Sunday Reflections

Today is the last Sunday of the Sundays of Easter.  Today there is also a collection for the Pope’s Pastoral Works: please dig deeply and give generously for these great works.  The Scripture readings today are very very rich and graced:  please do not rush through them but reflectively really digest them as you prepare for Mass.  At the Mass itself, please get there a few minutes earlier and pray to the Holy Spirit of the Risen Lord to open your ears and the ears of the others at Mass to really hear God’s Word today.

There were two important tasks for the Apostles in the early Church. The first was to build faith communities as they travelled from one city to another. We hear of some of those places in the Acts in this Sunday’s readings: Pisidia, Pamphylia, Pergia, Attalia and Antioch. The second was to offer encouragement and hope to these communities amidst the struggle of persecution. Paul and Barnabas were key figures in the building up of these communities and the encouragement and support they offered.

The Lord Jesus is our Shepherd.  He leads and guides us.  He protects us and cares for us in our need.  However, this leadership depends on following the shepherd, beginning with listening to the voice of the shepherd.  Jesus says that those who belong to him “listen to his voice”.  This may sound so easy, but it is a challenge.  Our independence and thought that ‘we know better’ are obstacles to this listening.  Jesus possesses all truth, and expresses unconditional love.  If we listen to him, he will give us that quality of life, as we follow our sh

The Easter Season beautifully and powerfully makes clear that God (God) pursues us – and each one of us! God is a God Who is madly in love with all of us and each one of us!  Our Beloved Hound of Heaven! Today’s Scripture Readings ooze with this depiction.  The depth of God’s love for us is incomprehensible; and how far God goes because of this blows our mind because this love is infinite, unmistakable, unstoppable and overwhelming.

Resurrectionists are called to build, and to teach others to build, a Christian community “in which all can experience the hope, joy, and peace of Christ’s Resurrection” (Charism Statement of the Congregation of the Resurrection).  Our gospel today focuses on the peace that the Risen Lord longs to bestow upon the early disciples and upon us today.  Like the early disciples, we can find ourselves anxious and disturbed, not only by the trials and tribulations of our daily lives, but also by the troubling events of our world.  In the midst of these disconcertin

During the lengthy Lenten season we have avoided the ‘A’ word, Alleluia.  Now it is time to proclaim it loud – ALLELUIA!!  The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not only a date on the calendar – April 21 this year – or even the weeks that the Easter candle continues in the sanctuary of the Church, but should be about the attitude of hope that we bring to the world.  This is the Charism of the Congregation of the Resurrection – hope – that God can do the impossible and the improbable.  The disciples did not understand the words of Jesus about his ‘rising’.  They

Today is among the most important liturgical days in the year; so listen to today’s scriptural readings very closely and absorb them into your very being!  There is a great amount of salvation history in them that calls us to make today’s readings the core of our being.

One of the most significant phrases in the Gospels emerges this Sunday when Jesus says "neither do I condemn you" to the woman caught in adultery.  By law, Jesus had every right to condemn her but he chooses not to.  Perhaps even a compassionate glance accompanied his words that continue to soften so many hardened hearts. 

Sometimes the Scriptures bring forth a strong reaction from people.  I find this to be one of them, like in Matthew 20:1-16 (the workers in the vineyard), which brings people to say, “It’s not fair!”  Many identify with the other son, the one who was dutiful and faithful, obedient and hard working.  Thus, they feel ‘hard done by’ and protest such a forgiving father.  It is difficult for some to understand that the ‘logic’ of God is not ours.  Instead of 2 + 2 = 4, God tells us that 2 + 2 = 5.  It may not make sense, but that is the way of God.  The gospel

We are presently well into this Holy Season of Lent.  Who is this “we”? All of us baptized into Jesus Christ who form the Body of Christ made visible and present here on earth – all of us who incarnate the Risen One in order to proclaim His Saving Gospel for the world.

Unfortunately at this time we are the Christian Community also hanging our heads in shame and sorrow because of the greatest abominable shame in the Church’s History – that of sexual abuse within the Church.  It is like a huge malignant cancer throughout the world that rests at our feet!