Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Today is the last Tuesday that falls within the Easter Season. Next week we will again return to the marvelous liturgical riches that we have awaiting us in Ordinary time, with all of its many feasts. As we approach Pentecost Sunday, we find a growing emphasis on the ministry of the apostles. Indeed, in today’s Gospel reading from the Gospel of St. John, we find a passage from before Jesus’ Easter resurrection. In fact, the reading occurs in Jesus’ prayer to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, before His death on the cross. This prayer is an important one, but we’re only getting a brief excerpt for today’s reading.
Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Our celebration has now passed, and we are nearing the end of the season of Easter. In this final week, we turn our attention to the Holy Spirit, and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples at Pentecost. By this time in Easter, it’s easy to feel that the Easter spirit has fizzled out. Those Easter egg hunts and the newness of the “Alleluia” seem to have been so long ago. But we should not be led to complacency in these last days of Easter. We are called to march on in the joy of the risen Lord, looking forward to that great gift given to us after the risen Lord Jesus ceased to walk the earth and ascended into heaven. In our first reading, therefore, we have another story from the Acts of the Apostles.
The Ascension of the Lord
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. We see two accounts of the Ascension in today’s first reading from St. Luke’s Book of the Acts of the Apostles, as well as in today’s Gospel reading from St. Luke’s Gospel. The Ascension leads to the praise of God, to worship, as we see for example in today’s Gospel reading where the disciples are continually praising God in the Temple.
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 makes the Church 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.
Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle
There are a lot, and I mean a LOT, of contradictory stories floating around about St. Matthias. Some say that after he became one of the Twelve (to take Judas' place; see today's lesson from Acts 1:15-17, 20-26), he preached in Judea and then went to Ethiopia, where he was crucified. Others say he was, in fact, in Ethiopia, but was not crucified. Some say he preached among the cannibals, was thrown in prison, but then was freed by the Apostle Andrew. Still others say he was stoned in Jerusalem and then beheaded, so apparently never made it as far as Ethiopia. Adding to this confusion is the fact that some people confuse Saint Matthias with Saint Matthew (from whom we have the gospel of Matthew). Matthias, too, is said to have written a gospel, but it has been mostly lost to us and has often been associated with unorthodox teachings. If all this confusion were not enough, throw in the fact that there is some dispute about Matthias' relics: are they in Rome or Trier or both? Worthy Christians dispute even his feast day: Latin Christians observe his feast today but in the Eastern Orthodox Church the feast is celebrated on August 9th.
Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter
The psalm response for today is “The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power” (Ps. 98:2b). This theme emerges in the two readings for the day.
Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
The Easter season continues but the thrill of the Resurrection seems to less and less obvious in the readings. One reason for this is because we are preparing for another big event in the history of the Church – Pentecost. A second reason is because, at some point the Resurrection has cease to be an isolated event that happens once a year. On the contrary it needs to be integrated with the rest of life, and indeed, in all of creation. There are so many ways that the life of God reflected in world around us – but only to those who are willing to see.
Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Today’s first reading from the Book of Acts is one of the most moving in that book. After having been humiliatingly stripped in public, St. Paul and his companion are beaten with wooden rods. Public canings in Asia might be brought to mind when we think of this passage. Being beaten with rods during the Roman period was a brutal affair. After this punishment, they are locked up in prison, not only behind bars, as it were, but also with their ankles tied to a stake.
Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter
In today's first reading from the Acts of the Apostles we encounter Paul and his companions filled with the Spirit of God and spreading the Good News of Jesus. Paul and his companions find welcome listeners among some women, and Lydia, who is one of these kind women receives baptism and invites them to stay at her home. Just yesterday, in the Sunday gospel reading, Jesus had promised that he would send an "advocate" to help his disciples. We see that promise being fulfilled in the life of the Church.
Sixth Sunday of Easter
In the responsorial psalm for today, Psalm 67, we find the express desire that the nations (the Gentiles) praise the Lord, that they be glad and exult in the Lord. We see a vision of this beginning to happen in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The strife in Acts, which leads to the Council of Jerusalem in this very same chapter (15), is whether or not, and if so then how, Gentiles from the nations can become Christians following Jesus. Must they first become Jews, leaving the nations, through circumcision?
Saturday of 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 Fifth Week of Easter
Today's Scripture
Today's scriptures highlight authority and its role for Catholics. Some Christians criticize Catholics for having a system involving bishops, cardinals and the pope. Some Christians go so far as to suggest that even having clergy is a backward notion for Christians at all. After all, some say, if the idea is to love each other as Jesus says in today's gospel (John 15:12-17), can't we do that without a pastor or a pope 'telling us what to do"? Moreover, for those who find the idea of authority for Christians reprehensible, they find support in some of Paul's letters particularly in his letters to the Galatians where he emphasizes freedom and the fact that he has the gospel from God, not from humans (1:12).
Thursday of Fifth Week of Easter
In this 5th week of Easter, we are continuing to follow the adventures of the early Church and to muse on some of the conflicts and problems that they encountered in trying to figure out how to be Christians. This task became particularly difficult when it came to negotiating the acceptance of the Gentiles into this new faith. After all, although faith in Jesus was new, it was really a fulfillment of a very old faith – the Jewish faith, and the Gentiles as a group didn’t belong to the Jewish faith in any proper sense (although there were individuals who converted to Judaism).
Wednesday of Fifth Week of Easter
The Lord works in mysterious ways. The spirit is prompting us to make faith connections in ways that are often unpredictable. Yesterday I was in line at the grocery and the person in front of me was talking to the cashier about his faith. While witnessing, he gave the cashier a pamphlet from his church. The cashier thanked the man and put the tract aside and began to ring up my groceries. I asked the cashier if she wanted the pamphlet. When she responded she didn’t, I asked her if I could have it. As a church worker, I like to learn from the ways that other churches evangelize.
Tuesday of the Fifith Week of Easter
The responsorial psalm for today, Psalm 145, contains the antiphon, “Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your kingdom” (145:12). In the text of the Psalm, it explains who these friends are, God’s “faithful ones” (145:10). These faithful ones, the “friends” of the Lord, Speak of the might of the Lord (145:11), “Making known to men your might and the glorious splendor of your kingdom” (145:12). This is something for us to meditate on today. How can we make known to others the glorious splendor of God’s Kingdom? For, if we wish to be God’s friends, God’s faithful ones, this is something we should strive to do. Our very lives should make known to others the glorious splendor of God’s Kingdom.
Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles
Today in the midst of this Easter season we celebrate the feast of two of the twelve apostles – Philip and James. These apostles experienced Jesus first-hand; they lived alongside him. For us, living so many years after Christ, we might rightly envy their proximity to Jesus. But at the same time, we might also note that being close to Jesus did not always make things as easy for the apostles as we would assume.
Fifth Sunday of Easter
When I was reading the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles for today, what struck me was the way in which Paul and Barnabas encouraged the early Christian disciples. They said, “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (14:22). At first glance, this doesn’t appear to encouraging. But in reality, it should be. This is not the only place we find such a teaching in St. Paul; if we turn to his Letter to the Romans, we find the same idea in the eighth chapter. There, St. Paul explains that the sufferings we experience can bring us to Christ’s glory, and do not separate us from God, rather they tie us more closely to Him. It is precisely by suffering with Christ that we begin to share in His glory. It’s simply a fact that we can run from suffering, but we can’t hide. In the end, we will all experience hardship and suffering. And this is particularly the case if we decide to follow Jesus.
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
I think we live in a culture that thrives on opposites. We teach our children early on about opposites: light/dark, hot/cold, wet/dry, open/shut, and so on. We buy sweet n’ salty mixes at the store; we love to have our cold slushy milkshakes alongside crispy fries and hot hamburgers; we like a good love story about opposites attracting; and, let’s face it, our political system seems to thrive on having a good mix of opposition on the floor of congress (even as some decry the nation’s lack of unity.
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter
In the last four weeks since Easter, we have been following the story of the early Church. Recent readings have emphasized the importance of the inclusion of the Gentiles. But today we hear Paul preaching in a synagogue at the invitation of local synagogue officials. How interesting! Christianity was now unambiguously open to Gentiles in the eyes of the early Church, and yet, Paul had not given up on sharing the message of the Jewish Messiah with the Jews. Moreover, Paul and companions remained comfortable in the synagogue, which had been their place of prayer for their entire lives.