Propagation of the Faith 2025

 

PROPAGATION OF THE FAITH HOMILY  2025

In my 57 years as a priest, excluding Christmas and Easter Masses, I have never experienced a liturgy in which at 6:00 am on each and every school day 1,000 high school girls in full Catholic school uniform sing the opening hymn with enthusiastic voices accompanied only by one high school girl in the choir loft striking a well-worn drum.  I tell you looking out from the altar at these Tanzanian girls was a mystical moment of prayerfulness and joy.

We were indeed on holy ground.  Father Damian Milliken, a Benedictine priest from Elmira, New York, was presiding at the Mass.  Father Damian is a priest now in his 90’s and has ministered in the last 50 years of his priesthood serving the poorest of the poor in Tanzania, East Africa.  The genuine love and respect that Father Damian enjoys with these young Tanzanians and their families and all who live in the area around Mazinde Ju is so Christ-like and uplifting. 

Equally impressive is a religious community of consecrated women who are such an important part of the teaching faculty.  These are the religious sisters of Usambara.  Dressed in their full habit, these sisters number 500 in Tanzania.  These sisters know in their DNA the joy of the Lord.

About six years ago, six parishioners from St. Joseph’s parish made this pilgrimage to Tanzania arriving in the Mount Kilimanjaro International Airport warmly greeted by Father Damian.  As a side bar, we did not have time to hike up Mt Kilimanjaro but that mountain sure is impressive.   We visited and became part of the community of St. Mary’s School in Mazinde Ju located on the side of a mountain in one of the poorest regions of Tanzania.  This was such a precious God moment for the six of us.  We were privileged to enter the world of Father Damian and the sisters of Usambara and these high school girls who are so very, very grateful for this educational experience that gives them the opportunity to go on to a university and have job opportunities which otherwise these students simply would not have.   For these students come from very poor families.

In a culture that is so different from what I am used to, to be immediately accepted and embraced and loved truly is an experience of a lifetime.

To describe St Mary’s School is a bit of a challenge.  It is a residential school where these students live during the academic year and are able to get three healthy meals each day.  The dormitories these students live in are filled with bunk beds.  Each girl has a tiny cubicle which houses all her worldly possessions including all her clothing.  I have a beautiful niece for whom to put all her clothes in this tiny cubicle would simply be impossible. 

These beloved daughters of God have no sense of entitlement by which they expect people to take care of them.  They are so grateful for every opportunity in life that is given to them.  They are not saddened by the effects of the poverty of the country; they are joy-filled in the opportunity that is given to them as students in this quality academic setting that is filled with so much love and so much spirituality.

Why do I tell you all this?  This weekend is our parish’s annual Propagation of the Faith Mission Appeal in which we are asked to spiritually and financially St Mary’s School in Masinde Ju in Tanzania.   Previously in this annual Propagation of the Faith Mission appeal, Father Damian has spoken in parishes in our diocese.  This year, Father Damian asked me to preach in order to save the money that would have cost for him to make the trip.

For the last several years, I have personally contributed $1,000 which provides a scholarship for a student for a whole year.   I gladly make this $1,000 contribution each year.  I had the profound privilege of spending some time with this young Tanzanian girl I have sponsoring.  I tell you I had to tell myself: “Be still my heart.” when I realized the opportunity I was giving this daughter of God in my prayer and in my tithing commitment.  In all truth, l cannot think of a better use of this money.  The second collection today goes in support of this Tanzanian ministry.  I have talked about St. Mary’s School, our contributions also go to support another nearby high school for schools founded by Father Damian and headed by Sister Christa, another Sister of Usambara.  Father Damian has also founded St Benedict’s parish with an elementary school connected to it. 

Today’s gospel is the very familiar and much-loved parable of the good Samaritan.  The gospel clearly calls us to be missionaries of mercy in the lives of people in need.  We are to be witnesses to the mercy of God to each other.  The mercy of God means sharing with one another acts of undeserved kindness.

In the parable, the scholar of the law asked Jesus the question:  Who is your neighbor?  I would ask you a follow up question:  Who is not your neighbor?

At both St Joseph’s and Holy Spirit, we seek to make a part of the DNA of our spirituality reaching beyond ourselves to help and serve and support and love people in need.  That is the message of Jesus demonstrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Our mission collection today, the second collection, invites us to be Good Samaritans to these Tanzanian high school girls.  Just as you would do everything for your daughters, I invite you to consider these Tanzanian young women as your spiritual daughters.

Yes, we live in a divided, polarized world.  Yes, in some ways, we live in a divided, polarized Church.

But I always go back to the last words that Jesus spoke to his disciples at the Last Supper on the night before he died:  By this all shall know you are my disciples, by your love for one another.

Have a Blessed day.

 

 

 

 

 

                                          

 

 

 

 

In what ways do we share equality with each other?

  

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN OT C  2025

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are equated equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

In reflecting on these words taken from the second paragraph of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, we must say there are many ways in which we are not all equal.  Some people enjoy the blessings of material prosperity much more than others.  Some people are more academically gifted than others.  Some folks enjoy the blessings of health much more than others.

 

And so we ask the question:  how is equality shared among us?  The Declaration of Independence says we are all created equal and that we are endowed by our Creator.  The fundamental equality that we all share is that each one of us without exception are God’s beloved sons and daughters.  The Declaration of Independence has it right when it says we are created equal, and that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

Indeed the equality envisioned by the founders of this great nation is a Gospel truth that is to be celebrated.  We are God’s beloved, and that we are to relate to one another in ways that reflect that equality.

 

As we celebrate the Fourth of July weekend and as we give thanks to God for the many blessings we enjoy as citizens of this country that we deeply love, it is good to pause and reflect on being American and being Catholic.

 

For example, what is the freedom we aspire to as Americans and what is the freedom we aspire as the disciples of Jesus?  As Americans, it is easy for us to lose track of the meaning of freedom that was given to us by our founding fathers and mothers.

 

Sometimes as Americans we think of freedom as the right to self-expression, to express my individuality in any way I wish and at any time I wish.  This is my right as an American, thank you very much.

 

This overly individualistic view of freedom needs to be balanced and corrected by a Gospel sense of freedom and discipleship.  As St Paul says, Christ has set us free – free to serve, free to love, free to celebrate that the Kingdom of God is at hand.  Freedom for a disciple isn’t just about individualism.  It is the freedom to be about building up the Kingdom of God in the here and now; it is the freedom to serve; it is the freedom to wash the feet of God’s poor.

 

From today’s Gospel, twenty centuries ago, Jesus summoned 72 committed people and sent them, two by two, to communicate God’s love, to bind up wounds, and to be peacemakers in a troubled world.  These ordinary people took with them no great plan, no set speech, no “how-to” manual.  They brought only their faith, their trust, and their experience of Jesus.  Jesus knew they would make mistakes; nevertheless, he involved them in his mission and gave them his authority.

 

Jesus may have sent them out without purse, bag, and sandals, but he did not send them out without advice.  Yes, they were to live simply.  The disciples of Jesus are to experience freedom in that simplicity.  They are to be missionaries for the reign of God.

 

Flash forward now twenty centuries to July 6, 2025.  We are missioned to share in the mission and ministry of Jesus.  This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.  We need to leave the baggage behind that keeps from focusing on our mission of witnessing to the love of Jesus in our community.  We need to leave behind the baggage of old hurts, of grudges that we have been holding on too long, of prejudices that keep us from recognizing in our neighbor one of God’s beloved.

 

The Gospel invites us to reflect on the truth that Jesus sends all of us out to be missionaries.  As American Christians, we have a dual citizenship.  We certainly are citizens of America; but as baptized disciples of Jesus Christ, we are also citizens of and belong to the Reign of God.

 

What would it take for us to live by the values by the founders of this great nation and what it take for us to be more faithful  to the mission that Jesus gave to His original apostles and disciples?

 

As we celebrate our nation’s anniversary of our independence, may we remember and celebrate that indeed we are a nation of immigrants; we celebrate the equality

we share with one another; we are a nation of welcome and hospitality; we are a nation that fosters peace and provides opportunities for growth for one and all.

 

May we retain true to these values as Americans.

 

As disciples, Jesus challenges us in our life’s work, in our relationships, in our personal spirituality to try to instill elements of the Reign of God into American culture.   As we celebrate the great nation that we have been blessed with, let us also be aware of the great gift of faith we have been blessed with. 

 

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus appointed 72 others to go ahead of him with news of God’s love and peace.  Those 72, in Luke’s view, represented the diverse nations of the world.  Jesus’ mission and message were intended for all.  That work of evangelization continues throughout history.

 

In sending out the 72,   Luke wants to tell us the mission of Jesus is not only carried forward by the so called experts like priests and religious, but it is the responsibility of every believer in Jesus.  Each one of us, as the community of the baptized, are missioned to communicate God’s love, bind up the wounds of our brothers and sisters, and we are to be peacemakers in a troubled world.

 

The mission of the Church is to carry on the mission of Jesus --  to live as Jesus lives, to love as Jesus loves, to forgive as Jesus forgives us.  The mission of the Church is to lift us and to affirm the dignity of each and every person – regardless of their race, regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of their politics, their religion or whatever difference you can possibly think of.  Today’s Gospel makes clear that all of us are to be missionaries proclaiming this mission.

 

We are both Americans who are committed to the values of the founders of this great nation.   We are also the disciples of Jesus committed to binding the wounds of our brothers and sisters and we are to be peacemakers in a troubled world.

 

 

Have a Blessed Day.

"Who do you say that I am?"

 

FEAST OF STS PETER AND PAUL  2025

The great apostles Peter and Paul whose feast we celebrate today are part of the beginnings of our Church. They gave their lives over to Jesus.  They were the leaders of the Jesus movement that spread to the ends of the earth.

Peter and Paul were ordinary people made extraordinary by grace. As we celebrate their feast, may we pause to reflect on our own spiritual journey.  We too are ordinary that are  made extraordinary by God’s grace. Peter who was impetuous and who denied Jesus three times was the man Jesus chose to the first Pope.  As the pope, Peter kept the Church united in the years following Pentecost.  These were years of rapid growth in the Church.

Paul’s dynamic personality was different than Peter’s and through his tireless preaching the Gentiles, the non-Jews, were welcomed into the Church.  Whenever you see the statues of Peter and Paul, usually Peter is holding a key, symbolizing his duty as the head of the Church, and Paul is holding the Bible, symbolizing his preaching.

Jesus used the different personalities of Peter and Paul, and was not disillusioned by the weaknesses of both Peter and Paul.  God called them to use their personalities to spread the Gospel.  Peter used his  impetuous love to look after the flock, and Paul used his training as a Pharisee and his strength of character to ensure that non-Jews would be welcomed into the Church.  It is a reminder to us that our talents and our weaknesses too can become God’s means of helping others.

Peter’s journey is one of great hope for all of us.  He confessed Jesus as the Messiah and received the keys to the kingdom.  And yet, he denied Jesus three times.  Peter reminds us that failure does not disqualify us from discipleship.  What matters is our repentance and our willingness to return to the Lord.

What do we make of our brokenness in our spiritual journey?  Our use of pornography, our too frequent masturbation, our judgments we make on others, our impatience with the shortcomings of others, the distractions that accompany our prayer life?

You and I are sinners, flawed human beings whom the Lord calls us to discipleship.  Our spiritual journey is not marked by perfection or by a will power that has overcome the sinfulness of our lives but rather we are called to be disciples that recognize our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Jesus didn’t say to Peter, “You are perfect, and upon this perfection I will build my Church.”  Rather the Church is built not on perfection but on grace, mercy, and the power of Christ.

Paul’s story is dramatic:  from persecuting Christians to becoming one of the Church’s greatest missionaries.  His life is testimony to the transforming power of Christ.  When Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, He didn’t just redirect this mission—He recreated his heart.

On the feast of saints Peter and Paul, we are reminded in a deeply personal way that our brokenness is not barrier to faith—but the very path through which our faith often grows.  These two great apostles, whose lives we celebrate today, were not perfect.  They were wounded, flawed, and broken in different ways—but precisely through those broken places, God’s grace entered and transformed them.

Paul’s past was violent—he persecuted the early Christians with zeal.  He stood by as Stephen was stoned.  But it was in the midst of his blindness that Christ encountered him on the road to Damascus.

Paul never hid his past.  In fact, he often spoke of his weakness and referred to a “thorn in the flesh.” But he also wrote:  “God’s grace is sufficient for me, for power is make perfect in weakness.”

Paul’s brokenness became his testimony:  proof that God can redeem anything, and anyone.

The lives of Peter and Paul reveal a deeper spiritual truth.  God doesn’t work around brokenness.  He works through it.  What we try to hide – our fears, our failures, our shame—become in God’s hands the very tools of grace and growth.

May you reflect this day on the spiritual truth that your brokenness may be your path to God, rather than a detour.  In the words of the apostle Paul, what is your thorn in the flesh?  May you encounter the Lord by opening yourself up to God’s mercy and forgiveness.

 Today we honor not just who Peter and Paul were, but who they allowed Christ to be in them.  They were flawed men, transformed by grace, and sent into the world with courage.

In praying over this Gospel, Jesus is asking the same question He asked the apostle Peter:  “Who do you say that I am?”
In the context of your life, amid your busyness, your commitments, your family, your fears and anxieties:   The question Jesus asks of us as well:  “Who do you say that I am?”  The apostles Peter and Paul were martyred for they believed.    Their faith wasn’t watered down to comply with the prevailing wisdom of the day as set forth by the Roman government.  Because of their willingness to surrender to God and allow their lives to be given over to a future they had not planned, Peter and Paul are two foundational apostles for us.

“Who do you say that I am?”  We gather as a faith community today to celebrate the Eucharistic presence of Christ among us.  We are fed and nourished at the Table of the Lord.  We deeply believe in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Jesus is among us and within us as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ.

“Who do you say that I am?”  Are we willing to discover Jesus as He lives in the hearts of people – as Jesus lives in His Church.  The mystery of Jesus as revealed in the Scriptures is the mystery of how Jesus lives in our world and in the lives of people.

“Who do you say that I am?”  May we recognize our own thorns in the flesh and may they us to trust more completely in the grace and mercy  of our loving God.

“Who do you that I am?”

Have a blessed day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mystery of the Trinity can only be grasped through the power of love.

 

TRINITY SUNDAY  C  2025

Today, we celebrate one of the most profound mysteries of our faith:  the most Holy Trinity – one God in three persons:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It’s a truth so central to Christianity that every prayer we make, every Mass we celebrate, begins and ends in the name of the Trinity.

 

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity.  We celebrate the mystery of the inner life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The inner life of God is communal, is relational; it is family.  In contemplating the Trinity, we reflect on the family of God.  We are drawn into the heart of God.

The Trinity is not a math problem.  No, it is nor isolation but communion.

The mystery of the Trinity can only be approached by analogy through our own experience of the power of love.  What we can understand points to what we cannot fully grasp, the inner life of God.  But we glimpse it.  God is a community, three divine persons emptying themselves into one another in an infinite cycle that is the source of all love.

To grasp the inner life of God in the mystery of Trinity, we don’t need to be theologians; rather we need to experience the great gift of friendship and love and mercy in life.  For us, Jesus is the face of the Father’s love and mercy.

Human friendship has the power to free people from the isolation we all experience as individuals.  At its highest point, friendship has the power to overcome the defenses and barriers that keep us separate.  We anticipate the thoughts and the needs of the beloved as our own, and we abandon ourselves in this exchange.  This is the beauty of love and friendship whether it is a young couple passionately in love, or the quiet intimacy of the long-married couple or with old friends whose habits are intertwined with affection and humor and familiarity.

It is only by analogy, but human relationships give us a glimpse into the mystery of the Trinity.  What does this mean?  For us to experience God in our hearts, we need to experience and value the friendship and the love of another in our hearts.  For me, God’s presence is revealed to me in family and in the friendships of my life.  When I love and am loved, I know God in my heart.

In some ways, the feast of the Trinity is the feast of family life.   We come from God in creation and we return home to God as we enter the fullness of God’s eternal life.  What will help us better appreciate where we have come and where we are going to is family life.  In the inner life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is communal, God is family – the divine family.

Our experience of God is discovered in prayer, yes; our experience of God is also discovered in family – your family life.  Trust me I am not presuming your family life is perfect for you to experience  God.  I was born at night, but not last night.  There is struggle in all family life; to be a family is hard work at times.  But God dwells in your family life.  This I know.  In fact, there is no dimension of your family in which God is not present – in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad.

The mystery of the divine family in the Blessed Trinity is perfect in the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But the mystery of God’s love and mercy is that God comes to us in our weakness, in our brokenness, in the craziness of our family life.  God’s love for us is unending.  What I like to say is there is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.

Our response to the Trinitarian love of God for us is one of gratitude.  And so, in this Eucharist, we gather to give thanks to the Lord our God.   When we know the merciful love of Jesus in the depths of our hearts, we will love with an attitude of gratitude for our days. 

What are we to make of the messiness of our family life -- when a couple are struggling to love because past hurts keep them from reaching out in love to each other, when parenting their children seems to getting derailed by the failure of children to listen to their parents and by the failure of parents to listen to their children.  It goes both ways, of course.

The Spirit-filled grace we seek is to see in the struggles of our family life, we realize more fully our need for God’s grace and to be more immersed in the mystery of God’s love for us.  Jesus immerses Himself in our limitations and our struggles.  Through united to God, Jesus empties himself of divine privilege and becomes one of us and dies like a slave.  In so doing, God is pouring out mercy to a broken world.  Our brokenness does not keep us from receiving the love of God; rather, it is because of our brokenness that God send his Son into the world to be our friend as well as our Savior and Lord.

So, how do we live the mystery of the Trinity?

 

·       Be a person of communion.  Just as the Trinity is unity in diversity, we’re called to build relationships marked by love, forgiveness and mutual respect.

·       Be open to the Spirit.  Let God speak to you through prayer, Scripture, and conscience

·       Live from the heart of the Trinity.  Know you are loved – eternally, unconditionally – by a God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

At the end of the day, it is in the human love and friendship we have with each other that is the lens in which we will discover the love and mercy of God that is poured on us from day to day, from moment to moment.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people.

 

PENTECOST  C  2025

Pentecost arrived for the disciples after fifty days of uncertainty.  True, Jesus had risen.  Overjoyed, they had seen him, listened to his words and even shared a meal with him.  Yet they had not overcome their doubts and fears.  They still met behind locked doors.

This leads us to ask what fears do we have that we have not overcome and that keep us behind locked doors? 

Initially the disciples were locked in the upper room out of fear.  On the Day of Pentecost those locked doors were thrown open; the fear in the disciples was replaced with a Spirit-filled courage and enthusiasm.  They were now fearless proclaimers of the Word of God.

What had changed for the disciples?  They received the Holy Spirit.

The great truth of Pentecost – for the first disciples and for us as well – is that the Holy Spirit has the power to enlarge and expand the human heart if we allow the Spirit of Jesus to grow and enliven us from within.

The feast of Pentecost brings to a close the season of Easter because the gift of the Spirit is the inevitable outcome of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The church understood clearly that what happened to Jesus on Easter Sunday was not just an amazing miracle to prove that he really was the Son of God. It was rather the next step in God’s desire to heal, once and for all, the relationship between himself and a broken humanity. Now the outpouring of the Spirit of Jesus means that our relationship with God is fundamentally transformed. So, let’s celebrate of our new life in the Spirit and the birthday of the church as the new people of God.

In today’s first Scripture reading, we hear how the Holy Spirit was given to the followers of Jesus.   Listen again: “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.  And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.  Then there appeared to them tongues of fire, which parted and came to rest on each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled to proclaim.”

The great meaning of Pentecost is that it was time for God to be born again not in one body that was Jesus but this time in a body of believers who would receive the breath of life from their Lord and pass it to others.  We see how the growth of the Church took place with the influence of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles.  The Book of Acts is the story of the incredible growth of the first Christian communities.  The Acts of the Apostles is kind of like a Gospel of the Holy Spirit.  In the first four books of the New Testament, we learn the Good News of what God did through Jesus Christ in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  In the Book of Acts of the Apostles, we learn the Good News of what God did through the Holy Spirit.

The first and foremost attribute of the servant church is its daring openness to the Spirit.  It is our prayer that the Church make room for the release of the Spirit in the life of the community and the courage to act when it does.  We are not to fall back into being the safe and self-absorbed church, but rather a place of miraculous hope and extravagant hospitality.

God chose a young virgin named Mary to bear God’s Son, and Jesus chose a bunch of Galilean fishermen to share in His ministry.   God chooses you and me to hear his message of hope and promise and love in this place and in our world this day.

 Defensive Christianity is not a Biblical idea.  The posture of Christian disciples is not hiding in fear to protect ourselves.   No, the disciples are sent to proclaim the Good News of the love of Jesus to one and all.  St. Joseph’s and Holy Spirit are called to be sister parishes who help and serve and love one another.

In receiving the Holy Spirit, the first disciples received the gift of forgiveness.  They also were able to speak in tongues and so were understood by those listening.  There is a universal language in which everyone understands and embracing all difference: a language of forgiveness.  I think if we can forgive each other that action crosses all cultures and invites whoever is the Other to see us as brothers and sisters.

Now more than ever, we invoke the Holy Spirit to wipe away the darkness of anxiety allowing us to be guided by the light of Christ and to trust in God’s promise of new life.

Our Gospel today takes place on Easter evening.  On that first evening they were gathered in a house with the doors locked, because they were afraid – afraid of being killed, just as Jesus had been killed three days before.  But Jesus was among them, and He said: “Peace be with you.”  To this scared group of former followers, the Risen Christ begins by bringing the peace of God.

Filled with inner peace that only God can give, our hearts are like a deep sea, which remains peaceful, even when its surface is swept by waves.  

The Church today still needs a new Pentecost – not a one-time event, but a continuous openness to the Spirit.  Let us not keep the Spirit locked in the Upper Room.  Let the Spirit send us out – into our families , our schools, our workplaces, our streets – to speak the language of Christ:  the language of love, mercy, truth, and hope.

 

Come, Holy Spirit.  Fill  the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Have a Blessed Day.

 

Life itself is our best school, and God is our teacher.

 

Seventh Sunday of Easter  C   2025

We find ourselves on this 7^th Sunday of Easter in a kind of in-between time.  The Ascension has taken place – Jesus has returned to the Father – and Pentecost is just around the corner.  The Church waits in prayer and anticipation go the coming of the Holy Spirit.  It’s a sacred pause,a time of transition.  And today’s readings speak to us deeply about saying good bye and embracing the mission Jesus gives to the Church.

Today between the Feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost, we are marking Jesus’ leave taking from the disciples.  There is sadness for the disciples of Jesus on the Feast of the Ascension.  What the first disciples had to learn is a lesson for all of us -- many, many times we have to let go and say good-bye and trust that with each letting go, God promises that he will not leave us orphans.  We have to change many times in our discipleship journey.  We choose some of the good-byes of life; other times our good-byes are not of our own choosing.  With each transition, we are called to trust in God’s continuous presence in our life.

Personally, today is my 57^th anniversary of priestly ordination.  I am many times blessed.  Over these many years, I have had several assignments which involves saying  good bye to people I love in one assignment and trusting in God’s plan for me in my next ministry assignment.  Also, I have presided over many, many funerals in my family and my parish family of beloved parishioners.

With each goodbye we experience, we are called to trust more fully in God’s continuous presence in our life.  God never says goodbye but always us to trust more fully in his unending love for us.

I invite you to hold on to this truth:  Life itself is the best school.  God is our teacher.  The problems we are facing right now are our best assignment from God.  In your present challenge, whatever it is, you may have to let go; you may have to take a risk; but please God this challenge may invite you to place even more trust in the plan of God for your life.  We face challenges in our community, in our parish, and In our personal life. We are facing the challenge of senseless gun violence in our schools and in the streets of our city:  we are facing the devastation of the war in Ukraine and in the Middle East; in our parish life we ask ourselves how can we better engage the young families in our parish; in grieving the loss of a family member; in dealing with your illness or sickness in one you love, we are left with questions that don’t have the answers we would like.

As I say, life itself is our best school.  God is our teacher.  In the problems we are facing just now, what are we called to let go up and take the risk of faith and to trust even more deeply in the plan of God for our lives.

The Gospel is taken from the end of Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper.  We are privileged to eavesdrop on Jesus’ intimate prayer with his heavenly Father.  In the Upper Room on the Eve of his Passion, the Lord prayed for his disciples gathered around him.  At the same time, Jesus looked ahead to community of disciples of all centuries.  In his prayer for all disciples of all time, he saw us too, and prayed for us.  He prayed that we be consecrated in truth.

In today’s Gospel, we are listening to the prayer of Jesus to his heavenly Father.  This takes place at the Last Supper with Jesus being conscious of His impending death on the cross.  Jesus does not see his death as ending, but rather his going home to his heavenly Father and a new way of being with us who are in the world.

Overhearing Jesus at prayer is our way of understanding the identity of Jesus and our participation in the divine plan.  The mission of Jesus to be become our mission.  What is this mission – to release divine love into the world. This is such an awesome mission for us as a parish community.

 May the prayer of Jesus be our prayer as well.  The prayer of Jesus is that we all may be one.  Jesus prayed for us to experience a unity based on our love for one another.  We needn’t be reminded for its need.  We often witness breakdowns of communication in families, enmity among members of the same faith community, dissension in civil society. 

Jesus’ unity  is to overcome all such divisions, especially those within the fold.  Jesus wants a unity like that between himself and the Father – a unity that preserves individuality, but which is close and intimate.  That union of the Father and the Son is our model.  It is a unity in which people will love and serve each other because they love and serve him; it is heart speaking to heart.  Its key is love.

Like Jesus, we find our glory in doing not what we will but what God wills.  What would it take for all of us to be committed to the petition we make in the Our Father: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

In the first Scripture reading today, Stephen was beautifully releasing divine love into the world by offering forgiveness to those who were stoning him to death.  Forgiveness is an essential element for achieving the unity that Jesus prayed for.

What a challenge this is for us.  We may not face martyrdom, but we all face situations of conflict and hurt.  Can we – like Stephen – pray for those who wrong us?  Can we work toward reconciliation in our families, communities, and parishes?

 

At the end of the day, may we claim the prayer of Jesus to be our own prayer.  Jesus prayed: “I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”  We are missioned to make the Lord’s name known in our parish and in our community. We make the Lord’s name known best when we release divine love into our world.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

 

Have a Blessed Day.

 

 

 

The peace that Jesus brings begins and ends with love.

 

Sixth Sunday of Easter C  2025

 

The final wishes or words of a loved one near death have a way of remaining with us.   Powerful words between the dying and the living is a sacred moment.   I can think of a parishioner whose last words to his wife were: “I love you.”  His last words to me were: “I am ready to go home to God.”  These beautiful last words of this parishioner are seared in my memory.

The Gospel today are the last words of Jesus as he spoke to his disciples at the Last Supper on the night before he died.  This is Jesus’ going away conversation with his disciples.  Listen again to the last words of Jesus to His disciples: “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.  Peace, I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”

Have you ever thought about the gift you would pass to your loved ones?  Many of us have a will in which we carefully think what to do with your assets after your death.  It goes without saying that it is a good idea to have a will.  But when we think about a will, we usually think about our material assets and who gets what.  Today’s Gospel is taken from the last will and testament of Jesus in His conversation with his apostles.

The farewell gift of Jesus was a not a bequest of his earthly goods.  It was a gift far more important.

Jesus is departing from this earth and, as every dying person, wishes to reveal a gift.    Jesus names peace as what he wants to leave.  He immediately specifies it as my peace.  It is not like the peace of this world.   Whenever everything is going well, we can manage a certain amount of inner calm.  However, when bad times come, calm is replaced by anxiety and fear.  We shake with the wind, vacillate with the circumstances.

Peace is a complicated word with many interpretations.  We deploy our well-equipped military around the world as peacekeepers.  Some people passionately fight for uncontrolled gun ownership which they believe will ensure peace.  Yet despite all of our energy and resources we put into protecting ourselves, we still are not at peace.

 Perhaps we are looking for peace in the wrong places.  Jesus urges, “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”  His words refocus us to the question.  “What needs to happen in our hearts so that we can find peace?”  The peace that Jesus brings begins and ends with love. 

Tensions in families are often unavoidable.  However, which is more likely to bring reassuring healing to this friction – anger and revenge, or compassion and forgiveness?   Turbulence in the stock markets can leave us greedily scrambling for an economic advantage, or we can humbly trust God to provide for our needs.

Stress can keep us up at night, damage our health and suck the joy out of life.  But what if we enjoyed the peace that only God can give, and it is a peace that is rooted in the conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of God.  This non-abandoning presence of Good is revealed in the cross of Christ and is the source of our inner peace.

What is the peace that Jesus brings?  With hectic schedules, where time for family, friends, work, study, errands – and relaxation – must be planned for each day, we look for ways to simplify our lifestyles to find some peace.  Banks and investment services offer any number of services to manage our money so that we can have “peace of mind.”

The peace Jesus gives is not imposed but given as a gift, not just a brief vacation but a centering peace in which Jesus says to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

We today live in the same space that Jesus was speaking with his disciples.  The Lord does not leave us orphans.  Rather he sends the Holy Spirit to be with us all our days.  The inner gift of peace is the Lord’s lasting legacy to us

But the peace that is Jesus’s gift for us can only be given birth by living the Gospel.  A beautiful example of the Christian dream of peace can be seen in the first Scripture reading taken from the Acts of the Apostle about life in the early Christian community.  The Church worked out a new peace through disagreement.  Each side was given a chance to represent its position and each side was listened to.  In the end, each side also gave up some of its demands, so that a new consensus emerged.  Christians, it was decided, need not follow all Jewish customs (like circumcision) but they need to follow some which were considered essential.  Disagreement was not crushed or avoided but acknowledged, and people of good will were led to a compromise.

Let us pray for a deep trust in God’s promise of peace and strive in our way to see it a reality.

There is both blessing and responsibility in Christ’s love.  Jesus unconditionally gives us His love so we can know and grow in love.  The gift we have been given is meant to be shared so that others can know and grow in peace.  Where and how are you as a Christian being called to share your love and promote the peace of Christ in our world today?

For us at the parish community of St. Joseph’s, we seek at all times to be guided by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  Like the first Christian communities from the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, all need to be able to express their convictions; we need to listen to one another;  decisions need to be made under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; and, most of all, we need to embrace the peace that only God can give and share our love with one another.

 

Have a Blessed Day.