Fourth Sunday of Easter

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042615.cfm

          Today, in addition to being called the Fourth Sunday of Easter, is also designated as World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  This is a day in which the worldwide Church is encouraged to pray for vocations to the priesthood, religious life, and deaconate.   Many parishes pray for vocations before each Mass and I'm sure many of you have prayed for vocations at other times and places and maybe even on your own.  Today, the Universal Church joins together to pray for this cause. 

          Still another title that has been given to this Sunday is “Good Shepherd Sunday”.  We hear in the Gospel today how Christ declares Himself the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep.  How appropriate that the day that we as a Church are encouraged to pray for vocations, is also the day that we reflect on Jesus as the Good Shepherd!  We are, after all, praying for shepherds to lead us when we are praying for vocations.  We all as Christians strive to model ourselves after Christ, but those in religious vocations particularly strive to be like Christ the Good Shepherd.  We strive to lay down our life for the sheep. 

          The Gospel is not the only reading that relates to the call for vocations.  Our first reading from Acts reminds us of how saying “Yes” to God's call means that we are opening ourselves to being transformed by Christ.  This reading actually refers to three transformations that take place.  The first transformation is that of St. Peter.  We all know what St. Peter said and did on the night of the Passion.  We can probably all think of at least one Gospel story in which St. Peter tries to be a loyal follower of Jesus, but ends up putting his foot in his mouth or making a fool of himself.  By the time we get to the Acts of the Apostles, however, Peter has experienced a radical conversion and transformation.  He speaks boldly and faithfully and becomes the great leader that God intended for him to be.  His speech that we hear in the reading today is a great example of this.  Here he is talking to the Jewish spiritual leaders about a miracle that has just taken place.  The reason the miracle was able to happen, he explains, is because of Jesus Christ.  He is boldly speaking about his faith. 

          The second transformation that is referenced here is for an unnamed crippled beggar.  The first reading for last Sunday also talked about him.  St. Peter and St. John were walking into the Temple area on the Sabbath (which was Saturday for the Jewish people) when they notice a crippled man who was begging for money.  The Apostles talk with him, but instead of giving him money or food, like other people were doing, they heal him.  In response he begins walking around, jumping, and praising God.  Imagine what joy that man must have felt in being able to walk and jump and run again!  This had to have been a truly incredible transformation for him.  As I already mentioned, St. Peter is now talking about this amazing miracle before the Jewish leaders, trying to explain to them that what they have just witnessed is not some sort of trick or something evil (as seems to be their big worry) but that it actually comes from God Himself.  This transformation happens not because the Apostles knew some magic or because the man was just faking his handicap for a long time.  It happened because both the man and the two Apostles had complete faith in Jesus Christ who has risen from the dead. 

          The third transformation that is referenced in our first reading is in regards to Jesus Christ.  We celebrate throughout these fifty days of Easter that Jesus Christ rose from the dead after three days in the tomb.  Christ's body had died: His heart was no longer pumping; His body was covered in wounds from all the beatings, scourgings, and floggings He received in addition to the wounds from the crown of thorns and the crucifixion.  He was executed as a common criminal.  His lifeless body is laid in the tomb.  Three days later, He emerges from the tomb, with a resurrected body.  One could say that this resurrected body has been transformed.  We read in the Gospels that He still has the nail marks in His hands and feet and the wound on His side where He was pierced with the lance, but other than that He is no longer bloody and beaten up. He is able to enter into rooms with locked doors and disappear and reappear in an instant.  His body is quite different from what it was before.

          These three transformations happened because the individuals responded to God's call for them: they responded to their vocation.  Jesus knew the will of God the Father and so followed the Father's plan of salvation by allowing Himself to die on the Cross and then to rise again.  He allowed His Heavenly Father to do what needed to be done.  Both the man who had been crippled and St. Peter were transformed because they put their faith in Jesus Christ.  They allowed Christ to work within them as they responded to God’s call for them.  Responding to God's vocation (whatever your vocation might be) means that Christ is going to transform you in incredible ways.  This transformation is not unlike His transformation from the tomb. 

          I know that it can sound a bit disconcerting and maybe even a little scary.  Not only do we have to believe and have faith in Jesus, but we also have to trust in Him that He will do what is best for us.  That brings us back once again to the Gospel reading of the Good Shepherd. 

          Christ the Good Shepherd is the one who takes care of us, provides for our needs and protects us.  The sheep trust the shepherd because they know that he provides protection and that he leads them to green pastures and plenty of water.  Just as a shepherd sometimes has to lead his sheep over some difficult terrain to finally find the food and water that they require in order to grow stronger and healthier, so also our Good Shepherd will be with us through some difficult times in order to help us to grow and be transformed so that we can respond to the calling God has for us.

          Be not afraid, but trust in the Good Shepherd. 

The Third Sunday of Easter

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041915.cfm

When it's time for me to get to work on a homily, one of the things I often do is I sit and read through the Scriptures and see if there is a particular line or two in one of the readings that I can focus on in order to build my homily off of. I also try to figure out a specific theme that is common to all of the readings or pertains to the feast of the day. So I like to find a section from the readings that helps point to that theme. This week the last several sentences of the Gospel caught my attention. Jesus tells His disciples that His death and resurrection are the fulfillment of Scripture. He says, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” He goes on to say. “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name.” In other words, God had intended this from the very beginning. God the Father wanted His Son to come and die for our sins so that by rising from the dead He would wipe away our sins. He even had Moses and the prophets write about it in scripture so that those who believe might better understand what was to happen.

As I reflected on this idea that Christ's death and Resurrection where meant to happen and meant to fulfill Scripture, it reminded me of a theme from a novel I read several rears ago. The novel was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The story follows a family of tenant farmers from Oklahoma. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl left the family homeless and penniless. So they pack up what few possessions they have in their truck and head west to California where they've heard there is plenty land and food and opportunities for everyone.

One of the themes that Steinbeck uses in this novel is talking about the inevitability of things. Steinbeck talks a lot about how the decisions of the rich of the 1920's and 30's eventually led to the poverty of the tenants and migrants and other poorer workers. I remember how the book keeps talking again and again about how things keep happening as if they were meant to happen and that nothing anybody did could change that. At one point in the story, the truck breaks down and a couple of men in the family get to work fixing it. As they get to work, one of them says that he doesn't like doing this because he always ends up hurting his hand in the process. A few minutes later his hand slips while loosening something on the engine and he gets a huge gash on the palm of his hand. Instead of getting mad about it, the character simply states, “Well, I'm glad it happened now rather then later”. He then puts some mud on his hand to act as a compress and gets back to work.

When I first read that, I was frustrated with what Steinbeck was saying about humanity. He seemed to me to be denying that we had free will; as if we could make our own choices or decisions. Someone finally explained to me later that what Steinbeck was probably trying to say was that there is a certain inevitability that these hardships had to happen. All the decisions that had led up to the Great Depression and all the decisions afterwards the just compounded the problems simply led to more hardships and suffering for the people. It's not that we don't have free will to choose or that everything was already predetermined. It's just that as events unfolded, eventually things like the Great Depression and poverty and hardship would happen.

Steinbeck was concerned about showing that the bad choices of the rich inevitably led to the sufferings of those who were poor. In contrast, the readings for today focus on the fact that our sinful actions inevitably led to the sufferings of Christ on the Cross. And the sufferings of Christ, in turn, inevitably led to the forgiveness of sins for the rest of us. In the case of Jesus, the suffering leads to something greater: salvation.

Our First Reading from Acts talks about how the Sacred Scriptures foretold that Jesus would suffer and die. St. Peter is the one who is speaking in this passage. A large group of people, including some Pharisees, have just witnessed St. Peter and St. John heal a crippled beggar. St. Peter takes advantage of such an attentive audience and speaks to them about why this healing was even possible: Jesus Christ. He ends by encouraging the people to repent of their sins, which caused this suffering of Christ, so that they may be forgiven.

The Second Reading is from the First Letter of St. John. Like St. Peter, St. John talks about the sins of the people. He starts out by explaining that he is writing this letter so that the people will not commit sin. St. John’s outlook is a bit more positive I think. He goes on to say that if anybody does sin, we have an Advocate in Jesus Christ. Just as an advocate in a court room speaks on behalf of an accused person, so Jesus speaks on our behalf to the Father. He expiates, that is, removes our sins. We are to keep God’s word in our hearts. Then we will show how much we love Him and He loves us.

The Gospel from Luke gives us the tale end of the “Road to Emmaus” story. Two disciples encounter Jesus on a road going to the little town of Emmaus, outside of Jerusalem. The disciples don’t recognize Him until He sits down to a meal with them and breaks bread. Then He vanishes. They hurry back to Jerusalem to tell the others and while they are speaking, Jesus appears. We are told that the disciples were terrified and think that Jesus is a ghost. They can’t believe that it is really Him at first. So He shows them that He is not a ghost and proceeds to explain how this was meant to happen through Scripture, just as I mentioned before.

Just as God meant for His Son to die and rise and again and free us from sin, we are a part of God’s plan as well. Let us strive to grow in our relationship with God and His Son Jesus. This will bring us to salvation.

Sunday of Divine Mercy

 http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041215.cfm

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and so it seems most appropriate that we take some time to talk about what mercy means. I was recently talking to a doctor-friend of mine and we were talking a little bit about Pope Francis’ recent announcement that the year 2016 will be declared the Year of Mercy. In other words, our Holy Father wants us to use that year to reflect on things like what mercy is and what God’s mercy has done for us and to practice showing mercy to others. My friend and I were talking about how this was such a wonderful thing, that we would have this Year of Mercy coming up. In our conversation, she told me that her son had asked her a question: “What is the difference between mercy and forgiveness?” It’s a very good question isn’t it? We often use the words “mercy” and “forgiveness” as synonyms. I know I interchange the two words quite a bit in my homilies. Despite their similarity, there is a distinction that can be made between the two. 

My friend offered one such explanation that I thought was very good. She said she remembered a story about Napoleon Bonaparte. The story goes that after one of his many successful battles, he had a young soldier in his army arrested for a crime and was going to put him to death for that crime. The soldier’s mother came to the emperor and pleaded with him to spare her son’s life. He replied that the young man had committed the crime twice and justice demanded that he be put to death. The mother said, “But I’m not asking for justice. I’m pleading for mercy.” “He doesn’t deserve mercy” was Napoleon’s reply. “Sir”, the mother cried, “it wouldn’t be mercy if he did deserve it. Mercy is all I ask”. With that, he agreed to spare the life of the son. My friend explained to her son that it’s called mercy when we don’t deserve it. We show mercy to others even when whatever they did to us does not deserve mercy or forgiveness.

I’ve reflected on this quite a bit since then. It is so easy to hold back our forgiveness to others when we are still in pain from whatever happened, or when they never offer an apology for what they did. We can come up with all sorts of excuses for why the person who has sinned against us doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. I think many of us were trained from a young age to expect an apology from the others before we forgive them. Not only that, but we expect them to “mean it” when they say “I’m sorry”. When I was growing up I remember it wasn’t always enough to say “I’m sorry”. If there was any indication of insincerity from the penitent, there usually came the reply of “Yeah, but you don’t mean it!” Now, I’m not saying that this is the way forgiveness is supposed to be. We shouldn’t be so stingy with our forgiveness, but we do tend to expect something from the other before we are willing to forgive them. We look at whether the person deserves our forgiveness.

Mercy is different. We give mercy whether the person deserves it or not; whether the person has made amends in some way or not. That is especially true when we look at Divine Mercy. When God gives us mercy, I dare say we definitely do not deserve it. Yet Jesus Christ, the Son of God, continues to offer it to us.

In the 1930's, a Polish nun named Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska began having visions of Our Lord. He told her about Divine Mercy and asked her to be the apostle and secretary who would tell the world about this wonderful message of Divine Mercy. Jesus asked her to have a painting done of how He was appearing before her. That image is now known as the Divine Mercy image. This famous image shows Jesus dressed in a white rob with his right hand raised in a blessing. From His heart are two rays of light; one red and the other pale.

At the bottom are inscribed the words, “Jesus I trust in you”. The colors of the rays symbolize the blood and water that flowed from Christ's side at the Crucifixion. It is at the Crucifixion that we see the greatest example of Divine Mercy. Mercy flows from Christ's Sacred Heart, as it does in the image. Our Lord also asked St. Faustina to spread the devotion of the Divine Mercy Chaplet and to work towards having the Second Sunday of Easter be named Divine Mercy Sunday. She wasn't the first to talk about Divine Mercy; Catholics have been honoring the mercy that God has shown us for centuries before St. Faustina was even born. The message that she spread, however, has helped Catholics around the world to be able to reflect better on what mercy really means.

Our Gospel for today is really a continuation of the same Easter story we heard last Sunday. It also teaches us something about Divine Mercy. Jesus appears before His disciples in the evening of that first Easter Sunday. Jesus breaths on them, giving them the Holy Spirit and then commissions them to forgive sins. The Church looks at this passage as being the point when Jesus established the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This Sacrament is really a major part of understanding Divine Mercy. It's really only through God's mercy that we are able to receive forgiveness through this Sacrament. As I said before, we don't deserve forgiveness. Even when we confess our sins, we are not always sorry for the right reasons. For instance, we're sorry because we know what we did was wrong, but we are not necessarily sorry because we have hurt our relationship with God. And even if we are truly sorry for what we did, how can we possibly make up for what we did against God and what Jesus did for us by dying on the Cross? Yet, Christ forgives us every time we come to the Sacrament.

The Gospel also tells us about St. Thomas. He wasn't there on the first Sunday and he refuses to believe the others. A week later he is there and Jesus comes again. Now he is able to see and touch Jesus for himself. Now he believes. It is easy for any of us to fall into doubt like St. Thomas. We question whether God can still love us after what we did. We question whether He can forgive us for what we did. Do not give in to that doubt, but trust in His mercy. Divine Mercy is for all of us. Let us give thanks for it.

Easter Sunday

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040515.cfm

​Mary Magdalene is, along with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, one of the most famous women mentioned in the Bible.  All four Gospel writers place her at the tomb on Easter morning.  Three of the Gospels mention a few other women who were with her, but all four agree that she was there at the tomb on that glorious morning and that she ran to tell the Apostles that He had risen.  That is why many refer to her as the Apostle to the Apostles.

​There are not many solid facts known about Mary Magdalene.  It seems that she was from the town of Magdala on the Sea of Galilee.  She was a part of a group of women who traveled with Jesus and the disciples and ministered to them.  She is also described as having been oppressed by seven demons that were cased out by Jesus.  A long standing tradition identifies her as being the woman caught in adultery, or the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, or even Mary of Bethany who was the sister of Lazarus and Martha. Some even suggest that she is all of them.  This tradition suggests that she lived a very sinful lifestyle until she meets Jesus and has a radical conversion.  Now, it is not impossible that this tradition could be true, but there is no Biblical evidence that is either.  So, the back ground and history of Mary Magdalene remains a mystery.  What we do know, is that she was a devoted follower of Jesus.  She was the first eyewitness to the Resurrection and was the first to go and share the Good News with others.  

​Mary is a great example of how sometimes we really only need one person to get a large group of people to follow.  Sometimes we just need one who is willing to share what they know or to share a testimony from their life or to encourage others to follow their example.  The Gospels relate how Mary Magdalene told Peter and the other Apostles that Jesus had resin from the dead.  Now, in some accounts, the Apostles are a bit incredulous and are not willing to believe her at first.  Not that surprising since people don’t normally rise from the dead.  However, other accounts describe Peter running to the Tomb to see for himself.  The Gospel of John even describes Peter and John having a race of sorts to be the first one there.  Slowly but surely the rest of the disciples begin to believe and the numbers begin to climb until Pentecost when it takes off like a wildfire and people are joining the Church by the thousands.  My point is, it starts off with one.  Mary Magdalene had to be will to be the first to start spreading the news.  It all spread from there.  

​Imagine how far any one of us could help spread the message and the mission of Christ.  We all just heard the story of the Resurrection.  We know the story.  Now the question is who can we spread the message to?  Imagine for a moment those in your life who you could reach out to.  Maybe it’s a family member who used to come to Church but no longer does.  Maybe it’s a co-worker who seems to be missing something in his or her life.  Maybe it’s a friend at school or at another activity that you’re involved in who shares some of your interests.  I’m not saying that we all have to find a person and start preaching to them about how Jesus rose this day.  I’m sure they have heard the Resurrection story at some point before.  I’m not saying that we have to get down on them about going to Church or changing a sinful lifestyle that they may be involved in.  Just share something from your faith: perhaps a meaningful word or phrase that you heard at Mass or in Scripture; a thought that came to you in prayer one day.  It might even be that you simply invite them to come to Mass with some Sunday or a weekday.

​Easter is a time for families to come together to celebrate this holiday.  Part of that celebration is that whole families often come together to Church.  It is no secret that some of those family members only make it on Easter or perhaps Christmas.  Some of you might be in that same boat.  It may very well be that the reason you are here is because someone in your family invited you to come.  Many times it just takes one member of the family to say, “Come on!  Let’s go to Mass!” or “Come with us!”  They may accept the invitation or they might not.  That’s okay.  We have to start with the invitation.  It just takes one to become the Mary Magdalene of the family.  

​Do not be afraid to share your faith and invite others in.  We are all called to be like Mary Magdalene, to let others know that Christ has truly risen indeed!