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.
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
“All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God” announces the response of today’s psalm.. We hear these words today immediately after we hear the story of Paul and Barnabas and the great mission to the gentiles. Gentiles, that is non-Jews, were generally regarded by Jews as outside of God’s saving power. Therefore, Jesus’ universal call, including Jews and Gentiles, is one of the most distinctive things about Him. He came from the Jewish tradition and He’s very clearly rooted in it, but His mission is universal.
Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter
This week, I've been reading a book called Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren Winner. Winner describes a mid-faith crisis as the realization that the newness, excitement and joy of faith has worn off and that the end goal of spiritual life (that is, life in God) seems quite far off. How do you make it through the middle of faith, when God seems far off, and nothing ever seems to change? Winner describes the slow, sometimes painful process of going through a mid-faith crisis - from her vantage point, it involves a lot of prayer (even when sometimes you're not sure that God is there), a lot of discussions with trusted spiritual friends, and a lot of simply being in the loneliness that a mid-faith crisis sometimes involves.
Feast of Saint Philip and Saint James, Apostles
Today the Church celebrates the feast of Saint Philip and Saint James, first century Apostles of Jesus. Last week we read about Philip and how the Spirit led him to baptize the Ethiopian eunuch, marking the beginning of the eventual spread of the gospel outside of the confines of Jerusalem. We also hear of Philip in today’s gospel (John 14: 6-14) with the other disciples and Jesus at the last supper, trying to understand Jesus and asking Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus then explains that if they know him, they know the Father because he dwells in him. (Keep in mind that even the first disciples, eventual saints, didn’t have it all figured out!)
Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Everyone knows that to have a good story you need to start with the words, “Once upon a time...”. The Bible, our collection of stories, has a similar phrase, “In the Beginning…”. This phrase is used to start out the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis and also to start the Gospel of John. On some levels, John calls us to remember Genesis by using these words. Yet where he goes after that can take us off guard. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) It is this Johannine understanding of the Word which echoed in my heart upon hearing the first reading.
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
In the recent daily scripture readings, we have been working through the book of Acts. This book has always intrigued me. It is full of lively accounts of the activities of the first Christians and their attempts to live out the gospel. It also recounts the astonishing ways that the Christian faith spread through the action of the Holy Spirit. Although I find this book fascinating, I also sometimes wonder what this book can have to say to us in our times, since our world is very different than the world which Jesus’ apostles and early disciples inhabited. It seems to me that the scripture readings for today provide an answer to this question.
Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Have you ever spent time thinking about your voice? Each of us has a unique voice that is like no others, and with your speech not only do you communicate words, but you also communicate emotions and personality. Some people even refer to our voice as our “auditory face”, since others can recognize who we are by just be hearing us speak. Researchers have discovered that even a baby in the womb can distinguish his or her mother’s voice in preference to the voice of other people. This ability to recognize another person’s voice allow us the opportunity to establish a relationship with the individual, since each time we hear that individual talk, we are reminded of our past memories of that person and the mutual experiences we have shared.
Fourth Sunday of Easter
One of the television shows that I have been intrigued by is Shark Tank. The show revolves around four filthy-rich entrepreneurs who at one time were themselves poor. They are the ‘sharks’ in the show. Each week amateur entrepreneurs appear before them with prospective business ideas. The game plan is to get ‘sharks’ to buy shares in their company in exchange for cash. If the sharks think that there is money to be made they negotiate with these amateurs to make a deal. But here is the thing – it is always about the money. For example, one entrepreneur wanted to keep his manufacturing unit in the country. The reason the ‘sharks’ did not invest in that project was because that would mean lower profits. The show in many ways is a reflection of society. I want to say that there is something evil about the dynamic at work. Self-respect, dignity, charity, patriotism, integrity – they are all expendable for money.
Saturday of the Third Week of Easter
“As a result of this, many disciples returned to their former life and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66). Jesus’ revelation of Himself as the Bread of Life, the one whose flesh we must eat and whose blood we must drink to gain eternal life, was not easy to swallow (no pun intended). Indeed it separated the deeply committed disciples from those who were on board only insofar as Jesus’ teaching seemed acceptable. This particular teaching shocked the latter group (John 6:61) and they returned to their former life. In response to their shock, Jesus remarks His words are “Spirit and life” (John 6:63).
Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Today’s scriptures cause me to reflect on the fact that Christianity is quite a bit strange. What we celebrate during the Easter season – Jesus’ resurrection – is odd in itself, but then add in everything else we believe: the virgin birth, the ragtag band of followers that wander around Judea, the disciples that proclaim Jesus in the face of persecution and death, all the various permutations of Christianity that exist in our world today. In the words of one of my students, “Christianity is entirely weird” and that is sometimes a stumbling block for people who find the weirdness to be anti-rational. But perhaps it is also the very weirdness of the Christian story that can cause us to have faith, as well.
Thursday of the Third Week of Easter
Don’t you wish, sometimes, that an angel or the Spirit of the Lord would give you such specific instructions as Philip receives in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8: 26-40)? “Get up and head south on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, the desert route.” It almost sounds like Philip has a spiritual GPS guiding him specifically where the Lord wants him to go. I sure would like to have one of those! And although it’s true that we don’t exactly have a spiritual GPS, we do have God’s Spirit within us, guiding and directing us if we but listen.
Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist
There is a familiar expression, “the clothes make the man” (person). If you have watched the clothing choices of our political candidates perhaps you noticed how the wardrobe choices are influenced by the setting and the makeup of the audience. Sometimes their outfits are so different from how they normally dress you almost want to laugh.
Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
The scripture readings for today suggest a parallel between the witness of Stephen in the first reading and the message of Jesus in the gospel reading. The first reading contrasts Stephen with those who put him to death. On the one hand, Stephen’s enemies look on him as a blasphemer and not as someone who has a worthwhile message for them. On the other hand, Stephen tells his accusers that in opposing him they are in fact opposing the work of the Holy Spirit. Stephen is a martyr because he is willing to die for his faith. He continues to preach to those who wanted to put him to death and, in so doing, he stands as a witness for God’s message in Jesus Christ.
Monday of the Third Week of Easter
Several months ago my wife and I were blessed with the news that she is pregnant and that we are now parents! I can say without hesitation that I’ve never been filled with more joy, more excitement, or more love for my wife. I’ve found it amazing and surreal how my perception of life, my perception of the world around me, and my perception of myself have changed so drastically and so abruptly when viewed from the eyes of a new father. As a result, I’ve reevaluated a lot and I’ve tried to reprioritize a lot, knowing full well that I have a ways to go and understanding that becoming the best father I can be (much like becoming the best disciple I can be) is a lifelong process. All of this has added a completely new dimension to my prayer life. Praying for the soul of this new life has become my daily joy, and I often find the words of the priest at baptism echoing in the quiet of my heart and saying, “I claim you for Christ.”
Third Sunday of Easter
Last week I preached that the time after Easter is tougher for me than Lent. Whereas Lent focuses me and keeps me disciplined, the time after Easter makes me relax and lose some of that focus. Since I preached that, I cannot tell you how many people came to me and said that they felt the same way. In fact, I met people whose prayer life has gone into total disarray since Easter. This is what is most disheartening for me – that whereas I experience a letdown after Easter, the readings point to a post-resurrection church which is on fire. That bugs me. Why can we not be on fire like the post-resurrection church?
Saturday of the Second Week of Easter
Sandwiched in between two overtly Eucharistic sections of John’s Gospel—the story of the multiplication of the loaves and the Bread of Life discourse—is the story we have in today’s gospel reading of Jesus walking on water. I have found myself wondering on multiple occasions: why? Why would Jesus walk on water? What was He trying to communicate? Aren’t there many other things that would’ve been better uses of His time? Was this a kind of David Blane or Houdini act meant to marvel the disciples?
Friday of the Second Week of Easter
How difficult it is, sometimes, to see the significance of the things we do on a repeated basis. When we first moved to Ohio, all my surroundings were new and it was exciting to venture to new places and get to know the town of Dayton. We visited several of the MetroParks and the Boonshoft Discovery Museum and attended the wonderful festivals downtown and tried out some new restaurants. In doing all that, we made new friends, good connections, and most importantly, began to feel that Dayton could be a home for us, and not just a random place on the map.
Thursday of the Second Week of Easter
What is it about the human condition that makes us so competitive? It can be such a struggle at times, and even an ongoing struggle throughout life to overcome the desire to be better than, more popular, prettier, smarter, chosen first, the winner, etc…it goes on and on. And our culture seems to feed that kind of competition and constant comparing of ourselves to others. Some competition can be good as it pushes us to do our best and strive to further develop ourselves in positive ways. But often it is destructive. The jealousy creeps in when someone else has what we want for ourselves or our children. Sadly, we’ve all heard or read stories in the media in which people are even killed out of such jealousy. Although that is the extreme, we’ve probably all experienced some degree of the destructiveness of jealousy when we compare ourselves to other people.
Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter
My chains are gone, I’ve been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy rains
Unending love, amazing grace.
These lyrics are found in one of my favorite contemporary Christian songs. They are found in an updated version of the song we all know, Amazing Grace. God’s grace is surely amazing. For he so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son to save and set us free. Though we do not live in the Apostolic age there still are prisons that hold Christians because of their beliefs. Even still we put ourselves into prisons of our own making.
Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
The first reading for today describes the life of Jesus’ disciples after his resurrection. It describes Jesus’ followers as a community and states that his followers were “one in mind and spirit.” Rather than having private property they “had everything in common.” The reading goes on to state that no one in the community of believers was needy. When new members joined the community, they would sell what they had and distribute the proceeds to those who were in need.