Year A Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 27:30-28:7; Psalm 103:1-4.9-12; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35

In today's Gospel, we are faced with one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings. Harmonized as it is with our first reading from Sirach, the Lord’s teaching about not just the importance but the necessity of forgiveness is set forth in a very direct way. In a word, today's teaching is provocative.

I dare say, forgiveness is a challenge to us all. It doesn’t matter whether it is about big or small things. And, in this passage, Jesus doesn’t leave wiggle room. This is what makes his teaching on forgiveness one of his most challenging , if not his most challenging.

What does it mean to forgive someone who has wronged you? It means intentionally choosing to let go of resentment, bitterness, and anger towards that person. Quite literally, as we see in the parable Jesus gives, forgiveness means choosing not to collect a debt owed.

Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. Neither does it mean making wrong into right. While forgiveness is required for reconciliation, it isn’t the same thing. In many instances, though not all, forgiveness opens the door to reconciliation.

In recent years, much psychological research has focused on forgiveness. Far from weakness, forgiveness requires a great deal of emotional strength. Forgiving wrongs reduces your own negative emotions and cultivates compassion and understanding toward the one you are forgiving.

The person most freed by forgiveness is the one who forgives. Just as it is physically easier to smile than to frown, forgiving others is easier than being weighed down by anger and resentment.

From a Christian perspective, forgiveness is a grace. A grace is something you don’t deserve. You can’t earn grace. This is where Jesus’ teaching begins.

Perhaps the best way to approach the parable found in our Gospel is as an allegory. In this allegory, God is the merciful king who forgives an enormous debt owed to him by his servant. The servant, who has no way of repaying the debt, stands in for us sinners. The king graciously forgives his servant's huge debt.

You would reasonably expect, as the merciful king in this parable clearly does, that someone who has been shown great mercy would extend that same mercy to others. It’s almost shocking that the forgiven servant is so utterly merciless to the person who owed him a very small debt. If we stick with the allegory, the parable shows the predicament of the Christian who, as the old bumper sticker said, is not perfect, just forgiven, but who nonetheless refuses to forgive.

Just as we can truly love only because God first loved us, we can truly forgive because, through Christ, God has forgiven us.¹ We even pray this, also from Saint Matthew’s Gospel, together at each Mass: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”²

Jesus’ parable serves as an illustration of his teaching about forgiving as many times as I am wronged. It also further explains our quite pointed reading from Sirach. True forgiveness, as the Lord teaches it at the end of our Gospel, must be from the heart.³

As C.S. Lewis observed: “Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”⁴ In other words, it’s easier said than done. But forgiveness is not merely done for the love of a neighbor but is also done out of a just love of oneself and for one’s own salvation.

Because God is infinite, his mercy is infinite. As Pope Francis taught: “God always forgives us. He never tires of this. It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”⁵ This is good news!

To be like God is to be like Jesus, who shows us the face of the Father. To be like Jesus is to forgive. While it’s hard to be like Jesus, by God's grace, it is not impossible. As his followers, the Lord calls us to follow him; not only to do what he taught but to do as he did.

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1 1 John 4:10.^↩
2 Matthew 6:12.^↩
3 Matthew 18:35.^↩
4 C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. Book III, Chapter 1, Section 7, "Christian Behavior.^↩
5 Pope Francis. Vatican Radio via America magazine: “God Always Forgives Everything: ‘He never tires of this. It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.’” 23 January 2015.^↩

Year 2 Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Corinthians 5:1-8; Psalm 5:5-7.12; Luke 6:6-11

Today is Labor Day. Somewhat ironically, our Gospel is about “working” on the sabbath. It is always the work of a Christian to do good and certainly to save life.

From a narrow perspective, like that of Jesus’ interlocutors in our reading, the Lord’s relationship with the Law can seem complicated. But it isn’t, really. Before the time of Jesus and even during his time, for many rabbis, adherence to the Law was not just about keeping a list of rules, avoiding what was forbidden, and doing what was prescribed.

What is at stake in these kinds of incidents found in the Gospel is our relationship with God, both personal and communal. It is very human to make my relationship with God transactional. I do this or don’t do that. As a result, God does something for me in return. Conversely, when I fail to do what I am supposed to do or do what I’m not supposed to do, God will punish me.

Try as we might to make him that way, God isn’t like that. God loves us. His disposition towards us doesn’t change. His love is not conditional, dependent on our often-whimsical behavior. Jesus shows us this repeatedly.

Detail from Christ healing an infirm woman on the Sabbath, by James Tissot, 1886-1896,in public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By curing the man with a withered hand on the sabbath, in the eyes of at least some of those in the synagogue, Jesus violated the commandment forbidding work on the sabbath. He did the very thing some of those present were hoping he would do. They came looking for a reason, any reason, to condemn him.

He blatantly did what those looking to accuse him hoped he would do: cured someone on the sabbath. They were not swayed by the mercy to which the Lord appealed. Jesus is the Mercy King. In our epistle reading from yesterday, taken from his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul asserted that to love your neighbor by doing good to her/him is the fulfillment of the Law (see Romans 13:8-10).

Of course, Paul takes this directly from Jesus’ teaching. You see, the Law was given to provide a means to the end of loving God with your entire being by loving your neighbor as you love yourself. There is no higher commandment. All other rules are subordinated to the Two Great Commandments (sticking with Saint Luke's Gospel see Luke 10:27-37).

I can genuinely love because I am first loved (see 1 John 4:10). Far from a transaction consisting of a quid pro quo, obedience is my loving response to God, who is love.

Year 2 Friday of the Twenty-second in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Psalm 37:3-6.27-28.39-40; Luke 5:33-39

It is impossible to separate Jesus from what we now call Judaism. Without Judaism, Christianity is incoherent. Today’s Gospel sets forth the kind of cognitive dissonance Christ often caused and that the Christian life still causes today.

Today, this dissonance, which is kind of a dialectic, is often a painful source of division. “Dialectic” is a big word. In this context, it refers to a way of thinking and argumentation through which what seem to be contradictions are shown to be paradoxes. A paradox (another big word) is something that looks like a contradiction but, on close examination is shown not to be.

For an example of this, we need look no farther than today’s Gospel. Instead of dedicating themselves to prayer and fasting on certain days of the week, as the Pharisees and even the Baptist’s disciples did, Jesus’ followers ate and drank. They feasted instead of fasted.

Jesus doesn’t say his disciples don’t fast because fasting is no longer an important spiritual discipline. He uses an analogy: do you fast at a wedding after the bridegroom arrives? No! You feast.

Jesus is the bridegroom, and his bride is the Church. Every Eucharist is a feast, a celebration, especially Sunday Eucharist. This is why Sundays don’t count as days of Lent. To arrive at 40 day of Lent, you must subtract Sundays.

The Church still fasts. Catholics are obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The normal way Fridays are still observed as days of penance is by abstaining from meat. But there is no Friday abstinence when a solemnity falls on a Friday.

Like all spiritual disciplines, fasting has rules. But when it becomes rule-bound, this discipline goes from being a means to becoming an end in itself. Turning these means into ends makes engaging in spiritual discipline worse than not doing them at all. The end to which all spiritual disciplines are but means is love of God and neighbor.As we read even the Old Testament: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (See Hosea 6:6 and Matthew 9:13).

As interesting and even important as this is, it isn’t the point of our reading. The point of our readings is about judging others. Saint Paul, who experienced plenty of judgment during his years of ministry, much of it quite harsh, wrote that he doesn’t even judge himself.

Many people think that self-judgment leads to more lenient judgment. While I suppose this is sometimes the case, I’ve found, in working with quite a few people over the past few decades, that a lot of people, probably most, judge themselves quite harshly. I know people who are very merciful towards others yet merciless towards themselves.

There’s a podcast I often listen to that is hosted by a pastor, Steve Cuss, who, along with his wife, is also a counselor. At the end of each episode that features a guest, Cuss has them endure what he calls “the gauntlet of anxiety-inducing questions.” The first of the three questions he asks is, “What’s one way that you treat others that if you started treating yourself the same way, your life would be better?"

Many times, the guest answers the question along the lines of, “My life would be better if I extended as much grace and mercy to myself as I do to others.” As Christians, we’re often sadly programmed to be quite merciless with ourselves from a young age.

Years ago, I participated in a memorial service for someone with whom I had the blessing to work as he returned to the church. Sadly and unexpectedly, Casey, who was a successful and much-beloved guy, took his own life. At each table setting at his memorial service was a card that read: “Be gentle with yourself and with others.” I keep this card on a shelf in my den as a reminder.

Time and again, Jesus shows us the face of the Father. God is not an angry tyrant. He is a merciful and loving Father, one who constantly works for your good. As scripture states it: “God is love” (1 John 4:8.16). God isn’t just love in a generic sense, but is agape, that is, self-sacrificing, self-giving love.

Christian morality makes no sense until you’ve experienced God’s love. Genuine morality is a loving response to the love of God. It is the fruit of a life grounded in and lived from God’s love, made manifest by loving your neighbor as you love yourself- don't too quickly forget not only to love yourself but let yourself be loved.

Year A Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 63:2-6.8-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

Following Jesus, being his disciple, is what it means to be a Christian. Where does Jesus lead those who follow him? To the cross.

While the Lord’s crucifixion was centuries away, the prophet Jeremiah experienced what the Lord, in today’s Gospel, tells his followers to expect. Despite himself, despite the ridicule he endures, Jeremiah can’t stop speaking. He can’t quit crying out. Try as he might to resist, he can’t quench the burning fire God places in his heart.

Now, we need to put what Jeremiah says into its proper context. He was calling Israel back to fidelity to her covenant with God. He warns his fellow Israelites of the consequences if they do not heed his inspired warnings. We know that the consequence was exile.

Despite his dire warnings, Jeremiah also spoke of hope through a new covenant God would establish. In addition to repatriation, God would, through this new thing, bring about internal transformation and a renewed relationship with his people.¹

It isn’t so much that God will directly punish them as it is that he will simply allow them to experience the natural consequences of their choices and actions. Even so, God remains merciful. God’s mercy is made evident by Israel’s return from exile. Instead of being absorbed into the Babylonian population, the Israelites maintained their unique identity as God’s people.

Being a Christian also means, as Saint Paul wrote in our passage from Romans, discerning God’s will. According to the apostle, the ability to know God’s will in the different circumstances life presents requires an internal transformation. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote about having the mind of Christ.²

It is by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, that one has the mind of Christ. Hence, a Christian life produces the fruits of the Spirit.³ One of the fruits of the Spirit is patience. Patience is also the fruit of the fourth Sorrowful mystery of the Rosary; the mystery itself being Jesus carrying the cross.

In the Salve Regina recited at the end of each Rosary (and that we frequently sing at Mass), we cry to our Blessed Mother as Eve’s “poor banished children,” making our way through “this vale of tears.” Being a Christian doesn’t spare anyone life’s sorrows, disappointments, and trials. The Lord’s response to Peter in today’s Gospel should dispel any notions of that.

You don’t have to go looking for crosses to carry. Inevitably, life will provide in this regard. Patience in suffering is made possible by hope. Hope comes not just from knowing or being told that Christ walks with you. It comes from experiencing his presence during times of trial and uncertainty.

Vaclav Havel, a Czech dissident during that country’s years under authoritarian rule and who later served his country as president, put it this way:

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. It is an orientation of the spirit and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons⁴

Taking Havel’s “take” on hope as her starting point, Tata Trapani observed:

Hope is the friend who sits with us in the dark, so we are not alone and shines for us so we can make it through. If we expect it to be more than this, we are doing it a disservice and we will always be crestfallen⁵

For Christians, hope is not merely a concept, an idea, an abstraction. Even to say that hope is the flower of faith, while a beautiful and, I believe, lovely and true image, is to pull up short. Logically, faith requires an object. In Christian terms, it requires a subject, that is, someone, not merely something.

For the Christian, this friend who sits with us in the dark and shines a light in that darkness has a name: Jesus Christ. And sometimes, more often than not I'd say, the Lord sends along friends, people, a person, someone willing to sit with us and shine a light in the darkness.

Turning to Havel again, hope “is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.”⁶ As human beings who bear the image of God, an image that cannot be eradicated, hope is a dimension of the soul. It is part of what it means to be human. Hope is that light, however dim or flickering, that keeps shining through the darkness, drawing our attention, even when completely distracted by circumstances.

Of course, the Lord doesn’t lead you to the cross to leave you there. He leads you there to take you beyond it, to life everlasting. But the only way beyond the cross is through it.

It’s easy to forget that Jesus’ cry of abandonment from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the beginning of Psalm 22.⁷ It’s even easier to forget that about two-thirds through, this Psalm turns from one of lament to one of joy, culminating with these verses:

For he has not spurned or disdained
the misery of this poor wretch,
Did not turn away from me,
but heard me when I cried out.
I will offer praise in the great assembly⁸

My dear friends, attend to hope. Foster hope in others. Be that friend willing to sit in the darkness, who, unlike Job’s friends, can offer encouragement even if only by your silent presence. Above all, patiently trust in the Lord, who is always true to his word. As Scripture exhorts: “Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.”⁹

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1 Jeremiah 31:31-34.^↩
2 1 Corinthians 2:16.^↩
3 See Galatians 5:22-23..^↩
4 Vaclav Havel. Disturbing the Peace. Trans. Paul Wilson, 181-182.^↩
5 Tata Trapani. “Vaclav Havel on Hope.” Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology blog. 24 August 2023.^↩
6 Disturbing the Peace, 181-182.^↩
7 Psalm 22:2.^↩
8 Psalm 22:25-26.^↩
9 1 Peter 5:7.^↩

Year A Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 19:9a.11-13a; Psalm 85:9-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

Last week’s Gospel found Jesus trying to get away to spend time in prayer. His plan was altered when, upon his arrival on the far shore, he encountered a vast crowd. Being “moved with pity for them,” the Lord cured the sick among them. After this, he performed a miracle by feeding thousands.¹

Remember that what prompted the Lord to seek out a deserted place where he could be by himself was the death of John the Baptist. It was grief that led him to desire to be alone with the Father. Our Gospel today picks up where the feeding of the 5,000 left off.

After his interaction with the multitude, the Lord still deeply desired to be alone to pray. This time he was able to go up the mountain by himself. The inspired author of Matthew seems to indicate that Jesus was on the mountain praying for quite a while. He planned to pray for so long, in fact, that he sent his disciples on their way while he stayed behind to pray.

When faced with life’s unexpected twists and turns, especially when faced with inexplicable tragedies, unexpected disappointments, and unforeseen setbacks, which leave you grief-stricken and/or feeling vulnerable and powerless, where do you go? To whom do you turn?

We live in an age when, even among people of faith, prayer easily becomes the last resort- what one does when there is nothing else s/he can possibly do. But the Lord’s first impulse upon learning of the violent death of the Baptist at the hands of Herod was to find a deserted place where he could be alone with the Father. Yet, even in his grief, he took time to serve others, even though that meant delaying his own plans.

More than healing the sick among the vast crowd, Jesus gave thanks to God, blessed it, and then broke the bread before distributing the food. This reminds us of something we hear each week in the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father. . .”²

Out of prudence, we normally tend to avoid absolutes like “always” and “everywhere.” Yet, when it comes to giving thanks to God, we are exhorted to have no such reluctance, no such reticence. Sometimes this is more of a provocation than it is a consolation. Yet, this is exactly what the Lord models for us.

Saint Paul sums this beautifully in his Second Letter to the Corinthians:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow³

My dear friends, as hard as this can be at times, this is what living out our baptism, living the Paschal Mystery looks like! As our Collect for today indicates, it is through Christ and “taught by the Holy Spirit” that “we dare to call [God] our Father.”⁴

After his time in prayer, Jesus set out to join his disciples, who’d already set sail across the Sea of Galilee. As they made their way across the water in the dark of night, they saw Jesus approaching them, walking on the water. Understandably, this frightened them.

The Lord assured them that it was indeed him and exhorted them, “do not be afraid.”⁵ Looking at this allegorically, the sea becomes the great mystery of life, wide, deep, often unpredictable, and at times quite scary. The boat is what we build to keep ourselves provisionally safe from the vicissitudes of life. But even in the relative safety of the boat, we know the power of storms at sea.

As long as the waters are calm, the boat seems a safe place. Those in the boat accompany one another during this sometimes-perilous crossing. As the wind whips up and waves start to rise and crash, here comes the Lord, improbably walking toward us. It is Jesus who transforms the waters into the vastness of God's love and mercy. He says to you, "Come."

Peter’s stepping out is what Paul wrote about when he insisted that it is by receiving God’s encouragement in our afflictions that we are able to encourage others experiencing affliction. It is by sharing in Christ’s cross that you already share in his resurrection. You need not even fear death. God, who is love, is stronger than death!

Peter knows full well that he cannot walk on the water on his own. He needs the Lord's help to do so. Jesus is all too happy to say to his eager follower, “Come.”⁶ Lo and behold, Peter steps out of the boat and begins to make his way across the water to Jesus.

Losing his focus on Christ, Peter suddenly becomes all too aware of himself. He begins to sink. But even then, Jesus immediately stretched out his hand and caught Peter. Fear, which is so tied up with focus on self, is often what holds us back.

The Lord repeatedly says to his disciples, “Do not be afraid.” In Saint Matthew’s Gospel alone, he says it three times. Besides today’s passage, he says this to Peter, James, and John after his Transfiguration, when they saw Moses and Elijah and heard the Father’s voice.⁷ Finally, the Risen Lord tells the women who came to the tomb, “Do not be afraid! Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there.”⁸

True prayer, the kind of prayer Jesus no doubt engaged in while on the mountain, results in self-forgetting. The consolation we offer to those who are afflicted in the midst of our own afflictions also requires self-forgetting, which arises from true prayer.

The sea of life is wide, deep, and unpredictable. We never know what tomorrow may bring, good or bad. And so, like Peter stepping out of the boat, let us squarely face reality by making an act of faith. Let’s do it by borrowing words from a famous prayer of Thomas Merton:

I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone⁹

And so, with Peter, we implore: “Lord, save me!”¹⁰

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1 See Matthew 14:13-21.^↩
2 Roman Missal. Preface VI of the Sundays in Ordinary Time, sec. 57.^↩
3 2 Corthinthians 1:3-5.^↩
4 Roman Missal. Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.^↩
5 Matthew 14:27.^↩
6 Matthew 14:29.^↩
7 See Matthew 17:1-8.^↩
8 See Matthew 28:1-10.^↩
9 Thomas Merton. “The Merton Prayer,” from Thoughts in Solitude.^↩
10 Matthew 14:30.^↩

Year A Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jer 20:10-13; Ps 69:8-10.14.17.33-34; Rom 5:12-15; Matt 10:26-33

In his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul asks, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”¹ If you take experience as your guide, or even today's first reading and Gospel, this question may not be as rhetorical as it seems. In short, there is plenty of opposition, both individually and collectively.

In our first reading, Jeremiah faces the reality that his former friends have now become his enemies. Listening to his every word, watching his every move, they wait for him to say or do something for which they can condemn and attack him. Nonetheless, the prophet, mining the same vein as the apostle, is convinced that God is with him.

Both Paul and Jeremiah speak in ultimate, not temporal terms. This is indicated by what Jesus tells the twelve in today’s Gospel. As he prepares them for the mission, he tells them they will face opposition and exhorts them not to fear those who might kill their bodies, reassuring them that they cannot kill their souls.

Our souls, the aspect of our being that bears God’s image, are immediately created by God and belong to God. Because it isn't yours, you can't sell your soul. Everyone’s soul is precious to God. Everyone is loved by God without exception.

I know we’re used to hearing things like, “If everyone is special, then no one is special.” I suppose there is a sense in which this is true. This reversibility depends on the adjective, doesn’t it? It also depends on context. For example, it's true that everyone is unique. And so, it makes perfect sense to say that God loves everyone without exception.

It’s important never to lose sight of the reality that you are included in everyone. To catch at least a glimpse, not only of the fact that God loves you, but also of the all-encompassing and unconditional way he loves you, even fleetingly, is life-changing. Father’s Day seems like a great day to contemplate the perfect love of God the Father.

Being human, we’re weak and forgetful. And so, it’s important to experience God’s unconditional love over and over again. It’s especially important to experience God's love during times of grief, pain, and suffering, that is, during life's inevitable lows. Grief, pain, and suffering can result from events beyond your control, from things done to you by others (like Jeremiah), or from personal failures.

I know quite a few people today dislike images like this, perhaps seeing them as "very seventies." But I think such pictures convey, as they were designed to, something important: even during our worst times, Christ is with us

None of these weakens or alters God’s love for you in the slightest. In an important sense, “grace” is merely a name for the many ways God makes his love manifest in our lives. Grace cannot be earned. God’s love cannot be earned. There’s no need to earn what you always already have. As we heard in our second reading, the grace of God overflows from the cross of Christ.

Seeing a crucifix should always remind us that God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son. In no way is God’s grace made more manifest in our lives than through the mercy given us in Christ. Christ’s cross is the mercy seat. It is the throne of the King of Mercy.

We can truly love only because we are first loved.² Because of our distorted perception, it's hard to make God's love the foundation of our daily lives, especially when this means bearing the cross.

While we hope for, expect, and even eagerly await something far better, it is this life with all its joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, suffering and elation that prepares us for an eternity in God’s kingdom. This is why scripture urges us to encounter life’s various trials with joy. Yes, trials can and do test faith. But testing, scripture teaches, “produces perseverance.” Persevering through “various trials” perfects faith.³

Perfection of faith by persevering through trials, far from being a magic formula, is about facing reality head-on, knowing that God is with you, come what may. It enables you to see for yourself not just that God is with you but how God makes himself present when you’re struggling. This experience makes something that is all too easily abstract very concrete.

During his recent Apostolic Journey to Spain, Pope Leo warned against the danger of efforts, usually well-meaning, to “spiritualize pain, superficially attributing it to 'God's will' or to some mysterious plan of his.” To do this, he noted, runs the risk of minimizing or silencing suffering, thus hurting people. God neither wants nor wills human suffering.

Yet, suffering exists, it’s real, as we all know. Christ, the Holy Father insisted, “carries [suffering] with us and invites us to trust in him with perseverance,” hopefully noting that “with God, life is always reborn.”⁴

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1 Romans 8:31.^↩
2 1 John 4:10.^↩
3 James 1:2-4.^↩
4 “Christianity is not about perfection, no one is defined by suffering, mistakes, pope says,” Carol Gltaz, Catholic News Service, 11 June 2026.^↩

Year 2 Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Peter 4:7-13; Psalm 96:10-13; Mark 11:11-26

There is a lot that can be gleaned from our readings this morning. But it’s necessary to focus on only one. At least according to Jesus, forgiving others “against whom you have a grievance” is necessary for your prayers to be answered.¹ Each day we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” thus accepting the other thing Jesus teaches in today’s Gospel: that forgiving others is a condition for receiving the Father’s forgiveness.

Forgive as you are forgiven. Refuse to forgive and forfeit the forgiveness necessary for eternal life. It’s really that simple. As C.S. Lewis observed: “To be Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” He then observes: “This is hard.”²

As a Christian, it is also important to try living in such a way that you don’t make other people have to forgive you. It’s easy to become so focused on what you want that you fail to consider others in your quest to obtain it. Being thoughtful and considerate of others is particularly important. As we collectively abandon civility, these virtues are increasingly rare.

In our reading from 1 Peter, we heard the exhortation: “Be hospitable to one another without complaining.”³ Value every person’s gifts, especially those put at the service of all. As Saint Paul insisted in his Letter to the Philippians, “humbly regard others as more important than yourselves.”⁴ This is perhaps the best measure of spiritual and emotional maturity.

To be like Jesus, you must want, you must desire to be like Him. Desiring this means not receiving these teachings sentimentally. Rather, you must let yourself be provoked. In its most literal sense, a provocation is something for (pro) your calling (vocation). Don’t be content to remain a non-fruit-bearing fig tree and certainly don’t become a cursed one.

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1 Mark 11:25.^↩
2 C.S. Lewis. The Weight of Glory (Simon & Schuster, 1996), pgs. 135-136.^↩
3 1 Peter 4:9.^↩
4 Philippians 2:3.

Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1.24.29-31.34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7.12-13; John 20:19-23

In Greek, “pentecost” means fiftieth. Jews observe Pentecost, known to them more familiarly as Shavuot, fifty days after Passover. Shavuot commemorates God giving the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai.

It was to celebrate Shavuot that so many Jews from all over the known world were gathered in Jerusalem, as recounted in the first Christian Pentecost found in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. All four canonical Gospels, especially the synoptics (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke), are quite clear that Christ’s passion and crucifixion took place during Passover. This is why this first Pentecost precisely coincided with Shavuot.

This year, Shavuot and Pentecost very nearly coincided. Jews throughout the world observed Shavuot on Friday, 22 May. So, a mere two days’ difference. As Christians, we must never lose sight of the deeply Jewish origins of our religion. Without Judaism, Christianity makes no sense at all!

Christians also need to recognize that our first Pentecost was the undoing of the Tower of Babel, when all human languages were confounded, thus confining people to language groups. This led to the existence of ethnicities and nations. In short, it meant a divided humanity.

With their Spirit-given ability to speak unknown foreign languages and proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ to all present, the apostles were able to begin God's work uniting humanity. This unification is not under a national banner, not by means of heredity, not by virtue of language. But under Christ's kingship, thus making God's kingdom present in the world.

The Catholic Church is just that, catholic, global, transcending everything that tends to divide people. Uniting people in and through the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is the beginning of the Church. As we heard last Sunday, our mission is to proclaim the Gospel, make disciples, and baptize people. The Holy Spirit is the Lord, the Giver of life. Being the Church of Christ also means being the Church of the Holy Spirit.

In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul first posits his antithesis between the letter and the spirit of the Law. In the context of writing about his own ministry, the apostle insisted, “the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.”¹ An antithesis is not a contradiction. And so, antithesis refers to an inherent tension, not a negation.

In what way are spirit and letter antithetical? By “letter,” Saint Paul refers to the Law, the 613 rules (prescriptions and proscriptions) he would’ve been very familiar with as a former Pharisee. For Paul, the purpose of the Law is to reveal sin by our inability to obey perfectly. Hence, the Law cannot grant eternal life.

By “spirit,” the apostle refers to the Holy Spirit, who brings life through faith in Christ, enabling believers to live in accordance with God’s will and to experience spiritual transformation. To live by the Spirit, then, isn’t simply to do whatever you want. It is to have your will increasingly conformed to God’s will. So, what you want is what God wants.

Spiritual transformation results not only in doing God’s will (i.e., “keeping God’s commandments”). Loving God with your entire being and loving your neighbor as yourself needs to become what you want, even what you long to do. In other words, love because you are first loved. To be holy, to be like Christ, is to love perfectly.

As Christians, we are called to rise above what our natural response might be when faced with life’s challenges. It isn’t easy to forgive, to do good to those who have done you wrong, to love and pray for your enemies. By God’s grace, imparted by the Holy Spirit, Christians are to live supernaturally.

There is a close liturgical connection between Ascension, which is normally observed forty days after Easter, and Pentecost because there is a close theological connection between the Lord’s ascension and the Holy Spirit’s descent.

During Saint John’s Last Supper Discourse, the Lord tells those who believe in Him that they will do greater works than the ones He performed “because I am going to the Father.”² Later, in the same discourse, Jesus says that unless He goes, the Spirit “will not come to you.”³

It is the Holy Spirit who effects the sacraments, that is, confects the Eucharist, etc. As our Gospel indicates, the first gift the Risen Lord gives to His Church, as He breathes the Holy Spirit, is the forgiveness of sins. In the Creeds, we confess our belief in “the forgiveness of sins.”

It is the forgiveness of sins that allows us to live by the Spirit, not the letter of the Law. It is the Holy Spirit who guides us to an ever deeper understanding of what God has revealed in Christ. Hence, living by the spirit and not the letter is the work of God through the Holy Spirit.

In his Letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul insisted that “if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” Life in the Spirit, he goes on to write, is manifest by “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”⁴ Let us strive to live in the Spirit and thus enjoy the glorious freedom of the children of God.

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1 2 Corinthians 3:6.^↩
2 John 14:12.^↩
3 John 16:7.^↩
4 See Galatians 5:18-25.^↩

Year 2 Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings: Acts 25:13b-21; Psalm 103:1-2.11-12.19-20; John 21:15-19

In today’s Gospel, the Risen Lord asks Peter, who betrayed Him three times, if he loves Him. He asks him this not once, not twice, but three times. The first two times the Lord asks Peter, He uses the appropriate form of the Greek verb agape. He switches gears the third time.

Agape is self-giving, self-sacrificing love. In 1 John 4, in the span of eight verses, we hear twice, “God is love.”¹Agape is the word used. Unlike most Western languages, such as English or even Latin, which feature a single word, “love” or, in Latin, amor, to cover a vast terrain of human experience, Greek has four love words: agape, eros, philia, and storge. Each word refers to a different kind of love. At least in Greek, the trivializing "Love is love" doesn't hold.

Eros, of course, refers to romantic love. Storge refers to familial love found among close family members, with a strong emphasis on loyalty- blood is thicker than water and all that (for Christians, water- referring to baptism- is thicker than blood). Much more than a lesson in Greek vocabulary, this understanding is vital for grasping what happens in this passage.

Philia is brotherly love, referring to deep and abiding friendship. Aristotle thought this was the highest form of love. Each of the three times Christ asks Peter if he loves Him, Peter replies with philos/philia. This includes the third time, when Peter, clearly growing frustrated, says, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”²

But the third time the Lord asks Peter, “Do you love me,” He meets Peter where he’s at, so to speak. The Lord does this by using philia (philels, to be exact). What this shows is that, even now, after encountering the Risen Lord, Peter’s love for Him is not yet perfect. Will it be made perfect? If so, how? We receive the answer when the Lord tells Peter,

when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go³

The inspired author, in an editorial note, looking back across the distance of several decades, likely referring to Peter being crucified upside down in Rome, tells us that the Lord “said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.”⁴ The author then writes the Lord’s final word of this exchange: “Follow me.”⁵

You and I are also perfected in love by taking up our cross and following Jesus.

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1 See 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
2 John 21:17.^↩
3 John 21:18.^↩
4 John 21:19.^↩
5 John 21:19.^↩

Ascension of the Lord

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47:23-.6-9; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20

Today we are celebrating Ascension Thursday. For those who do not know, Catholics throughout most of the world, including many Catholics in the United States, observed the Lord’s Ascension last Thursday. Ascension is celebrated on Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter because that is forty days after Easter Sunday.

Pentecost follows ten days later, fifty days after Easter. Like Easter, Pentecost, which is the Church’s second most important liturgical celebration, is always on Sunday. The word “Pentecost” means fiftieth. Maybe if we called Ascension Tessarakost, we would not be able to move it- tessarkost is “fortieth” in Greek.

Forty days is important because in Saint Luke’s account of the Lord’s Ascension found at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which should be considered as something like the fifth Gospel, a period of forty days is mentioned:

He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God¹

The Risen Lord speaking to His closest disciples about the kingdom of God during this forty-day period is often referred to as “the Gospel of the forty days.” So, moving this solemnity throws our liturgical math off a little.

According to the Church, divine revelation is communicated to us via two interrelated but distinct modes: scripture and tradition. The Gospel of the forty days is about what is handed on through the Church’s tradition.

Despite the Lord speaking to them about the kingdom of God, it’s clear from our first reading that His closest disciples still did not understand what He taught them. This is why they ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”²

Their failure to grasp what they were taught led the disciples to ask that question. Short answer: No! Longer answer: No, not even maybe. God’s kingdom, which, in and through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is already present in the world, even if only in the form of a mustard seed, is not identifiable with any earthly kingdom, nation, or domain. This is fundamental Christian teaching!

Sadly, many Christians today are similarly confused. Speaking their confusion, the Lord refers them to Pentecost, when, just a few days hence, they “will be baptized with the holy Spirit.”³ It is then that they will begin to understand better.

This is why Blessed Pope Pius XII, in 1954, promulgated an entire encyclical letter on the Church’s supranationality. Being Catholic, as the word “Catholic” implies, means having an allegiance that transcends any ethnic or national identity.⁴ As the Church father, Justin Martyr insisted, because of our faith, Christians make the best citizens.⁵

Pentecost is the undoing of Babel and the beginning of the Church, which includes women and men of every race, tongue, people, and nation. Look around you, even here in our parish, you'll see the Church's catholicity.

Christ ascended so that He could send the Holy Spirit. By means of the Holy Spirit, the Lord can be closer to you than if He had remained bodily. The Holy Spirit is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence among, in, and through us. It is the Holy Spirit who transforms the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood.

It is the Holy Spirit who makes Christ present in and through all the sacraments. Along with the Eucharist, baptism anchors the sacramental economy of grace. It is holy baptism that allows you to receive Christ in Holy Communion.

Baptism impels us (or at least it should) to share the Gospel. In today's Gospel, the Lord gives His Church our mission. But that mission is not merely to baptize people. We are to make them disciples. Disciple-making, something with which the Church really struggles. It is a core ministry to engage in formation for transformation into Chritslikeness.

It’s been great to read so many news stories about record numbers of baptisms this Easter. This can easily become just a numbers game. In the end, numbers don’t matter. The Church’s retention rate for adults who join through OCIA isn’t very good. Much the same can be said for the young people who pass through sacramental preparation programs.

These are just some of the indications that we need to focus on making disciples, on becoming disciples, people who want to be like Christ. Part of becoming a disciple is to take up the Great Commission, given in today’s Gospel. It is the mission of the Church until the end of the age. Hence, being a disciple is to be a missionary disciple.

As the Lord’s disciples learned from the angel as they stood there looking up as Jesus ascended, being Christian isn’t about standing around staring at the sky and passively waiting for Christ’s return in a strikingly similar way to His ascending. Christian disciples, as Saint Paul insists, play to win.⁶ We don’t play merely not to lose.

Christ’s disciples are to make God’s kingdom a present reality and not view it as a dream deferred, as pie in the sky in the by and by. We need to level our gaze and bring good news to a world in such dire need of it. At the end of this Mass and every Mass, let us go in peace glorifying the Lord by our lives.

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1 Acts 1:3.^↩
2 Acts 1:6.^↩
3 Acts 1:5.^↩
4 Pope Pius XII. Encyclical Letter Ad Sinarum Gentem [On the Supranationality of the Church]. 7 October 1954.^↩
5 Justin Martyr. First Apology, Chapter 4.^↩
6 1 Corinthians 9:24.^↩

Year 2 Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Readings: Acts 15:22-31; Psalm 57:8-10.12; John 15:12-17

Along with “thy will be done,” having no greater love than laying down one’s life for a friend, is perhaps the most overused and misused of Jesus’ words.¹ We can probably also include “judge not” on this list, a different topic for another day.² When it comes to dying for another, we must keep in mind the unique efficacy of Christ’s sacrificial death.

Recognizing the unique nature of Christ’s sacrifice is vital to grasping what Jesus is saying. God’s love, given to us in Christ and poured out by the Holy Spirit, remains even when we fail to do what the Lord commands. These are what keep us from using Jesus’ words in vain.

What is it that the Lord commands us to do that, if and when we do it, we are His friends? Love one another as He loves us.³ But let’s not fall into the trap of separating these two things. To love others, to love your neighbor, to make yourself a neighbor, especially to those in need, is to lay your life down for them. In this passage, “love” translates the Greek word agape, which denotes self-giving, sacrificial love.

In our Gospel passage, Jesus is not talking about two separate things. He is not even talking about two different but related things, one following from the other. He is saying you lay down your life for others more by how you live than by any willingness to die. You lay down your life by loving them the way Christ loves you.

In his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul noted that “only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.”He went on to state, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”⁵

The Cistercian monk, Father M. Louis, more famously known by his birth name, Thomas Merton, in a letter written to Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, summarizes Jesus’ teaching very well:

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy⁶

This is how you become a friend of Jesus.

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1 Matthew 26:42; Luke 22:42; John 15:13.^↩
2 Matthew 7:1.^↩
3 John 15:12.^↩
4 Romans 5:7.^↩
5 Romans 5:8.^↩
6 Cited in Catholic Voices in a World on Fire, by Stephen Hand, pg 180. Lulu Press, 2005.^↩

Memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker

Readings: Genesis 1:26-2:3; Psalm 90:3-4.12-14.16; Matthew 13:54-58

In 1955, Pope Pius XII made 1 May the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. He did this so it would fall on the same day as International Workers Day, usually called “May Day.” In the eighteenth century, May Day became a secular celebration of workers’ rights. In short, May Day was a major celebration for the communists in Communist countries and for Communist parties outside the Soviet sphere, especially in Western Europe.

By inaugurating the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, the Holy Father wanted to emphasize the Christian understanding of the necessity, importance, and dignity of work. Addressing the Catholic Association of Italian Workers on 1 May 1955, Pius XII, speaking about Saint Joseph, insisted:

There could not be a better protector to help you penetrate the spirit of the Gospel into your life…From the Heart of the Man-God, Savior of the world, this spirit flows into you and into all men; but it is certain that no worker has ever been as perfectly and deeply penetrated by it as the putative Father of Jesus, who lived with Him in the closest intimacy and commonality of family and work¹

Adding, “So, if you want to be close to Christ, We also today repeat to you ‘Ite Ioseph‘: Go to Joseph!”² The antiphon for the Invitatory for today’s Memorial is: “Come let us worship Christ the Lord who was honored to be known as the son of a carpenter.”³

The Church’s understanding of the integrating nature of human work is grounded in the command given in Genesis to be stewards of God’s good earth and to engage in productive labor.

In his encyclical on the dignity of work, Laborem Exercens, Pope Saint John Paul II, a man, like our pastor, all too familiar with the oppressive nature of communism, observed:

the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide [social] changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society⁴

Saint Joseph the Worker, by Ade Bethune

Let’s not forget that in Poland, it was the labor union Solidarity, named after one of the fundamental elements of the Church’s social teaching, that was instrumental in bringing about the freedom necessary for workers to enjoy the fruit of honest labor. Labor unions, which the Church continues to support, are great examples of living out the Church’s social teaching. Unions seek to safeguard human dignity by pursuing the common good, building solidarity, and being self-governing organizations, they also exemplify subsidiarity.

Since Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which kicked off the Church’s modern social teaching, the Church has sought to advocate for worker's rights, especially against often greedy wealthy interests. Rerum Novarum marked the Church’s somewhat delayed response to the Industrial Revolution.

With the digital revolution now culminating with the development of artificial intelligence, which poses as many or more threats than it does human benefits, it is no accident that our current pope took the papal name Leo. Since shortly after becoming Roman Pontiff, Pope Leo XIV has been at work on an encyclical addressing technology and artificial intelligence.

The encyclical is meant to serve the same purpose as Rerum Novarum for our time; it is projected to be entitled Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity).⁵ Pope Leo XIV deems it necessary for the Church to contribute to the pressing discussion about technological development by evaluating AI through the lens of integral human development, and to assess its current and future impact on human society.

By tirelessly working to protect and provide for his family while striving to listen to and obey God, Saint Joseph serves as a role model. Saint Joseph the Worker. Pray for us.

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1 Pope Pius XII. Speech to Catholic Association of Italian Workers. 1 May 1955.^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Liturgy of the Hours. Proper of Saints, 1 May, Invitatory Antiphon for the Memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker.^↩
4 Pope John Paul II. Encyclical Letter On Human Work (Laborem Exercens), sec. 1.^↩
5 Daniel Esparza. “'Magnifica Humanitas’: Pope Leo XIV’s Rerum Novarum moment” on Aleteia. 2 January 2026.^↩

Year 2 Friday of the Third Week of Easter

This is longer than my homily. In this format, there are a few things I wanted to expand on.

Readings: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 117:1bc-2; John 6:52-59

It’s funny how so many people who take the entire Bible quite literally, thus reading many of its books in a flat, two-dimensional way, refuse to take the text literally in some instances when it is, in fact, meant to be taken more or less literally. Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse, found in the sixth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel, is one such instance.

It’s clear from the Greek, the language in which the entire New Testament was originally written, that when the Lord spoke of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, He was speaking in what we might call real terms. His words, as the reaction of those who heard them clearly shows, are shocking. This is why some of them ask, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?”¹

Consider, too, that the setting is the synagogue in Capernaum. What Jesus says in this passage is not just mind-blowing but, at least to Jewish ears, maybe even downright blasphemous. Even if He were not talking about His own flesh and blood, or what sounded like human flesh and blood, Jews do not drink or even eat blood. It is strictly forbidden. So, let's not be too harsh on those who heard these words and were, well, disburbed by them.

Jesus says this before He institutes the Eucharist at the Last Supper. It also bears noting that, unlike the institution narratives in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the inspired author of Saint John’s Gospel writes about the Lord washing the feet of His closest disciples.² What is important to note is that, despite the literal nature of these words, at the words of consecration, the dead body of Jesus does not plop down on the altar to be divvied up.

Theologically, the two most difficult matters to address are the Blessed Trinity and the Holy Eucharist, perhaps followed by the hypostatic union. The reason why is that these are deep, fundamental, and unfathomable mysteries of Christian faith.

First off, it's important to start with the reality that the Lord is not dead but resurrected and alive. Being truly human and resurrected, He has a body. Second, if we understand the consecrated bread and wine to be transformed into Christ’s body and blood in a capharnaitic way, considering His resurrection, there would be only a very limited amount of Him to consume. In the context of the Eucharist, “capharnaitic” is often referred to as “physicalism.”

In this context, "physicalism" means that, rather than understanding the mode of Christ’s Eucharistic presence in a sacramental and substantial way, it is understood in what can be be described as a gross and primitive way. In fact, physicalist understandings of the Eucharist, reported miracles notwithstanding, are condemned by the Church. Rather, transubstantiation refers to a change in substance while the accidents remain.

A substantial change, which, in the Eucharist, is effected by the Holy Spirit, is a real change. This substantial change is not a physical change. In metaphysical terms, one might say in this way the Holy Spirit makes Christ's presence more real.

Believing in Christ's real presence in the Eucharist is what Aquinas would call a truth of faith. It is of faith because it is something we know only because God revealed it, this is also makes it, theologically speaking, a mystery. But even truths of faith need to be explored by human reason. After all, faith seeks understanding. It's important these things makes sense without deviating from divine revelation. This is one reason why we need the Church.

One of the reasons the Church is so clear on this is because during her earliest centuries, Christians were often accused of engaging in cannibalism. No doubt, this is what the people gathered in the Capernaum synagogue thought Jesus was suggesting.

Let’s not forget that Christ is really present in the Eucharistic celebration (with no celebration, there is no Eucharist- divorcing the Blessed Sacrament from the Mass is a huge mistake) in four ways: in the gathering of the baptized, in the person of the priest, in the proclamation of the scriptures, and in the transformed elements of bread and wine.³

Because the Holy Spirit is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence, the Eucharist is the most real encounter with the Risen Lord one can have. It is through Holy Communion and all the sacraments that Christ gives Himself to us totally. Such an encounter, as Saint Paul’s encounter shows, is life-changing. It is notable that after he was baptized, Paul ate and regained his strength. Is there a detectable Eucharistic undertone in this? Maybe.

It is important to grasp that, at its core, to believe in the real, sacramental presence of Christ in the Eucharist is to believe in His Resurrection from the dead. By exercising His priestly ministry in the Mass, our Risen Lord makes present His triumph over death. This is why “whoever eats this bread will live forever.”⁴

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1 John 6:52.^↩
2 See John 13:1-17.^↩
3 Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium), sec. 7^↩
4 John 6:58.^↩

Year 2 Friday of the Second Week of Easter

Readings: Acts 5:34-42; Psalm 27:1.4.13-14; John 6:1-15

“And all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus” (Acts 5:42). Indeed, Jesus is the Christ, the Christos, the Messiah, Meshiach. Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God, true God from true God. He didn’t just rise from the dead. He is is risen and alive!

That’s a lot of words! Isn’t that the risk we run, letting what passes for faith, which we often reduce to mere belief, become mostly or even exclusively words? Words found in Sacred Scripture are given to inspire us, to encourage, to challenge, and to provoke us. This is why faith is a verb, not a noun. Faith is action, not description.

While we should appreciate Gamaliel's balanced approach, it should also be noted that he seemed to raise no objection to the flogging of the apostles. Maybe he thought that would dampen their zeal in proclaiming the itinerant from Nazareth as some kind of savior or as the Messiah. Rather than cool apostolic fervor, the trial, rebuke, and flogging only inflamed the twelve more. But, according to Gamaliel’s criterion, their message must have come from God.

While it’s true that prudence governs all the virtues, prudence should never be used as an excuse not to proclaim Christ. Saint Francis of Assisi, the deacon and great evangelist, who certainly preached Christ in both word and deed, never said, “Preach the Gospel and if necessary, use words.” Francis was ordained as a deacon to gain faculties to preach. Preach he did, as well as engage in selfless works of charity.

Rabban Gamaliel, Medieval Miniature, courtesy of Wikipedia

The other day, driving down Orchard, I was behind a car that had on its back bumper a sticker that read: “If Jesus had owned a gun, he’d still be alive today.” Talk about an exercise not only in missing the point but in missing the most important point. Jesus, armed with power that made and sustains all there is, love, agape, is not dead but is alive!

There is a huge difference between thinking of Jesus as alive rather than someone who lived and died a long time ago, as merely a historical figure. It makes an even bigger difference to have a life-changing encounter with the Risen Lord. This is possible because He ascended and sent the Holy Spirit, who is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence. It is the Holy Spirit who effects the sacraments.

By gathering, listening to the scriptures, and receiving Holy Communion, you encounter the Risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. In each Mass, as the scriptures are proclaimed and Holy Communion is received, the Word becomes flesh in and through us. We are sent forth to constantly proclaim the Christ, Jesus, to be His presence, His hands, eyes, ears, feet, heart.

Make no mistake, Christ is king, but not one in the mold of King David, as the crowd and even His disciples imagined. He is king of a kingdom that, while it is not of this world, is both in and for the world. It is manifested in the world now as a mustard seed, as yeast, as a sign of contradiction to worldly powers, which often chafe at when it is presented.

The power of Christ is the power of self-giving love. There is no better sign, no better symbol, no more meaningful demonstration of this than the sacramentum caritatis, the mysterion agape, the sacrament of self-giving love, that is, the Eucharist.

Divine Mercy Chaplet w/ Exposition

By the mercy of God, we come before our Risen Lord, present in the Eucharist. His Eucharistic presence is a present, a gift flowing from Divine Mercy. In a few moments, praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, given mystically to Saint Faustina Kowalska, we implore the Father for the sake of His Son’s sorrowful passion, to have mercy on us and on the whole world.

By praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy together, we intercede for the world before the Father, through the Son, in the power of their Holy Spirit. We ask God to have mercy on the world and on us. Yesterday, Pope Leo held a Rosary Vigil for peace Saint Peter’s Basilica. At same time locally, there was a Rosary procession in Salt Lake City, which began and ended at our cathedral. This gathering is an extension of the Holy Father’s vigil.

In a memorandum issued last Thursday, Bishop Solis directed that in all prayerful gatherings of the faithful in our diocese this Divine Mercy Sunday, we pray for peace throughout the world and for respect for the human dignity of migrants and for their safety. In obedience to our bishop, this Chaplet of Divine Mercy is offered for those two intentions. Of course, it is right and fitting to add your own intentions to these communal intentions, just as at Mass.

Evil is real. I am not sure I agree with the assertion that evil is merely a lack. Evil seems to me, at least at times, to have some substance. In a world full of chaos and uncertainty, where, as Pope Leo noted in his new year’s address to the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, war, with all its concomitant suffering, seems to once again be in vogue. This causes many to wonder if evil has any limit.

Toward the end of his life, Pope Saint John Paul II, who was instrumental in Saint Faustina’s canonization and who established the Second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday, wrote about the limit God imposes on evil.

John Paul II insisted you can’t “think of the limit placed by God himself upon the various forms of evil without reference to the mystery of Redemption.” He then asked, “Could the mystery of Redemption be the response to that historical evil which, in different forms, continually recurs in human affairs?” Before jumping too quickly to give a facile answer to a complex question, he annunciated some of the evils. All too easily, he insisted, we can come to see

the evil of concentration camps, of gas chambers, of police cruelty, of total war, and of oppressive regimes - evil which, among other things, systematically contradicts the message of the Cross - it can seem...that such evil is more powerful than any good

He then urged us to pay close attention to history. Doing so, “we discover that this is precisely where the victorious presence of Christ's Cross is most clearly revealed.” Against a dark background the light shines forth more brightly. For “those subjected to systematic evil, there remains only Christ and his Cross as a source of spiritual self-defense, as a promise of victory.”

According to John Paul II, it is the Cross of Christ that “marks the divine limit placed upon evil, it is for this reason only: because thereby evil is radically overcome by good, hate by love, death by resurrection.”¹

It is only by bearing your cross daily and giving your life in loving service to others that you can experience resurrection, that is, in the words of Saint Augustine to the wealthy Roman widow Proba, life that is truly life!

Take courage, by His death and resurrection, Christ conquered evil and death. By His passion, death, and resurrection, Christ not only responds to all the evil in world, He vanquishes it. Christus resurrexit, quia Deus caritas est - Christ is resurrected because God is love.

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1 All citations from John Paul II. Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of the Millennium, 19-20. Random House: 2005.^↩

Year A Second Sunday of Easter

Readings: Acts 2:42-47; Ps 118:2-4.13-15.22-24; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

During this Easter season, both in the Sunday lectionary and for the Office of Readings (one of the offices that comprise the Liturgy of the Hours) the Church provides us with readings from 1 Peter. This inspired text focuses on the suffering endured by many early Christians.

Because we are in Year A of the three-year cycle of Sunday readings, we read from 1 Peter for six consecutive Sundays. While some readings feature it more explicitly, five out of the six broach the subject of suffering.

As the Buddha observed: to live is to suffer. As Christ painstakingly showed: to love is to suffer. But to love is also what it means to be truly alive. Theologian Herbert McCabe observed: “if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.”¹ While it is abundantly clear that suffering, in its various forms, is an inherent part of life, it’s important to note that God does not cause human suffering. On the contrary, humanity caused Christ’s suffering and death.

Both in His suffering and descent into hell, Christ retrieved human suffering from the void of meaninglessness. As Msgr Luigi Giussani insisted: “He mounted the Cross to free us from the fascination with nothingness, to free us from the fascination with appearances, with the ephemeral.” It is because the Lord “was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”² Experience makes abstractions real.

In and through Christ, “the alchemy of grace can turn the lead of suffering into the gold of glory.”³ Being a Christian means steadfastly refusing to let suffering have the last word. Christians are incorrigible about this because we believe in the resurrection. This is what our epistle reading tells us: we rejoice in the “resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” the source of our “living hope.”⁴

When accepted rather than refused or denied (both of which are futile responses) and united with Christ’s suffering, your suffering can be the means by which your faith is strengthened, your hope enlivened, and your charity increased.

Living this way, which cannot and does not attenuate the seriousness of suffering or dull its pain, will result in “praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”⁵ When you think about it, not letting your suffering diminish your living hope is the very revelation of Jesus Christ, just as the crucifixion is the deepest revelation of God’s very self.

Today’s Gospel has two distinct parts. In the first part, we hear what is held to be Christ’s institution of the Sacrament of Penance (i.e., confession). In part two, we hear Thomas’ merciful encounter with Christ. So, we might say that within one and the same Gospel reading the Church puts before us faith and doubt.

What ties faith and doubt together inextricably is the reality of suffering. Nothing produces doubt about God’s goodness, God’s power, or even God’s very existence more than suffering. But rather than denying suffering or seeing it as God’s punishment for wayward humanity, or an individual who has misbehaved, or inflicting divine wrath upon yourself, the doubt caused by suffering is vital and perhaps even necessary for faith.

According to our epistle reading, doubt caused by suffering is what makes your faith “more precious” and more enduring “than gold that is… tested by fire.”⁶ Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Certainty is the opposite of faith. In the context of suffering, it is people who can always produce a reason for suffering, usually by invoking pious platitudes,which grate. As Rich Mullins sang: “I know it would not hurt any less/Even if it could be explained.”⁷ Suffering is a mystery because there is no explanation that eases our pain.

It is very important to point out something our Gospel for Divine Mercy Sunday makes very clear: the Risen Lord still bears the wounds of his crucifixion. This is perhaps the best explanation of suffering available to us. It is God telling us he has suffered with us and continues to suffer with and even through us.

Thomas, who sadly remains stuck by the descriptor “Doubting,” isn’t faithless. Anyone who has attentively read the fourth Gospel knows that he is faithful start to finish. His experience of the Lord’s suffering and death certainly caused his hope to wane. Most likely, Thomas was heartbroken, despondent, grieving.

Maybe what he was told by the others simply seemed to be good to be true, something he wanted so badly to believe but couldn’t face the risk of disappointment if turned out not to be. Too often, we reduce Jesus’ closest disciples to caricatures, to two-dimensional figures, rather than complex human beings like us.

Thomas’ response should be our response whenever the consecrated host and the chalice are raised: “My Lord and my God!”⁸ Lest, anyone break his arm patting himself on the back for his superior faith, you are not among those who have not seen! Here today, the Risen Lord says, Eat my flesh and drink my blood, "and do not be unbelieving, but believe."⁹

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, let’s worship the God who is Mercy and dismiss the omnipotent moral monster of so many imaginations. Taking a cue from the closing prayer for the Chaplet of Divine Mercy: in difficult moments, like one we are presently living, may we not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to God’s holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

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1 From Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching,” London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 20, 19 October 2006.^↩
2 Hebrews 2:18.^↩
3 Ken Boa, from the podcast “In the Studio with Michael Card.”^↩
4 1 Peter 1:3.^↩
5 1 Peter 1:7.^↩
6 1 Peter 1:7.^↩
7 Rich Mullins lyrics to “Hard to Get.”^↩
8 John 20:28.^↩
9 John 20:27.^>↩

Friday in the Octave of Easter

Readings: Acts 4:1-12; Psalm 118:1-2.4.22-24.25-27a; John 21:1-14

Again, Happy Easter! Christus resurrexit! Christos anesti! Despite everything that might weigh us down or cause despair, we hope because Jesus rose from the dead. Because He lives, we can live because, by the power of the Spirit, He can live in us!

Just as Jesus discovered the price of love was death- though, by His resurrection, He proved love is stronger than death- it wasn’t too long before Peter and John discovered the cost of following Christ. Apart from healing in the name of Jesus, these two were arrested and charged with proclaiming the Lord’s resurrection.

When arraigned before the Jewish authorities, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, boldly proclaimed the same Jesus they had condemned to death as the resurrected savior of the world. It was by His power he healed the handicapped man.

When charged with being a Christian, Peter didn’t make a case to the contrary and then anxiously wait to see if he was convicted. Rather, he pled guilty, loudly proclaiming His guilt. By what power or name did I heal the crippled man? The name of Jesus. You know, the guy you had killed!

Apparition du Christ sur les bords du lac de Tibériade, James Tissot, 1886-1894

Proclaiming Christ risen and reigning is the mission entrusted to all 266 of Saint Peter’s successors. You don’t need a doctorate in Church history to know that some of these did a lousy job carrying out this mission. Some even served as counter-witnesses. Thankfully, it’s been centuries since such an unworthy man has walked in the shoes of the Galilean fisherman.

Even during his short pontificate, Leo XIV has boldly proclaimed the Gospel during a time chaos and upheaval. I am quite certain he’s quickly learned, as Peter and John did, the good news is not always well received. Like Peter, this requires proclaiming it more boldly! This the Holy Father has done with persistence, serenity, and gentleness.

In Evangelii Nuntiandi, Pope Saint Paul VI plainly declared:

Evangelizing is. . . the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection (sec. 14)

In our Gospel today, we can see Peter’s jumping into the water as a kind of baptism and the meal the disciples ate with the Risen Lord as a Eucharist. Indeed, baptism should set someone running from the font to the Lord’s table, eager to partake of the saving sacrifice, the medicine of immortality.

Never forget that you are called to share what you receive here. You receive Christ. You are to share Christ. Because you are a member of Christ’s Body, your mission, your deepest identity, your reason for existing is to proclaim Christ.