Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter
So many people do not REALLY have faith in Christ or in his resurrection. They see Jesus as a nice guy who said good things like "Love each other" but the idea that Jesus rose bodily from the dead seems both a figment of imagination as well as an unnecessary part of the gospel story. Today's scriptures ask us to reconsider the significance of Jesus' bodily resurrection, though.
Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Have you ever played the “guess how much I love you” game with a child? I remember the loving competition when my children were young, each of us trying to outdo the other in declaring our love. “I love you more than I can say”, “well, I love you more than the whole world,” “ I love you bigger than the sky!” As I seem to recall, they were usually stumped when I would finally say, “I loved you before you were even born.”
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
In Jack London’s book, ‘White Fang,, the story of wolves and their interaction with people is told. This book allows the author to belong to and see the world from the eyes of a wolf. In ‘White Fang’ London explores not only the violent life that is the wolf world, but also the equally fierce world of humanity. As it opens two men learn they are being pursued by wolves. This section is how these two men attempt to stave off the predators’ intent on destroying them.
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
The gospel for today is taken from the prayer that Jesus offers just before he goes to the garden where he is arrested. In the prayer, Jesus speaks of the role of his disciples after his ascension. Jesus prays that his disciples will pick up where he has left off and continue his work in the world. It is fitting to read this gospel passage at this particular time in the liturgical year, since we have just celebrated the feast of the ascension when Jesus took leave of his disciples for the last time. Although Jesus speaks in his prayer of returning to the Father, it would be a mistake to think that his ascension means that Jesus is gone. Instead, that Jesus ascended means that he is present to us in ways that he was not present during his earthly life and ministry. Among other ways, he is present to us in the mass, in our daily prayer, and in our lives in community with other people.
Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter
I have the wonderful opportunity to work on the team that prepares the 8th grade students at our parish for Confirmation. Throughout the course of the program we discuss the Holy Spirit and His presence in scripture, in salvation history, and in our lives as disciples. As part of their preparation, the students choose a “patron saint” whose name they will take at the time of Confirmation. During our gatherings, the students create and paint icons of their saints, and they are encouraged to reflect upon how the Holy Spirit has been evident in their saint’s lives. As we discuss these holy men and women who are from many different lands and many different times, it is easy to see that the Holy Spirit is essential for growing in holiness and becoming Disciples of Christ.
Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
The account of the ascension from the gospel of Mark is a very intriguing passage. Just for a moment picture this: These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” If I compare my ministry with this passage there is every reason for me to feel absolutely inadequate. In fact, I may conclude that I am a complete failure.
Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter
In a little more than a week we will celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, when the disciples receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit, who forms them into the Mystical Body of Christ. This feast is the conclusion of the fifty days of the Easter season. For now, we continue to celebrate the great mystery of Easter.
Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter
For many people (myself often included), life happens on a very short-term time scale. My days are cluttered with brief Facebook announcements, quick news tidbits and hurried hellos to friends as I rush to the next activity. My thoughts and feelings are equally as short-term: how I feel about my life, my appearance, my job, politics, religion and so on are easily affected by a friend's Facebook post, or a sales clerk's mean words, or any number of other short, day-to-day interactions. I can feel despair if someone doesn't smile at me, wondering all day why they didn't smile, what I did wrong, how I could fix it for next time. My feelings about these short day-to-day interactions can last a long time, paradoxically.
Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Good story tellers can have you on the edge of your seat and have you hanging on their every word. They are so good at emphasizing the right words changing their voice so that they draw us into the story. There is one more part to it that St. Paul clearly understands, by making the story connect directly into the lives of his audience.
Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
It can sometimes seem as though Jesus is far removed from our 21st-Century lives in Dayton, Ohio. His life and ministry on earth is certainly removed from us by many centuries. He lived in a time when the world was very different, and he lived and worked in a much different cultural context. I find that my own sense of being far removed from the historical figure of Jesus sometimes has the danger of allowing me to make excuses for myself: in particular it allows me to pick and choose the ways that I am willing to follow him. I find myself sometimes asking how Jesus expects me to follow him when he is so far away from my life. This in turn can make me less passionate about my faith and less certain of my role as a Christian in the world around me. The scriptures for today speak to these concerns and show that this way of thinking is mistaken. They remind us that Jesus remains very close to us, in many different ways but in particular through the operation of the Holy Spirit.
Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle
Several weeks ago, I was having dinner with a friend after work. We had not seen each other in about three months, so we had plenty of catching up to do. Among many other things, I was extremely excited to tell him all about my recent involvements with youth ministry and the upcoming meetings and events that we had planned for the months ahead. Knowing my passion for God and youth ministry, my friend told me, “Man, you should just start your own church already!” I shyly laughed off what my friend had meant as a well meaning compliment and we continued catching up and enjoying each other’s company. However, I was admittedly taken aback by his comment, mostly because “my own church” was the last thing that I wanted. It was the Church that Jesus, my Lord, had instituted that had captivated my heart. That is the Church that I want to serve as a disciple and that is the very same Church that we see in today’s readings.
Sixth Sunday of Easter
One of the greatest challenges of my ministry is funerals. To help families deal with the tragedy, I try my best to make the funeral as meaningful as possible. Especially the homily, I make it an opportunity to let people discover God in the midst of it all. I also focus on celebrating the deceased person’s life by engaging in a conversation with family members about the deceased. Sometimes after the service the family come to tell me how they appreciated what I said about the person and how I connected the scripture to the life of the person. My response often to them is that I did not have anything to do with the homily except to deliver it. I tell them that, the way we live our lives each day, we are writing our funeral homily. The people or the celebrant can only capture the essence of what the deceased person’s life stood for. They can only reflect of how they lived their lives. As the family thanks me, I often ask them to thank their loved ones for the life they lived.
Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter
There are several interesting elements in today’s three Readings that are worth noting, all of which link in some way to the Christian concept of discipleship.
In our First Reading, St. Paul encounters Timothy and decides to take him as a traveling companion. Timothy is himself both Jew and Gentile, having a Jewish mother (which is the general requirement for membership in the Jewish community) and a Gentile father. Through his parentage, Timothy seems to represent the Church of this period, which is growing community of both Jews and Gentiles. St. Paul, who will elsewhere argue vehemently against the need for Gentile Christians to become Jews, ends up having Timothy circumcised. This strange decision is presumably reached so that there will be no doubt about Timothy’s status within the Covenant, so that Timothy will be accepted by those to whom he is called to serve as a messenger. As these disciples travel about relaying the decisions of the Council of Jerusalem (that were reached in the previous chapter), the faith of the Christian community grows. The overriding theme of the First Reading, however, is following the lead of the Holy Spirit. According to Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Timothy intend to travel through one region and preach the Gospel only to be “prevented by the Holy Spirit” from doing so. Instead of allowing them to go where they have determined they should go, the Holy Spirit guides these disciples to preach to the people of Macedonia. They receive a vision, which is not necessarily the vision that they wanted, and begin to recognize that they are called in a different way than they have originally supposed. This does not mean that they will never make it to these other regions; it only means that they have other work to do that they must accomplish first.
Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter
I often get asked, "Why is Christianity so legalistic? Why are there so many rules?" This seems intuitively wrong to many, especially when they read that Jesus himself broke laws. For instance, Jesus broke the Sabbath in order to heal people (see Mark 3). He favors mercy over legalisms and love over obeying a rule that doesn't lead to more love.
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Some people see Christians as somber, miserable people who have no joy in their life. Do you have joy in your life? Do you want joy in your life? Sounds like a silly question. Who doesn’t want joy? I don’t mean fleeting happiness, or a denial of or even absence of suffering, but a deep joy and complete joy.
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
A few years back a tree died in my front yard. The yard seemed like it was missing something, so the hunt for new tree began. Although I liked the Silver Maple that was there before I really wanted to get a tree that flowered. In my search I came across the Bartlett Pair, crabapple and apple trees. But what really captured my attention was this combination Cherry tree. I had never heard of such a tree, but I thought it was worth try.
Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
It sometimes seems that one of the things most lacking from modern life is peace. I find that life can be very busy. I often find myself rushing from one thing to the next, without the ability to take everything in and to reflect on what I experience. At the same time, it is evident from the evening news that our world contains countless examples of conflict, war, turbulence, violence, and oppression. There are numerous ways that lack of peace breaks into our lives, including crime and interpersonal conflict.
Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter
I learned about the Ten Commandments when I was in grade school like most of us did. Our class went to Confession once a month and that is when we were supposed to confess our sins. I don’t remember many specific details about that whole process but I distinctly remember the intense feelings associated with it. I felt terror. After confessing my sins I do not remember feeling peace or joy, let alone experiencing the mercy of God. I only remember feeling intense relief at having lived through the experience once more. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood I figured out how that was related to my relationship with God.
Fifth Sunday of Easter
There is a story my second grade teacher told us in my catechism class that I still remember. One day, Michelangelo walking through a garden in Florence, saw a block of marble in a corner protruding from the earth. It was half covered by grass and mud. He stopped suddenly, as if he had seen someone. Then he said to his friends who were with him, exclaimed: "An angel is imprisoned in that marble; I must get him out." And, armed with a chisel, he began to work on that block until the figure of a beautiful angel emerged. Each of us is a work in progress too. Each of us is a disciple in the making; we are Christians in the making. And today's readings offer us ways that God can make us who are called to be.