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  • The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

    The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

    Today’s readings

    There’s a little Christian Science church in the town where I grew up.  They have since moved, but they used to be on Main Street, just north of the downtown area.  Their sign used to list their upcoming sermon topic, followed by the line “All are welcome.”  Imagine my surprise when one day, the topic was going to be eternal punishment.  So the sign read: “Eternal Punishment.  All are welcome.”  I had to drive around the block to make sure I read that right!

    Usually though, the topics weren’t very specific.  So one time the topic was going to be “God.”  I thought that will either be the world’s longest sermon, or it won’t really come all that close to talking about God.  The problem with God as a topic is that you’re painting with a pretty wide brush: anything you say can be right, but it also might not even really finish the job, and either way it can lead you into heresy!

    I feel like today’s topic of the Most Holy Trinity has me faced with that same dilemma.  It takes a lot longer than I’m able to talk to really get that topic covered, and still we probably won’t understand it very well.  Our limited vocabulary just gets in the way.  But let’s see how far we can get.

    There was a time when I got invited to speak to a religious education class about God.  I had the teacher ask them the week before to write down their questions about God so that I could help them with the things they really wondered about.  One of the questions, at first glance, seemed kind of a halfhearted effort to get an assignment done, until I really thought about it.  That question was, “What is God like?” and I think that young person was really onto something.

    In the end, we can say a whole lot of things about what God is like, but again our vocabulary gets in the way.  We can say God is like goodness, and that would be right.  But not in the way we think of things or even people as good.  Because our view of goodness has to do with how useful it is, and God’s goodness goes way beyond that.  We can say that God is like beauty, and that too would be right.  But not in the way that the world views beauty, which is limited and selfish and sometimes objectifying.  God’s beauty goes far beyond what we could ever imagine.

    But there is something we can say about what God is like that gets us a little closer to understanding the Most Holy Trinity, at least insofar as we can understand that holy mystery.  When I preach to the children in our school, I often tell them there is one thing that they have to know about God, and if they know it, they know a lot about what God is like.  And that one thing is that God loves you.  I tell them that’s so important that if they’re ever stumped on a religion test, they can write “God loves me” and it will be worth at least half credit.  The teachers just love it when I say that!

    But even that is hard to understand, because God, who is love itself, his love goes beyond anything we can conceive of.  His love looks like what happened on that cross.  His love embraces us even in our ugliest moments.  His love is powerful enough to burn away all of our flaws and make us new creations in his image.  His love really, truly keeps the world in motion.

    And our readings today tell us that love is a lot of what God is like.  The greeting I gave you at the beginning of Mass comes to us from the end of today’s second reading: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”  In that greeting, Saint Paul mentions every member of the Holy Trinity, “God” referring to God the Father.  And he describes that Trinity as a loving communion that fills us with grace.  That’s echoed in our Gospel reading, in which the very famous line from John 3:16 tells us what God is about, and what the Gospel teaches about God: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  God’s love wants us all to come to eternal life, and so he sent his only begotten Son to come and take the punishment for our sins, and in the process breaking the power of sin and death to control our eternity.  Memorize that line, friends.

    Love is an apt description of the Holy Trinity, even for Saint Thomas Aquinas who famously described the Trinity in that way.  He taught that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit is that love between the Father and the Son.  For Aquinas, the Trinity is a loving relationship, and I think that’s helpful to us who exist in relationships.

    Sometimes, we need God to be Father: correcting us, wanting the best for us, calling us to be who he meant us to be.  If we let him, the Father’s love burns away all the parts of us that are not praiseworthy and sets us ablaze to become new in his image.  Sometimes, though, we need God to be Son: a brother who picks us up when we have fallen far down, one who walks with us in the darkness of whatever is going on with us, one who leads us to the place where God’s love can encompass us.  And sometimes we need the Holy Spirit, whose love literally inspires us to be who we were meant to be, to live as new creations, and to desire nothing outside of God’s love.  We need God to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit in different ways at different times.  God doesn’t change: he’s always Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  But we change, needing him in different ways all through our life.

    So to answer that student’s question, “What is God like?” is a challenge.  Because God looks different to us at different times in our lives.  It’s only after this life has brought us to the kingdom when we’ll really know what God is like, as we see him face to face.  So I think I’ll leave you with that question, brothers and sisters.  What is God like?  I imagine it depends on what’s going on in your life, what your prayer has been like, and what your hopes and dreams are.  But it’s a question we should often pause to consider.  So pray about it this week.  What is God like?

  • Friday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Jesus is always seeking to make things new.  When he came into the world, he didn’t come into the world to keep things the way they were.  He intended to cast out sin and its effects on people, and to call people back to true and authentic worship, and a real relationship with God who made us and loves us.

    So, in today’s Gospel, he comes to the Temple in Jerusalem.  And at the Temple, it was customary to have people there selling animals to be used for the sacrifice which was required of them, and to have money changers there to exchange the Roman coins for coins that could be used to pay the Temple tax.  All of this was legitimate business.  But the problem is, the legitimate business had become more important than really worshipping God.  It had become more important than taking care of those in need.  It became more important than really praying, or really living the faith.

    So Jesus overturns the tables and chases the business people out of the Temple because he saw that the Temple worship didn’t bear fruit any more, kind of like the fig tree in the earlier part of the Gospel story that didn’t bear any fruit.  Yes, it’s true figs weren’t in season.  Yes, it’s true the buying and selling in the temple area was legitimate.  But none of that matters.  The only thing that matters is bearing fruit for the Kingdom of God and becoming a people who really pray and really live their faith.  The time had come for change.

    I think that’s true of us too.  We tend to like the things we’ve become used to, or even if we don’t like them, we are comfortable with them because change makes us nervous.  We may not like it people are gossiping about someone, but we go along with it because we don’t want to make waves.  We may even feel uncomfortable when people say something hurtful or racist about another group of people, or make an inappropriate joke, but we don’t have the courage to stand up for what we believe.  And Jesus wants to turn over those tables in our lives so that we don’t become withered up trees that bear no fruit. 

    Let’s let Jesus turn over the tables in our lives today.

  • Tuesday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In this section of the Gospel, Jesus is taking the time to set things right about what it means to be rich and famous. If yesterday had not been the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, we would have had the Gospel reading about the rich young man. As you might remember about that passage, Jesus looked at the young man and loved him, and then challenged him to give up his possessions and follow him. But the young man went away sad, for he had many possessions. To this, Peter replies in today’s Gospel, “We have given up everything and followed you.” I don’t know if this is boasting, or frustration, or some mix of the two. But Jesus responds to his assertion by telling him that now, in the present age, those who give up everything will receive so much more.

    I don’t think Jesus was trying to put forth a prosperity gospel here, though. I really don’t think he was saying they’d be rich and famous in the present age. What he was saying is that they would be rich in what matters to God, rich in the Holy Spirit, rich in love and mercy. And it’s that last line that brings it all into focus: “many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.” By being the least, giving up everything, they will be first in the Kingdom of God, which was and is here among God’s people.

    So for all of us, rich young men, or overzealous disciples, or just plain folks who want to inherit eternal life, Jesus looks at us and loves us, and calls us to give up everything that’s in the way, so that we can be the last who will be first. What is it that we have to let go of today so that we can be first in the Kingdom of God?

  • Mary, Mother of the Church / Memorial Day

    Mary, Mother of the Church / Memorial Day

    Today’s readings

    This morning’s celebration has us gathering to celebrate two important moments.  The first is the Church’s celebration of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, and the second, of course, is our nation’s remembrance of Memorial Day.

    The Church celebrates the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, each year on the day after Pentecost.  It’s a relatively new feast for us, because Pope Francis extended this feast to the Universal Church in 2018.  Before that, it had a long history in Poland, and it was Saint John Paul II who commissioned a mosaic of Mary, Mother of the Church, at Saint Peter’s Basilica.

    The image of Mary, Mother of the Church, has its origins in the Gospels, and in Sacred Tradition.  At the foot of the Cross, Jesus commended Saint John to Mary as his mother, and her to Saint John as her son.  The Church has seen this as Mary welcoming all members of the Church in the person of Saint John, and relating to them as mother.  This gives strength to the Tradition that since Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the head of the Body, so she is also the mother of the members of that same Body.

    Mary also prayed with the disciples in the Upper Room for the coming of the Holy Spirit, and as the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, she became the mother of the emerging Church.

    Memorial Day originally began in our country as an occasion to remember and decorate the graves of the soldiers who died in the Civil War.  Later it became a holiday to commemorate all those who had died in war in the service of our country.  So today we remember those men and women who have given their lives for peace, justice, righteousness, and freedom.  These have been people who have given everything, have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.  It’s important that we take time to reflect on the freedom we have received from their sacrifice, because I think we often forget it or at least take it for granted.  They lived lives of real freedom, and so must we in our own way.  Real freedom is expressed in service, in our making the world, or at least our corner of it, a better place.  Real freedom is living in such a way that we become the person God created us to be.

    Today we pray for those courageous men and women who have made that ultimate sacrifice to keep the world safe, and free.  These are the ones who have been people of faith and integrity and are true heroes that God has given us. These are the ones who have laid down their lives for what is right.  If we would honor them on this Memorial Day, we should believe as they have believed, we should live as they have lived, and we should rejoice that their memory points us to our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is our hope of eternal life.

    Today’s Gospel has Jesus showing us the way for all of this.  Giving his own mother to be our mother, the Mother of the Church, he shows that the members of the Church must lay down their lives if the Church is to make an impact in the world.  Those who gave their lives in the service of our country did that in their way, and we are called to do that in our way too.

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Today’s readings

    As the pastor of Saint Mary’s, I am grateful to Bishop Hicks for his leadership on this important issue of the protection of children and vulnerable adults.  I think a lot of us are almost weary of hearing about this, but as Bishop points out, an institutional sin like this can’t ever be forgotten until all of the damage, including the sadness in people’s lives, has been healed.  And keeping this issue at the forefront of our attention helps us to keep the victims in our prayers and keep us vigilant about providing an environment where this never happens again.

    Also as pastor here, I sincerely apologize to anyone who has ever been harmed by the actions of a priest of this diocese, and in particular of this parish.  Please know that I pray for you in particular and sincerely ask for God’s healing in your lives.

    I am grateful for the Charter and for the processes that, over the last few decades, have helped us to make strides in creating a safe environment for children and vulnerable adults, and I pledge as pastor to be certain that these policies and best practices are followed here at Saint Mary’s so that all of our ministries are safe places for everyone who calls Saint Mary’s their spiritual home.  Please check our parish website for more information, including all of Bishop’s videos and his official statement.

    On this feast of Pentecost, I think it is important for us to know and see that the Holy Spirit continues to renew and purify the Church.  The Church not only needs to atone for its institutional sin, but it needs to be a beacon that encourages all of the institutions that involve children and vulnerable adults to do better.  Our world needs the Holy Spirit and the light given to us in the Church now more than ever.

    On this day when there is more than a little sadness, we need to embrace the joy of the Spirit so that we can brighten a darkened world.  And we see that joy in our first reading today.  The first line, “Each one heard them speaking in his own language” has always amazed me.  As I pictured it, I could just see people standing there in Jerusalem, and all at once these men start preaching and everyone hears them in his or her own language.  It must have been an amazing experience.  Certainly the message had to be powerful, but for each to hear it in his or her own native tongue had to boost the power of the experience for each of them.  This was the power of the Holy Spirit on display for all the world to see.

    That powerful experience helped to ignite the fire that was the early Church.  If not for this amazing experience, we wouldn’t be here today: there would be no Church.  But because Jesus returned to the Father and they sent forth the Spirit, those early apostles preached the Word to everyone and the Church was fostered that brings us the faith in our own day.  This is why Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Church.

    What I think is important to note about that experience is that the gift of the Holy Spirit enabled the Church to speak the Gospel to everyone.  Not just those who spoke Hebrew, or even Greek or Latin.  That clearly was the work of the Holy Spirit.  That miracle continues today too: thanks be to God, the Gospel is preached all over the world in many, many languages every single day.  And souls continue to be won for the Lord.  But for that Gospel to be believed, for it to be adopted and lived, it needs to be backed up by the way that we live.  Many people may miss the words of our preaching, but they can’t fail to notice our living, our actions – one way or the other.  As Saint Francis once said, “Preach the Gospel at all times.  When necessary, use words.”

    Sometimes words fail us.  We might not know the right thing to say in any situation, but in those moments, our actions can preach much louder than our speaking.  We often experience that when someone close to us has lost a loved one, or is grieving in some way.  Words aren’t going to make that all better, but our presence and being there for them says much more than our words could ever say.  That presence may be just the right thing to say at that time.

    I think all of this pertains to the news Bishop Hicks spoke of today.  We have to be a Church that is so on fire for the Gospel  that we speak in our words and actions in ways that make our Church a safe place.  We have to be there for victims, helping them to heal.  We have to say something when we see something that isn’t right.  We have to educate ourselves so that we know what to look for.  And we have to commit to doing these things so that the abuse of children and vulnerable adults never happens again.  If the Gospel is to mean anything in the world today, we have to be people who inconvenience ourselves to love others before we do anything else, or our preaching will continue to ring hollow.

    And we have no better example for this than our Lord Jesus Christ, who took on the worst in us because he saw the best in us.  He it is who took our sins – our sins – to the cross, and rose to everlasting glory that we might gain that same glory.  He it is who returned to the Father and with him sent their Holy Spirit upon the earth that we, the Church, might be purified and renewed.

    This broken world needs to hear the preaching in our actions, in the way we treat every person, so that this world can become the Kingdom of God.  We may well be the only time someone ever sees Jesus; may the preaching of our lives be so strong that they can’t fail to see Jesus in us.

    Come Holy Spirit! Renew the face of the earth! Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

    Note: You can find all of the information about our response to the Attorney General’s report here.

  • Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    A lack of unity will kill us all. Jesus knew this, and so did St. Paul. In fact, St. Paul used a lack of unity among the Jews to save his own life. He knew that the Pharisees, of which he was one, believed in the resurrection of the dead, and angels and spirit. He knew that the Sadducees did not (which, as one of my seminary professors used to say, is why they are sad, you see…). When Paul appealed to the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection of the dead, he got them on their side, and the skirmish that ensued caused the commander to whisk Paul to safety. He was not to die this day; the Lord had other plans for him.

    As Jesus gets ready for his own death in the gospel reading today, he prays for the unity of the first disciples. He knew that they would be challenged greatly by the world, because they were no longer of the world. They belonged to God now, and that would be the source of their unity. That unity would keep them together and ensure that a reasoned, unified message would be proclaimed throughout the world and throughout the ages. That was the only way the gospel could be proclaimed to every creature on earth.

    In our day, unity is just as critical as it ever was. We still believe in ONE holy, catholic and apostolic church. We believe that Jesus came to found just ONE church, and that the fragmentations that exist among us are the result of sinfulness and broken humanity. We need to be people who witness to the joy of our faith so that we can bind up all that disunity and become once again one people, healed of all divisions. We are called to be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one, so that we can witness to all the world the saving power of our one, almighty God.

    Because Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Graduation Mass

    Graduation Mass

    Sometimes when we come to major moments in our lives, there is this crazy though that comes to us – what do I do now?  It’s kind of like, I’ve looked forward to this moment for so long, even though I know the next step, I don’t know how to be me in that next step. 

    The good news is, right in the middle of tonight’s Gospel reading, there is one word that sums it up for Christian disciples.  This is the word that marks what we’re supposed to do; it wraps up all the instructions Jesus gave to his Apostles, and to all of us who are his disciples.  It tells us who we should be and what we should do.  This one word is especially appropriate for you graduates today, as you get ready to begin the next phase of your life in a new school.  That word is: GO!

    We hear that word a lot.  Once we have learned the rules of a game or a race or some kind of contest, the person officiating the game will say something like, “Ready?  Go!”  “Go” is a word we look forward to: we can’t wait to begin the game or start the project, or whatever it is we’re doing.  There’s no time like the present, and we always want to keep going.  But that same word can trigger a bit of sadness.  We don’t always want to go; we like where we are, where we are has been home, and it’s comfortable.  When we go, we’re often in unknown territory, and so going can be as much an occasion for pause as anything else. 

    So going is part and parcel of life, both our life in this world, but also our life with Christ.  In this life, we will, like it or not, experience a lot of coming and going.  We are always on the move, until that great day that we get home to heaven, that place that is our true home, that place to which we journey all through our earthly lives.  So I thought it might be well to take a quick look back and review some of the important things you’ve been taught during your time here at Saint Mary’s.  The first thing I’d mention is what I have taught you is the most important thing that you can know about God in this life.  And that is that God loves you – in fact God is love itself.  God is a love so perfect that it surpasses anything we can know about love in this life.  God is a love so pure that God cannot not love – that wouldn’t logically be possible.  And so God, in love, made people – you and me and everyone else – so that he could have a way to show his love.  And so God loves us, forgives us, guides us, challenges us, and loves us some more.  And so I’ve told you that writing “God loves me” as the answer on a religion test would get you at least half a point.  I’m not sure if that works in high school, but I obviously think it should!

    The second thing I’d want you to remember is that it’s not all about you.  You, and your relationship with God, are certainly part of the equation, but we disciples aren’t just supposed to live for ourselves.  We are a people who are to go out and preach and teach and share and witness what we’ve been taught.  Sometimes, we will do this with words, but most often, we will do this with actions.  We will reach out and take care of people in our lives, and people God puts in our lives.  We will make a decision to give of ourselves so that people in need can have a better life, or at least a better day.  The gifts that we have are never given to us just for ourselves; they are meant to be shared, and when we share them, we find they don’t run out, we just keep getting more to share.  It’s kind of like the feeding of the multitudes: when we share our little offering of five loaves and two fish, God makes it enough, and more than enough, to feed everyone.  But only when we remember that it’s not just about ourselves.

    The final thing I’d like to remind you is that as a leader – and all of you will lead in some way at some time – you should never ask people to do something you’re not willing to do yourself.  Jesus is the absolute best example of that.  In teaching us to love each other and lay down our lives for each other, he literally laid down his life for us: dying on the cross to pay the price for our sins and to give us the possibility of eternal life, of going to that place prepared for us in his Father’s house, that home that is our true home – in heaven.  And so just like Jesus, we too have to lead by being servants, and taking up the cross, and doing what we might not want to do but what needs to be done, so that others will see the way to live too.  We have to witness by example and to lead the way we want others to live.

    I believe these lessons will serve you well.  Know that you are loved just for who you are.  That will give you peace on your darkest days.  Know that you are called to reach out to others so that they can find light in the darkness.  And know that you are a leader when you witness by your life and example.  When you do all that, you’ll be successful beyond your wildest dreams, and you’ll have a relationship with your God that no one can take away from you, and will bring you to that place of ultimate happiness.

    Having learned all this, I charge you all to GO.  Go, make a difference.  Go, live in God’s love.  Go, be a witness to what you’ve been taught.  Go, lead the world to a better place.  Go, be a disciple and make disciples of everyone you meet.  Go, knowing that our Lord is with you until the end of the age.  Go, and glorify the Lord with your life.

    Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word represents a kind of wrap-up to the lives of St. Paul and Jesus, respectively. They both have completed the mission for which they had been sent, and both are now giving the mission back to God who would continue it as He alone saw fit. Paul’s mission had been one of conversion, beginning with his own, and then reaching out to the Gentiles he met traveling far and wide. Now he did not know what would happen to him, only that the Holy Spirit kept telling him it was to be an end filled with hardship, from which Paul refused to shrink.

    Jesus, one with the Father from the beginning, had come from the Father and was now going back to the Father. He brought God’s love to bear on the aberrations of sin and death and had drawn disciples into the mission to continue the work. It could not continue unless he returned to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit upon them. Doing that has brought the Gospel into every nation and into the lives of millions. He too faced an end filled with hardship, from which he refused to shrink.

    We disciples will come to our own ends as well. Will we too be able to give the mission back to the Father, confident that we’ve done it as best we could, and confident that it would be continued as God saw fit? Have our days sometimes been filled with hardship, and if so, have we also refused to shrink from it? We disciples are part of the mission that God has in the world. We take it for a time and will eventually have to hand it back over. Please God, may we all be able to do so with confidence that God’s will has been done in us!

    Because Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    A topic in the spiritual life that I think we don’t understand the way we should, and which doesn’t get a lot of discussion, is hope. Saint Peter in today’s second reading urges us to “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope…”  And that’s a bigger challenge, I think, than we realize sometimes.

    First of all, as I mentioned, I think we don’t really understand what hope is.  In common usage, I think hope means something like a wish.  We often say, “I hope that …” or “I hope so,” as if to say, “It probably won’t ever happen, but it would be really nice.”  That’s not what hope means, and that’s not the kind of hope that Saint Peter is asking us to be ready to explain.  Even the definition of hope leaves this discussion wanting.  Merriam Webster defines hope as “to cherish a desire with anticipation; to want something to be happen or be true.”  Anticipation implies more than a mere wish, certainly.  But wanting something to happen or be true entertains the possibility that it will not.  That’s not the kind of hope we’re talking about either.

    But Merriam Webster also provides what it calls an “archaic” usage, which defines hope in one word: trust.  And now I think we’re closer to where we need to be.  The hope that we have in Jesus is something in which we can certainly trust, because he promises its truth, and God always keeps his promises.  All we have to do is attach ourselves to that hope so that we can be caught up in it in all the right moments. So what is it that we hope for?  In what do we place our hope, our trust?  Maybe it would be better to ask in whom we hope: Jesus is our hope, and through his death and resurrection, he has set us free from the bonds of sin and death, and opened up the way for us to enter eternal life in communion with the Father.

    Our world needs this hope.  Just tune in to the news to see that lack of hope: wars, skirmishes and unrest in many parts of the world; bizarre weather and killer tornadoes in many places of our country; cataclysmic natural disasters over the past few years that have left communities or even whole countries reeling.  Closer to home, we could cite high unemployment, rising prices on everything from gas to food, violence in our cities, and so much more.  It doesn’t take much looking around to feel like there’s no hope of hope anywhere.

    So the problem, I think, is in what or where that we place our hope.  Often we place our hope in ourselves or our own efforts, only to find ourselves at some point over our heads.  Or maybe we place our hope in other people in our lives, only at some point to be disappointed.  We sometimes place our hope in self-proclaimed gurus like Oprah or Doctor Phil, only to find out that their pep-talks at some point ring hollow and their philosophies are shallow.  You can’t find much hope in sources like these, or if you do, you might find that hope to be short-lived.  And so, as I said, if we want real hope something in which we can truly trust, the only place we need to look, the only one we should look to, is God.

    Now, I say this, knowing full well that some of you have prayed over and over and over for something to change, only to be disappointed after you say “Amen.”  And there’s no way I’m going to tell you that all you have to do is pray and everything will work out all right.  God doesn’t promise us perfect happiness in this life, and so often we are going to go through periods of sorrow and disappointment.  That’s the unfortunate news of life in this passing world.  The sorrow and disappointment are not God’s will for us, they are by-products of sin – our own sin or the sin of others – and those things grieve God very much.

    But even in those times of grief, God still gives us hope, if we turn to him.  The hope that he offers is the knowledge that no matter how bad things get, we don’t go through them alone, that God is there for us, walking with us through the sorrow and pain and never giving up on us.

    Today’s readings give us a foundation for this hope.  In the second reading, Peter awakens our hope of forgiveness.  He says, “For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.  Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit.”  Even the hopelessness of our sin is no match for God’s mercy.  Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, we have hope of eternal life in God’s kingdom.  Because God loved us so much, he gave his only Son for our salvation, and now we have hope of forgiveness, hope for God’s presence in our lives.

    In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that we can hope in him because we will always have his presence.  Even though he ascended to the right hand of the Father, as we’ll celebrate next week, he is with us always.  “And I will ask the Father,” he says, “and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth…”  We receive that Holy Spirit sacramentally in Baptism and Confirmation, and we live in his Spirit every day.  The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives gives us the hope that we are never alone, even in our darkest hours; that the Spirit intercedes for us and guides us through life.

    We disciples have to be convinced of that hope; we have to take comfort in the hope that never passes from us, in the abiding presence of God who wants nothing more than to be with us.  We have to reflect that hope into our sometimes hopeless world.  As Saint Peter said, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.  Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope…” The reason for our hope is Christ.  We find our hope in the cross and resurrection.  We experience our hope in the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.  We spread that hope in our hopeless world by being Christ to others, living as disciples of Jesus when the whole world would rather drag us down.  Even when life is difficult, we can live with a sense of joy, because above all, we are disciples of hope.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading today, 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 were part of the Jewish culture.  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, very basic things. 

    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 know the Lord, now need to help others to know him.  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 our experience of the Lord to the world who desperately needs his love and presence.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!