Holy Spirit, we are inspired to say and do good things too.  The Holy Spirit will inspire us to speak many kinds of words in many situations.  We can depend on the Spirit to give us the words when we don’t have them.  Saint Paul teaches that the Spirit even prays in us when we can’t pray, expressing our needs in groanings when we can’t find the words to say.  So we can depend on the Holy Spirit to inspire us to speak in many ways:

    • Words of comfort to those who are going through difficult times. Maybe just by being with them and saying nothing at all.
    • Words of challenge when we are in a situation that is veering off course, and others are urging us to go the wrong way.
    • Words of correction when someone we love is acting out or not living up to their full potential.
    • Words of reconciliation when we seek to heal a broken relationship.
    • Words of vision when we are part of a group that is seeking to do something new.
    • Words of healing when we comfort another person who has been wronged by others.
    • Words of change when we stand up for what is right in a society that wants to do what it wants to do.
    • Words of mercy when we let go of a grudge, or forgive someone who has hurt us.

    The Holy Spirit will give us the right words for all of this at the right time, and we will be able to speak them in a way that everyone who needs to understand them can understand them.  We may never be able to speak multiple languages – I sure can’t! – but in the Holy Spirit we will be able to proclaim that Jesus is Lord in our words and actions and no one will be able to miss the significance of that – everyone will understand it, no matter what language they speak.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “Do you love me more than these?”

    It’s a question that cuts to the heart.  Peter had just betrayed his friendship with Jesus and his commitment to the Gospel by denying his Lord not once, but three times: “I tell you, I do not know the man you are talking about.”  This is a poignant meeting of the two of them, the first time they have been alone together, since those words of betrayal were spoken.  And Jesus’ words to Peter in this moment are a mixture of comfort, challenge, and warning.

    So first, comfort.  And this might not looking comforting on the face of it.  Just as Peter had spoken words of betrayal three times, three times Jesus asks the question: “Peter, do you love me?”  Yes, the question cuts to the heart, but it is also comfort, because with each asking, Jesus is healing Peter from the inside out.  Healing never begins until the truth is spoken: “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.”

    Then come words of challenge: “Feed my sheep.”  When we are forgiven or graced in any way, we, like Peter, are then challenged to do something about it.  Feed my sheep, follow me, give me your life, come to know my grace in a deeper way.  Never do we receive grace only for ourselves.  Grace is for us, but we are meant to grace others once we’ve received it. 

    And then words of warning: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  When we give ourselves over to God, that necessarily means that we might have to go in a direction we might not otherwise choose.  It necessarily means that we have to give up our own plans and follow God.  We have to let him take us where we do not want to go, so that we can be the ones we were always supposed to be.

    Jesus then summarizes all of it by saying “Follow me.”  No matter what we disciples have done in our past, no matter how many times we have messed up or in what ways, there is always forgiveness if we give ourselves over to our Savior and our friend.  If we follow him, there is mercy and grace and forgiveness – and challenge.  That’s the life of discipleship.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today’s first reading always fascinates me.  Paul and Silas are in a terrible situation, not for the first or last time, I might add.  But just look at how their vibrant faith allows God to do things in and through them that are nothing short of miraculous.  First, there’s the earthquake that brings down the prison walls, although Paul and Silas did not take advantage of the situation.  Then there’s the conversion of the jailer, who was an employee of the Romans, and so would have been expected to worship their pagan gods, and he probably had up until this very moment.  You might also note the rather miraculous faith of Paul and Silas, who despite being very badly mistreated on account of Jesus, did not abandon their faith but actually grew stronger in it.  Authentic faith, lived in freedom, makes possible the salvation of many, many souls.

    Just observing the story as it unfolds in our Liturgy of the Word, it’s all so amazing, although Paul and Silas probably just viewed it as part and parcel of the life they had been called to live.  They had faith in Jesus and they probably didn’t expect anything less than the miracles they were seeing!  The baptism of the Roman guard’s household in particular, was a huge win for the kingdom of God, and Paul and Silas wouldn’t have expected anything less, it seems.

    People of great faith experience great miracles.  This is not to say that all their troubles go away or that they can wave a wand and prison walls tumble down.  Paul and Silas were still imprisoned, and continued to be hounded by the people and the government because of their faith.  But the miracles always come through the abiding presence of Christ.  These God-moments give us strength when we need it most.  It might not be a huge thing, maybe just a kind word from a stranger that comes at the right moment, a phone call from a friend that makes our day, an answer to prayer that is not what we expected but exactly what we needed.  The Psalmist today has that same great faith: “Your right hand saves me, O Lord,” he sings.  Let us pray that our hearts and eyes and minds would be open to see the miracles happening around us, and that we might live authentic faith for the sake of the kingdom of God.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    It’s interesting to me that some of the first things we ever learn about God are also some of the most foundational, most important things we learn about God.  One such notion is that God is love.  We’ve learned that, probably, when we were small children.  But theologically, it bears out and serves us well in our adult lives.  So I don’t know if you were counting or not, but between the second reading and the Gospel, the word “love” was used in one form or another eighteen times.  So it’s pretty easy to see where the Church is leading us in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  Love is a theme that runs through John’s Gospel and the letters of Saint John: John’s point is that the Gospel is summed up in that God is love, that foundational notion we learned when we were little children.

    Now we get all kinds of notions about what love is and what it’s not.  Our culture feeds us mostly false notions, unfortunately, and it gets confusing because love can mean so many different things.  I can say, “cookies are my favorite food – I love cookies!” and I think we can all agree that’s not the kind of love Jesus wants us to know about today.  When we say “love” in our language, we could mean an attraction, like puppy love, or we could mean that we like something a lot, or we might even be referring to the sexual act.  And none of that is adequate to convey the kind of love that is the hallmark of Jesus’ disciples.  All of these fall short of what Jesus wants us to know about love.

    So I think we should look at the Greek word which is being translated “love” here.  That word is agape.  Agape is the love of God, or love that comes from God.  It is outwardly expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, who came to show the depth of God’s love by dying on the Cross to pay the price for our many sins.  So that’s the kind of love that Jesus is talking about today; it’s kind of a benchmark of love that he is putting out there for our consideration.

    I love when my engaged couples pick today’s Gospel for their wedding Gospel.  Very often, they pick it because it sounds pretty and it says nice things about love, which are obviously pertinent to a wedding liturgy.  But I like it because it gives them quite the challenge!  To really see what Jesus meant by love in today’s Gospel, all we have to do is to look at Jesus.  His command is that his disciples – including us, of course – should “Love one another as I have loved you.”  And the operative phrase there is: “as I have loved you.”   Meaning, “in the same way I have loved you.”  And we can see how far Jesus took that – all the way to the cross.  He loved us enough to take our sins upon himself and nail them to the cross, dying to pay the price for those sins, and being raised from the dead to smash the power of those sins to control our eternity.  So the love that Jesus is talking about here is fundamentally sacrificial; it is a love that wills the good of the other as other.  And he says it rather plainly in one of my favorite pieces of Holy Scripture: “No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  This sacrificial quality a vital property of agape love.

    And the disciples clearly were called to that kind of sacrificial love.  They were persecuted, thrown out of the synagogues, beaten for stirring up trouble, put to death for their faith in Christ.  Like their Savior, they literally laid down their lives for their friends.  That is what disciples do.  And so, we disciples hear that same command too.   Now, of course, we may never be asked to literally die for those we love, –although many in the world do that every day – but we are absolutely called on to die in little ways: to give up our own self-interests, our own selfishness, our own comforts, our own opinions, for the sake of others.  Love always costs us something, but real love, agape love, is worth it.

    So I think we should look for opportunities this week to love sacrificially, to love in ways that maybe we don’t do every day, ways that we may never do unless we think about doing them and make a decision to do them.  Doing a chore at home, or a job at work, that’s not our job and not making a big thing of it.  What might be important here is to not even call attention to the fact that it was we who did it.  Finding an opportunity to encourage a spouse or child with a kind word that we haven’t offered in a long time.  Picking the neighbor’s trashcan up out of the street when it’s been a windy day.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the thing is we do, what matters is the love we put into it.  When we make the decision to do something little for the sake of love, the joy we find in that act can help us to make it a habit of life, so that those little things become even bigger.  That kind of loving transforms families, heals past hurts, and can even make our little corner of the world a more beautiful place.  The love of God, agape love, offered most perfectly in the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, transformed our eternity.  That same love of God, lived in each one of us, can transform our world.

    Saint Theresa of Calcutta once said, “I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’  Rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?’”  When we are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to love, there is no way we can miss the joy that Jesus wants us to have today.  “Love one another as I have loved you” might be a big challenge, but it absolutely will be the greatest joy of our lives.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Religious Education and Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Religious Education and Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading this evening, we have from the Acts of the Apostles a rather defining moment for the early Church.  Jesus hadn’t given them a precise rule book of how to make the Church develop: he simply sent them out to baptize.  But he also told 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.  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.

    Well, obviously, this little mini-council, swayed by the great stories of Paul and Barnabas, hearing all the wondrous deeds that God was doing among them, decided that the Spirit could call anyone God wanted to be disciples, and they shouldn’t get in the way.  So they decide to impose very little upon them, outside of avoiding idol worship and unlawful marriage.  

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

    And now the command comes to us: we have to be the ones to proclaim God’s deeds to everyone, and not to make distinctions that 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.  When they experience that love in us, they will be attracted to come to know about Jesus 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 Religious Education or Confirmation preparation, and take it from our head to our heart.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • The Fifth Sunday of Easter

    The Fifth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    When I was growing up, I often helped my parents trim the shrubs around the house.  We did it so that we could trim off the over-growth and make the shrubs look neater, but also to keep the shrubs healthy and growing. But when I did it, 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, but some of them looked for all the world like they were healthy and life-giving. Sometimes, to make the shrub more vibrant, some branches had to be radically cut away.

    Jesus talks about pruning in today’s Gospel.  And he does that to point to the fact that we have to give in to that kind of painful process in our own lives too/  We have to be willing to get some of us pruned away if we are to grow as healthy and fully human people.  That’s our task in this world: to become fully human, fully the people God created us to be.  So whatever gets in the way of that fullness has to be chopped off, and sometimes that’s just not pretty.  Pruning ourselves is painfully difficult, but we recognize that the things we prune away can be really destructive: relationships that entangle us in ways that are not healthy, pleasures that lead to sin, habits that are not virtuous.  However enjoyable these relationships or activities may seem to be, and however painful it may be to end them, end them we must in the name of pruning our lives to be healthier, to be more fully the people we were created to be.  There is no other way.

    There’s one other thing that our Gospel today tells us that we must do in order to become what we were meant to be, and that is to remain in Christ.  That’s what he says in the Gospel:

    Remain in me, as I remain in you.
    Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
    unless it remains on the vine,
    so neither can you unless you remain in me.

    And I’d have to say that they key here is the word “remain” because Jesus uses it four times in that short quote!  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, as the branch remains in the vine.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you can bear much fruit.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you will not wither and dry up only to be pruned off and burned as rubbish. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that whatever you truly need and want will be done, and so that you can bear much fruit and be my disciples.

    If we want to be truly happy, if we want ultimate fulfillment in life, if we really want to be the wonderful creation God made us to be, we must remain in Jesus, because, as he says, “without me you can do nothing.”  And that’s true.  How many times have we tried to better ourselves and lost sight of the goal before we even started?  How many times have we tried to stamp out a pattern of sin in our lives, only to fall victim to it time and time again?  How many times have we tried to repair relationships only to have egos, hurts or resentments get in the way?  When we forget to start our work and continue our work with God’s help, we are destined to fail.  Apart from Jesus we can do nothing.  Well does he advise us to remain in him.

    But what does “remain in me” look like?  Unfortunately, we don’t get a clear-cut blueprint for that in today’s Gospel. And the truth is, remaining in Christ is going to be different for every person.  Just like pruning shrubs isn’t a once-and-for-all activity, we are going to have to do some pruning every now and then so that we can remain in Christ.  And so we’ll have to continue to be on the lookout for parts of our lives that are not ultimately life-giving and prune them away.  But we’ll also have to look out for opportunities that will fertilize our growth.  We have to check our growth daily, we have to examine where we are remaining every day.  That might start with Sunday Mass attendance, and perhaps move on to daily Mass, praying devotions like the Rosary, reading Scripture every day, and taking time at the end of the day to see whether we’ve been part of the vine, or are in danger of breaking away from it.  We have to be willing to renew ourselves in Christ every single day of our lives.

    It’s not so easy for us to be most fully the wonderful human creation we were made to be.  But that, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our calling and our joy.  May we all support one another in our times of pruning and through our journey of remaining.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)

    The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)

    Today’s readings

    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 clarity, since we don’t regularly have contact with people who care for sheep, but I still think Jesus’ illustration is a good one, and we can certainly understand it.

    We know basically what a shepherd does, right? He cares for a flock of sheep. The shepherd has an important task: he must keep the flock healthy and safe, so that the flock’s owners will be able to get a good price for them at market. He has to find good grazing grounds so the sheep can be fed, must see that they stay together and get to market, and has to keep them safe from predators. Jesus makes a distinction between good and bad shepherds: those who actually care for the sheep as opposed to hired hands who are just collecting a paycheck. When a predator comes along, the hired hand takes off, leaving the sheep in harm’s way. But not the good shepherd: that shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

    Of course, Jesus illustrates this beautifully in his own life, and we’ve seen that in these Easter days. The sheep are God’s people, the danger is sin and death, the hired hands who didn’t really care about the sheep were the religious leaders of the time, and the Good Shepherd is Jesus, who laid down his life for God’s people in his Passion and death. That’s what good shepherds do: they give their lives for the flock.

    So here’s the take-away: we are all called to be good shepherds. We all have a flock. For a priest, that flock is his parish. For a religious brother or sister, that flock is the community in which they live. For parents, it’s their families. You get the idea. But the important detail is that the task is the same: to save their flock from all danger of the foe. The foe remains sin and death, brought about by the predator who is the devil. The vocation of us shepherds is to get the sheep of our flock to heaven, which is a participation in the vocation of Jesus the Good Shepherd.

    Which means we have to be true to our promises. For priests, that would be preaching the Gospel faithfully, not just telling people what they want to hear, but challenging them to grow in their relationship with Christ. For parents that means being faithful in their marriages and diligently bringing their children up in the practice of the faith, as they promised at their child’s baptism.

    What’s important to know is this: all of our vocations work together. If we’re all faithful to our promises, God can do his work in us and through us. For example, when parents faithfully bring their children to Mass, and priests faithfully preach the Gospel, then children can grow up with a relationship with our Lord that will see them through whatever life throws at them, and can bring them one day to their goal of eternal life.

    To all of this, there are many distractions, wolves that threaten to scatter and destroy the flock. But if we are good shepherds, then we can count on the guidance of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to bless our efforts and lead us all to life.

    This is the time when we celebrate shepherding vocations.  This past Friday, Greg Alberts, one of our current seminarians, and Tom Logue, our seminarian intern last year, were ordained to the transitional deaconate, on their way to priestly ordination next May.  In May of this year, our beloved Deacon John will be ordained to the priesthood for service to the Dominican order and to our diocese.  And during this time, we have several weddings scheduled.  All of this is joy, all of this is Christ the Good Shepherd continuing his work, leading us all to eternal life.  Let’s be sure to pray for all of them, for new vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and for faithfulness in the living of all holy vocations.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Second Week of Easter

    Friday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Our first reading today is filled with kind of intense drama.  The disciples, ever since Jesus rose from the dead and sent them the gift of the Holy Spirit, have been going around and preaching in the name of Jesus.  This is obviously attracting the attention of the religious leaders, and they’re not too happy about it.  It bothers them that the crucifixion of Jesus wasn’t the end of the story.  The news that he rose from the dead is something they are trying to cover up, and they don’t want anyone to know about it.

    So they take counsel together, and intend to deal with the disciples so that they will stop preaching.  But there’s a little interesting plot twist.  The official Gamaliel is trying to keep a balance between wanting to silence the disciples and not wanting to anger the people who are hearing them.  So he convinces the other officials to let the whole thing play out.  He reasons that if this isn’t of God, which he obviously things is the case, well, then, it will all die out on its own.  But if it is of God, he cautions the others that they don’t want to get in the way of that.  Now Gamaliel is obviously trying to brush the disciples off and cover his bets in case this doesn’t go well, but in doing that, he’s actually being king of prophetic.  We know that the preaching of the disciples was certainly something that came from God, and we know how it worked out.  After all, we’re here talking about their preaching today.

    But the courage of the apostles is inspiring, isn’t it?  They have been warned twice, and put in prison, and now beaten, and still we are told that “all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.”  Thank God for that!  We are grateful for their new-found courage today, or we wouldn’t be here worshipping right now.

    We are called to display that same courage and to speak non-stop of our Lord Jesus Christ in all that we say and do.  The psalmist today reminds us that the only thing worth seeking is to dwell in the house of the Lord, and the only way to do that is to follow our Risen Lord.  So when you’re making a decision about what you’re going to say to someone who may be annoying you, or what you’re going to do in a difficult situation, stop and think about how you can proclaim the Christ, Jesus, in what you say and do.  God built a Church and is filling heaven because of the preaching of the disciples.  He can do a lot with our own proclaiming the Word in what we say and do, too.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

  • Second Sunday of Easter (Sunday of Divine Mercy)

    Second Sunday of Easter (Sunday of Divine Mercy)

    Today’s readings

    I always like to say that today, this octave day of Easter Sunday, this Sunday of Divine Mercy, is the feast day for those of us who sometimes question things, and the apostle, Saint Thomas, is would then be our patron saint.  And so today we can give Thomas a hard time for his unbelief, and we can disparage all those other “doubting Thomases” in our lives, or, maybe, we can just come to the Lord in our humility and say “My Lord and my God!”  Today, we celebrate with all the joy of Easter Day that God’s Divine Mercy reaches us in our doubt and uncertainty and calls us to belief.

    Now, I’m sure we can all think of at least one time when we were reluctant to believe something, or had our faith tested, only to have Jesus stand before us and say, “Peace be with you.”  I remember the time that it became apparent to me that the Lord was calling me to go to seminary after so many years being out of school.  I had a long list of reasons why that wouldn’t work, why it couldn’t be done at this stage of my life, why anyone would be a better choice than me.  And I never got a direct answer to any of that.  Never.  In some ways, all I got was Jesus standing in the midst of my questioning and saying to me “Peace be with you.”  And six months later I was in seminary.  Letting Jesus fill you with peace can be life-changing.

    I am going to guess that you had that same kind of experience at some point in your life, at some time.  If not, you will.  Maybe it was in college when you started really questioning your faith and felt like everything anyone had ever told you was a lie.  Or maybe it was the time you were called to do something at Church, or even take a turn in your career, and couldn’t possibly believe that you were qualified to do that.  Maybe it was the time it suddenly dawned on you that you were a parent, and had no idea how you could ever raise a child.  It could even have been the time when you completely changed your career – as I did – and weren’t totally sure that was God’s will for you, or how it would all work out.  Some time in our life, we have to take a leap of faith, or if we don’t, we will spend our forever wondering “what if.”

    Sure: like Saint Thomas, we want evidence, we want hard facts, a good hard look at the big picture, something that will confirm our decision before we’re ready to jump in.  We want to “see the mark of the nails in his hands and put [our] fingers into the nail-marks and put [our] hands into his side.”  But that’s not faith.  Some people say that seeing is believing, but faith tells us that believing is seeing.  “Blessed are they,” Jesus says, “who have not seen but still believe.”  We sometimes first have to make an act of faith, a leap of faith if you will, before we can really see what God is doing in our lives.  And that’s the hard part; that’s the part that, like Thomas, we are reluctant to do.

    Jesus makes three invitations to us today.  The first is to believe.  Believe with all your heart and mind and soul.  Believe first, and leave the seeing to later.  Trust that God is with you, walking with you, guiding you, willing the best for you.  This is Divine Mercy Sunday, so we are called to trust in our merciful God who pours out his love on us each day.   Be ready to make that leap of faith.  What God has in store for us is so much better than our puny plans for our lives.  We have to know that if God calls us to do something, he will give us what we need to do it.  Be blessed by not seeing but still believing.

    The second invitation is to touch.  “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says to Thomas, “and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  He makes that same invitation to us every time we walk up to receive Holy Communion.  What a gift it is to be able to share in Christ’s wounds, to be bound up in his Passion, to live the resurrection and to be nourished by his very body and blood.  Just like Thomas, we’re invited to touch so that we too might believe.

    The third invitation is to live a new day.  The Gospel tells us that Jesus first came to the Apostles on the evening of the “first day of the week.”  That detail isn’t there so that we know what day it is or can mark our calendars.  In the Gospel, the “first day of the week” refers to the new day that Jesus is bringing about – a new day of faith, a new day of trust in God’s Divine Mercy, a new day of being caught up in God’s life.  We are invited to that new day every time we gather for worship.

    We will have doubts, periodically and sometimes persistently.  But God does not abandon us in our doubt.  Just like Thomas, he comes to us in the midst of our uncertainty and says to us: “Do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  “Peace be with you.”

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

    Jesus, I trust in you.