Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Alleluia, Christ is risen! As the season of resurrection continues, we are reminded through today’s readings that God is Trinity. The readings affirm our belief in God who sent us Jesus and empowers us with the Holy Spirit us to let God’s way be known among all the nations.
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Alleluia, Christ is risen! As we continue to celebrate Easter, we hear the story of the early Church. Last week we heard of Stephen’s martyrdom, and today we learn that some believers were scattered by the subsequent persecution (led by Saul, who became the apostle Paul after his conversion). The gospel message of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was so exciting and so joyful that these believers simply could not keep it to themselves. They fled persecution, but they continued spreading the word of this Messiah. They even began to share it with Gentiles, like the Greeks, who had not been awaiting a Messiah as had the Jews. And yet, through the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, these Gentiles also came to believe. We have this beautiful line from the Acts of the Apostles that, “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts 11:26).
Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Alleluia, Christ is truly risen! We are now in the fourth week of celebrating Easter. In this season, we have been focusing on the joyfulness of Christ’s resurrection. For, while life is not all about joy, Christ’s resurrection is the greatest source of joy we could have. For our church this is so important that the celebration of Easter lasts longer than the penitential season of Lent.
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Christian imagery is rife with the imagery of sheep. In today’s readings, we hear in the psalm response that we are God’s people, the sheep of his flock (Ps. 100:3c). In the gospel reading, Jesus proclaims that his sheep know his voice and follow him. In the second reading from the book of Revelation, our imagery shifts so that God is not just the shepherd, but rather Jesus is the Lamb who was slain for us in the new Passover and final sacrifice.
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
In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus continues to emphasize what He has been explaining to the crowd and to His disciples in the Gospel readings this entire week: He is the Bread of Life. Those who followed Moses and who ate the manna in the wilderness all eventually died. Jesus informs His listeners that if they eat of the Bread of Life, i.e. if they eat Jesus, they will not die but have eternal life. Jesus explains that the bread of which He speaks is His flesh.
Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter
Sometimes the joy of the resurrection is harder to participate in when times get tough. When we are in the midst of facing the loss of job, or struggling through the pain a shattered friendship, or even journeying with a loved one who is near death, Easter joy might seem vanquished. We may not feel it, but these times are when the Lord is trying even harder to remind us of his desire to feed us and lead us to from death to new life.
Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
We are now at Tuesday of our 3rd week celebrating Easter. Our readings for these weeks have caused us to think about what happened after the resurrection – how the early Church lived and how the Church came to understand who Jesus was in light of his crucifixion and resurrection. Today’s gospel passage is an important piece to understanding Jesus. In fact, for the next few days we will hear these texts known as the “Bread of Life” discourse. Sometimes, we may be tempted to think that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, leaving us alone on the earth that had once known his presence.
Monday of the Third Week of Easter
As we begin this Third Week of Easter, we are called to keep in mind the resurrected Lord and continue to live in the Easter joy – the knowledge of our salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As we have done all Easter season, we continue to follow the stories of the early apostles as contained in the biblical book called the Acts of the Apostles. This is the sequel to our gospel stories, providing us with some kind of sense of how Jesus’ disciples lived the Christian life after Jesus’ death and resurrection. This week Stephen will feature prominently in the narrative contained in Acts.
Third Sunday of Easter
Alleluia! Christ is truly risen! While most of the world has left Easter behind, we Catholics continue to celebrate the excitement and joy of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. This is our Third Sunday of Easter, and the Easter season is longer even than Lent – a good reminder to us of the importance of the resurrection for our Christian faith. The Christian life is not all about suffering or crucifixion. Ultimately, it is about resurrection, God’s victory over sin and death.
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? After some reflection, I think that we can best understand the nature of this episode in the wider context of John’s Gospel and Jesus’ entire ministry.
Friday of the Second Week of Easter
In the past month, I’ve found myself reflecting deeply on the nature of the church and what it means to be church. The re-emerging sex abuse scandals have hit me hard, emotionally and intellectually, and they have particularly brought up tough questions like: what does it mean to be in a church that is so patently fallible and yet which claims to be Christ’s body, and an eternal institution? Good and evil, divine and human, fallible and infallible, are all intermixed: how can this be?
Thursday of the Second Week of Easter
Easter continues, and so does the adventure story of the early Church. In today’s first reading we have an account of Peter and the Apostles being taken in for questioning before a court. Their answer to the court demonstrates the continuing commitment to Jesus and the gospel message: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). They continue by telling the court that they are witnesses to the resurrection. It is evident that knowing Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection has fundamentally changed their lives. The bumbling Apostles of the gospels – often mistaken, often confused, often “weak in faith,” have become courageous leaders of the Church, finally unwilling to deny Jesus.
Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter
Easter season is full of great opportunities for each of us to realize God’s love for us. Our scriptures today give us a beautiful understanding of God’s spirit working in the early Christian community. That spirit was pushing the apostles to witness to the power of the resurrection in their lives. That same good news is affirmed and reinforced in the psalm and the gospel.
Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
Today’s Gospel reading, from St. John’s Gospel , focuses on the Sacrament of Baptism. We know this not only from Jesus’ discussion of spiritual rebirth, but also from His emphasis on being born again (or from above) by water and the Spirit in the immediate context preceding the section in today’s reading, and also at the end of this passage immediately following the section we have in today’s reading, where Jesus finishes this discussion and His disciples go out and baptize.
Monday of the Second Week of Easter
Alleluia, Christ is risen! We are now starting on our second week of Easter and continuing to follow the journey of the early Church as remembered in the Acts of the Apostles. Our passage for today again describes Peter and John, who, by now must be regarded as troublemakers in the eyes of many in the city. For the Christian community, however, the actions of Peter and John make sense because they are interpreted in light of the paschal mystery, i.e. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The Christians feel empowered by their recollection of all that had happened; Jesus’ death has not ended their discipleship; rather, his resurrection has intensified their commitment to the gospel message. Hence the word that describes them is “boldness.” In the face of threats, they stay true to their lives as followers of Jesus.
Second Sunday of Easter
Today is the last day in the Octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. At the end of the Octave we still find ourselves at the beginning of the Easter Season. And so, if you haven’t made the most of Easter yet, there’s still a lot of time, in fact, longer than the season of Lent. Today’s readings really highlight the hope of the Easter season, both resurrection hope, but also the hope of healing.
Saturday in the Octave of Easter
These words from today’s Psalm (Ps 118:15) illustrate the insuppressible good news of Jesus’ life death and resurrection. The good news of the resurrection bubbles forth from Jesus’ disciples out of their gut, almost uncontrollably; it is unable to be squelched or held down.
In the reading from Mark’s gospel today, Mary Magdalene is the first witness to the resurrected Jesus (Mark 16:9). In John’s endearing account of this same appearance, we are told that Mary didn’t recognize Jesus at first, but mistook him for the gardener (John 20:15). In Mark’s account, we learn nothing of the exchange between Mary and Jesus, only that after He appeared to her, “she went out and told his companions” (Mark 16:10), who summarily dismiss her story. It is interesting that Mark only gives us two verbs: “he appeared” and “she told.” Mary is not even commanded by Jesus to tell the others, but it seems she cannot contain herself. She cannot hold in this joyful news.
Friday in the Octave of Easter
During the Easter Season, we do not read the first scripture lesson from the Old Testament as is customary the rest of the year, but we read from the Acts of the Apostles. This is partly to emphasize that Jesus’ resurrection has brought about something new. God is doing a new thing in the midst of the old and we emphasize this by reading only from the New Testament. But there is another, perhaps more significant reason to bring in readings from the Acts of the Apostles: we cannot fully realize the meaning and importance of the resurrection without understanding its aftermath.