May 27 - Memorial Day

+ On this Memorial Day, we reflect upon the value of human life and the price that is sometimes paid in order to protect and defend it. But first comes the fundamental attitude of respect for and love of all that human life entails – from the moment of conception to natural death. Without this basic attitude there is nothing really to protect and defend – if it is arbitrary and based on selfish concerns.

That being said: we see how God valued all the life he created and continues to create: he looked at it and called it good! We must do the same.

When persons and countries do not do the same, then there is cause for strife, contention and war – war being the means to “right a wrong” – if two wrongs can make a right in certain circumstances. But the ultimate motivation for the war must be the returning of the general population to a community of respected persons who can live out their lives in freedom of choice and conscience for the building up of the earthly community and city.

When there is war, there are casualties, there is injury, and there are broken lives and families on both sides of the cause. We pray today for a healing for all the ill that war causes, and for the repose of the souls of all those on both sides of a conflict who gave their lives doing what they thought was best.

The only winners in war – our gospel passage tells us today – are those who believe in the resurrection of the dead – as Martha modeled for all of us. Jesus tells her that he is the resurrection and the life that follows death, and if one believes in him he will live forever. This is an amazing consolation for all those who fight and die for a just cause. It is said there are no atheists in foxholes. I believe this. And I also believe that personal belief in God’s promises is a strong underlying strength to all who fight and die for their brothers, and their families and their country.

And so, on this Memorial Day, we thank and honor those who have thus given their lives. We thank and honor their surviving families and friends who still carry on their memory and legacy of hope. And we thank and honor the God who gave courage when it was needed and guidance and direction for heroic behaviors when they seemed almost impossible to accomplish.

The victor will inherit great gifts from God and they will be his children forever! For he is the Beginning and the End who makes all things new!

Amen! Amen!

May 26 - 6th Sunday of Easter

+ It is certainly not difficult to understand that two “parting-gifts” ought to be much better than just one. Who would not want “a double dose of good things?” Today Jesus is preparing the Apostles for his departure from them – very soon – by telling them now about two very curious and interesting gifts that will be sent to them when he leaves: the HOLY SPIRIT, and PEACE. Either would have been amazing by themselves – but together they are a truly awesome jackpot of prizes!

It is his Death and Resurrection that made possible the gift of the Spirit. Out of his pierced side as he hung dead on the Cross flowed Blood and water – symbolizing the reality of the life-giving Spirit that is now available to all; and, the risen Jesus “breathed” the Spirit into the disciples with the words: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit, who will teach and remind us of everything that Jesus told us, is the instrument of bringing about the peace that Jesus promises to give. This kind of peace is not as the world gives it, which is often merely the absence of warfare or conflict, something illusory and transitory. Jesus, on the other hand, promises us God’s own peace, a permanent and complete well-being and interpersonal harmony with God and with one another. This Spirit of Peace, however, is the Spirit of Forgiveness: which again makes it so very different from all other kinds of peace. And so it is when we allow the given Holy Spirit of God to move us to enter into situations and circumstances of experiencing the giving and receiving of forgiveness that we experience the true and lasting peace that God wants us to have.

No one is perfect, yet! Forgiveness empowered and brokered by the Holy Spirit of God himself, must be a substantial part of our Christian experience or we are missing out on a major portion of it! Because we are baptized we are all called to be filled with peace and to be peacemakers: let us joyfully take up this task and experience God, communion with one another and peace among us, as we are intended to!

In the first reading today we see the apostles and elders in Jerusalem acting as peacemakers, invoking the Holy Spirit directly, to settle the dispute as to whether Gentile converts to Christianity had first to become Jewish, if only for a short while (because salvation must “come from the Jews”). The Holy Spirit himself made his intentions known and it was not necessary for this to happen. And, the deep peace of God resulted and the spread of Christianity took a leap forward.

In the gospel passage Jesus tells the disciples clearly that he was to leave them in a short while, but that their hearts were not to be troubled or afraid, for the promised gifts would be arriving soon! These combined gifts of Spirit and Peace were for the early Church, and they are for us – if we want them, if we ask for them, if we forgive (as we are forgiven). Let’s do it!

Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord, and my Father will love him and we will come to him!

May 22 - 5th Week of Easter - Wednesday

+ Our readings today are about unity and community, or a more contemporary way of saying it would be: participation. Jesus makes it very clear that a disciple of his must remain entirely and wholly attached to him like a branch on a vine, it must participate in the life of the vine. A branch cannot live apart from the vine; and even if it could, its fruit would be of a strange variety – being dissociated from the species of which it is meant to be a part. And so, we must remain in Christ so that our fruit is godly fruit, our works are meritorious for our salvation, and our loving is pure and self-sacrificial. There are many in this day and age who are semi-rooted to the vine, or so they think; but the truth is either you are or you aren’t connected to it: either you have the Christ-life flowing through your spiritual veins or the world’s: and if it is the worlds’ then it can never be entirely true, beautiful or just!

In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Barnabas in order to stay rooted on the vine – which is the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, as it was just beginning to take form in the world – decide to go to Jerusalem to consult with the apostles and presbyters there about the matter of circumcision of Gentile converts. They did not simply act on their own, but wanted to find out – by the working of the Holy Spirit – in consultation with the others who received the same Spirit at their ordinations – what is to be held or not held in this particular case in the day to day operations of the Church. This is how the Church was set up on Pentecost – it would be guided and informed by the Spirit – and this is how it still operates today. The community, the unity, the participation is protected, the gathering of personally united persons is guaranteed freedom from error, when acting collegially, and together with the Successor of Peter as their head.

And so today, we thank God for joining us to him, for remaining with us and for joining us to one another in a communion of holiness, fraternity and peace. And let us not forget that to “experience the life of union”, we must go out from ourselves, participate in life, and thus become who we are really meant to become in the first place. Then we may all go together to the house of the Lord, and give him thanks and praise! Amen! Alleluia!

May 19 - Fifth Sunday of Easter

+ In the gospel passage we have just heard, Jesus is telling his disciples of all generations that the way they will be recognized and regarded as members of his community is if they truly “love one another” – as He himself loves everyone! This has to be so or else there is no unity, there is no community, there is no Mystical Body, there is no Church.

If Jesus is these things, then the essence of Jesus, which is amazing love, must be the outstanding characteristic and essential essence, and being, of his family, his group, his friends. How could it be otherwise?

The goal of everything, all life, human and otherwise is to become part of an entirely new creation which already exists in shadow form: the Resurrection of Jesus has already accomplished the transformation of everything: amazing grace has been introduced onto the planet, but, the problem from day one (Pentecost) was that the people have to hear about it, so they can take it into their hearts, believe what they hear, and come to know what they believe,  and bring their own loving response to this tremendous love-story between God and his people by the action of loving service – by loving as Jesus loved.

This was not always easy, not at the beginning (as Paul and Barnabas knew), and it is particularly not easy today, with the surging tide of of people who are so caught up in the speed, glamour and excitement and me me me perspective, that they don’t know even what they don’t know – that the belong to a vast a wondrous outer level – an already formed community of love.

So, the mindless, soulless insistence, is not the way that it is supposed to be, the way that God intended: and so we must be brave, we must be courageous; because the Father is a family man; he likes to gather with his children and grandchildren, and with all of the creation that are the work of his hands for family times at great feasts and happy times together.

May we this day rededicate ourselves to using the powerful Easter Grace that God has given us to welcome the Gospel Message – the Good News that EVERYTHING IS ALRIGHT NOW! everything is essentially OKAY! into our own lives more deeply, and to proclaim him in a variety of forms and shapes with all we meet every day – as prompted by the Spirit within.

Quite frankly, if you are not telling the Jesus story (evangelizing) - which is about the power of love over death, the promise of eternal life in a kingdom glorious - then you are not being a real Christian, a real Catholic – and we would not want that to be so!

I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.

May 12 - 4th Sunday of Easter and Mother's Day

+ Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. It is also Mother’s Day – and a perfect day to talk about Jesus as both Mother and Father. Yes, you heard me right. The Jesus proclaimed as Light of the World, Mighty Lord of Lord, and King of Kings is manifested in some of his actions as we find in Scripture; but more than that and most often he is a nurturing, caring, worrying, doting, defensive of his flock mother image.

In all of his miracles he is acting as both a nurse and a mother, who would do anything to restore health to her children. He feeds five thousand people by multiply loaves and fish – which only a mother would do. He feeds his best friends and confidants, the Apostles, with the bread and wine which he transubstantiates to his own body and blood – BEING becomes Bread and Wine so we can recharge our own heart lights, our own spiritual beings, so we can be salt and light in our world.

And so as we reflect on all the sacrifices that mother’s make to give their children true, authentic and genuine love, security and well-being, so we think of Jesus who gave his own life, body and blood for the same purpose.

And so he is our Shepherd, and our Mother at the very same time.

Thank you, Jesus, thank you all mothers for being who you are in our lives! which lasts into eternity! Mary, of course, is the quintessential, female motherly figure, who also demonstrated the strength, resilience and confidence in her son that only a father can give – so yes, she too along with us are both male and female, with a predominating factor due to God-given gender. May we all celebrate with joy the persons that we are, as we all exist in the heart of GOD THE FATHER, through the working of the Holy Spirit. Amen.  

May 10 - 3rd Week of Easter - Friday

+ We have two powerful readings today: the first about the conversion of St. Paul, and the second about Jesus’ great ultimatum regarding true “communion” with him.

In the Acts of the Apostles we see what happens when God has his way with a young energetic persecutor of the brand new Church of his Son that was just getting on its feet: God saw into the entire personality and soul of Saul of Tarsus and simply liked what he saw and he chose him, of all people, to be the great Apostle to the Gentiles – indeed to all people to the ends of the earth! Sometimes God changes our plans for us no matter how we think we are on a correct and true track: in the end, his track is always surer and better: because he alone knows how all the colors of the entire tapestry fit together to make a magnificent work of art!

In the gospel passage Jesus, on purpose, makes an extremely demanding and shocking statement: you must eat my flesh and drink my blood in order to achieve the salvation that you so desperately long for: there is no way around it (you must be that united with one another so you can share the merits of my life)! And many leave him at this point for this was madness in their estimation!

Well, maybe yes in their estimation, but not in God’s. For those who stayed and believed and were willing, Jesus later would show how this eating and drinking would not be under unpleasant circumstances: since he had all power in heaven and earth, he simply took fruits of the earth (bread and wine) and by speaking words made them really and truly his body and blood (soul and divinity) so that we, the members of his Body the Church, for all generations, would be able to eat and drink for our own salvation and spiritual nourishment and fortification – when the priest speaks the same words over bread and wine!

We thank God then today for providing for the transmission of the Word of God, by an eager young upstart named now Paul of Tarsus; and for the means to fulfill the command that Jesus gave to eat his flesh and drink his blood in a very real but palatable sort of way!

Yes, the Bread of Angels tastes sweet to the palate of men; it is their joy and their hope of future glory!

Amen! Alleluia!

May 9 - 3rd Week of Easter - Thursday

+ We have two wonderful readings at mass today:  in the first reading we see an angel of the Lord visiting Philip and telling him to take a certain route and no other – and along the way the Spirit said to Philip to catch up to someone riding in another chariot. Inside that chariot was an Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the prophet Isaiah. Philip stopped the coach, got in and said: Do you understand what you are reading. The young boy said no: “How can I, I don’t have anyone to explain it to me!” Then, Philip launched into the Proclamation of the Good News! In reaction, when the eunuch saw water on the side of the road, he said to Philip: what is stopping me from being baptized right here, right now? Philip said: “Nothing” So he baptized the eunuch and a transformed life for the eunuch took root and began to grow!

In the gospel passage we see a similar kind of scene, if we look hard – In this Bread of Life Discourse: Jesus speak of himself as the Bread from Heaven, and he who could bestow eternal life on any who would simply believe it. Jesus then explains the Eucharist to any who were curious – and they were curious and many came to believe. In our day in age, it is the priest who explains to us what we could otherwise not even imagine: imagine this: bread becoming the substance of Jesus’ body, and the wine, his blood. Why? so that we could eat and drink it, yes, eat and drink GOD, not so that we could assimilate him, but so that he could intimately and deeply assimilate us more into him. It’s not magic, but it is very real, very comforting and very powerful, with power to purify our motivations, our minds, our personalities, our bodies. Then we can go out from this mass and put into practice, with God’s internal spiritual battery-boost, what we have learned and come to know there.

Amen, I say to you: I draw you to my Father, - be taught by him, and satiated by me! And you will live happily here, and blissfully hereafter! I promise.

May 7 - 3rd Week of Easter - Tuesday

+ Our readings today are exceedingly powerful. In the first reading we read the account of the stoning to death of Stephen. And why were they stoning him, for the same reason basically that they were responsible for the murder of Jesus: when truth comes face to face with unflinching lies then the liar must kill, in some way, shape of form, the truth bearer. It’s classic – and it did not begin with Jesus – all the way back to the snake in the Garden, Cain and Abel, and many of the prophets.

A revolutionary idea here is that maybe truth and lies can exist at the same time, if only for the opposite to happen, for the truth to truly take root and transform the lies, the deceptions, the evil into something bright, light and sublime.

Isn’t this exactly what happen on the cross: life and death met there, darkness and light met there, lies and truth met there, hatred and compassion met there: and by accepting this negativity into himself Jesus once and for all time transformed them into some good, useful and salvific.

Can you grasp this: JESUS BECAME SIN IN ORDER TO CONQUER IT ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME? And at that moment: we were all “saved” if you will, we were forgiven (Jesus’ word), reconciled, (Paul’s word!)

This is huge. It’s done! We are already living in the redeemed world of love and grace, just like the rest of creation: all of it: most especially in birds, animals, fish, flowers, sunsets and the rest.

The only problem, and it is a problem, is that very many of us truly bury this treasure, this pearl of great price, the prized possession deep in our souls – lock the door – and then go off on our merry way to live our own lives, leaving God securely locked in our own inner resources.

And all of our thinking, reasoning, motivations, words and actions are tainted, distorted and for the most part simply backwards and upside down – especially the bit where we think we know who we are and what’s really going on: most of us are actually clueless.

For example, in the gospel passage the teachers of Israel think it was Moses who provided the manna from heaven, but Jesus says NO, it was my father – and if you can’t understand that, then you don’t understand God, nor me – who comes from God to make things clear. You have put an armed guard and the door of your own resource to God and others safely outside you heart and soul.

But there is a way to bore through the door of that inner temple: and that is to freely and consciously open our hearts to the reality of the Presence of the Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit) that is always there, it is not only part of our very consciousness, it IS our consciousness – the consciousness we share with all creation. The only difference with us is that as human beings we are aware that we can know things, we are aware of awareness, we know God IS and LOVE is all there is. And that, my brothers and sisters, is what makes us human, makes us divine, and makes us cocreators with God of an enormously vibrant, fun and eternally evolving universe!

Amen. Alleluia!

May 6 - 3rd Week of Easter - Monday

+ Our gospel passage today makes a very important distinction: we must be clear about why we “go to the Lord” – why we are attracted to Jesus; just exactly what it is that we expect from him? A great number underestimate Jesus: they think him just as a nice guy, a good teacher, a worker of wonders – a good person to know in times of trouble: but they fail to see him as the one sent from God, who is both God and man at the same time, who is goodness itself, who teaches what he himself has created, and who has ultimate power over nature and can do whatever he wants. And so the one great requirement is that people come to believe in Jesus as the one sent from God – and he is to be respected, and honored and loved as such!

Proof of the possession of belief is found in a strong desire to tell about this God-Man, this Lord, Savior, King to everyone. Stephen believed – much to the dismay of those in whose jurisdiction he was telling the Jesus story – and they could only counter him by lies and false testimony because they knew he was telling the truth about Jesus – and so they did lie, they twisted what he was saying to incite the Sanhedrin to charge and condemn him to death; this they will do: but through it all: the face of Stephen will remain like that of an angel: when one is beholding the face of God – while under fire – nothing can interiorly harm any of us!

May we fearlessly be your apostles and “tellers of your story” today, Lord – to all we meet – someway, somehow!

Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord, the law of LOVE!  alleluia!

May 1 - St Joseph the Worker

+ The principal feast of St Joseph is celebrated on March 19, but this second feast of Joseph the Worker was inaugurated by Pope Pius XII in 1955 to counteract a Communist holiday on May 1. The new feast replaced that of the Patronage of St Joseph, later called the Solemnity of Joseph (another secondary feast). The appropriateness of this new feast is grounded in the fact that Joseph was a carpenter by trade and trained his son Jesus as a carpenter as well.

Joseph indeed was the worker-carpenter at Nazareth who provided for the needs of Jesus and Mary; and he initiated the Son of God into human work. Therefore, on the day when a holiday in honor of workers is celebrated in many countries, Christian workers venerate him as their exemplar and protector.

There is a God-given right to work, coming from the command of God to Adam to subdue the earth and take care of it - how else could this be accomplished other than by work. Therefore, the feeling of completion that one gets from work ought not be denied or downplayed – it is very much a “sacred sweat”!

In our day and age, in the circumstances in our own country, and in so many other countries of the world, the rights and dignity of workers needs to be honored and protected – by providing jobs in the first place for all who want them, and seeing to it that they have safe work environments and policies set in place to ensure their employment rights.

St. Joseph quietly and faithfully trusted God to provide what he needed as a worker/provider – and then he worked his whole life as a way to repay God for his trust in him to accomplish certain specific tasks; may we embrace our God-given tasks and assignments today – whether we are technically employed by an agency or not: for we are always in God’s employ “subduing with love” “the earth and its creatures” that he has given us to care for – all the days of our life!

St. Joseph, the Worker – pray for us!