The Easter Message is that all are welcome; all are forgiven; and all are loved by the Risen Lord.

 

EASTER 2022

There is the story of the man whose dad came home from the II World War.  His dad worked in a factory with a very menial job.  He had to pay his own way through college.  Frankly he didn’t think too highly of his dad because he didn’t seem to amount too much.

The young man got himself a job in an international conglomerate and seemed to be moving up the ladder of success.

His dad died and at his dad’s wake in walk the CEO of this international conglomerate.  The man was as pleased as could be and went to the CEO to thank him for coming to the wake.  The CEO than asked:  are you a relative of the deceased Frank?  The man quickly said that he was Frank’s son.  The CEO responded:  “So, you’re the son.”  Then he went on to say that your dad saved his during the II World War and pulled him out of harm’s way.  They had kept in touch, exchanged Christmas cards, and the man had repeatedly told Frank that if there anything I can do for you, please let his know.  After some years, Frank finally did ask for a favor. He asked if he could get his son a job in his international conglomerate.

Immediately the son was filled with shame in not appreciating his dad and what he had done for him.

On this Easter Day, may we be thankful for all that our family has done for us.  May we witness to an Easter attitude of gratitude.

Today is the day of Easter joy.   We proclaim the centerpiece of our Catholic Christian faith:  Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead.  Alleluia! Alleluia!  Today we celebrate the reason why we are a people of hope and new life.  Today we cast off fear and make a leap of faith.  Liturgically we light the Easter candle because we believe in the light that comes from the Risen Lord.  This Easter candle needs to be lit in the deep recesses of our hearts.

More than ever on this beautiful Easter day, we need to trust and embrace the grace Jesus offers.  The Risen Jesus calls us by name and offers us the grace to walk away from the empty tombs of the fears and the demons of our lives so that we live with Easter joy and an Easter peace.  This indeed is our journey to an Easter faith.

 

On this Easter day the Risen Lord wishes to identify with us and to enter into the experience of the people he loves.  Today God is sending this Easter message to us that the Risen Lord showers upon us the joy and peace that accompanies us as an Easter people.

May we embrace our Easter faith in which we look at life from a transformed perspective.  May we not be focused solely on the challenges we face in these  days; may we be enlivened by the love and the joy of the Risen Lord.  We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

This virus has not dimmed one iota God’s love for each and everyone one of us.  The Lord’s Easter message is that all are welcome; all are forgiven; and all are loved by the Risen Lord.

Now on the first Easter day, the first disciples did not exactly experience the Resurrection event with the magnificence of Easter music and Easter flowers and a wonderful sense of celebration.  The first disciples did not immediately proclaim:  We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

For the first disciples, their Easter faith was much more gradual.  The first disciples encountered the empty tomb before experiencing the Risen Lord.  The Easter Gospel speaks of the empty tomb experiences of Mary Magdalene and the apostles Peter and John.  They only gradually came to an Easter faith.

An important truth of our lives is that we discover important things about our lives at the empty tomb.  Our dealing with this pandemic for many of us is an empty tomb experience as we have been confined to our homes and we haven’t been able to gather as we would like.

Just as the first disciples experienced the empty tomb before they came to a resurrection faith, we need to encounter the empty tombs of our own lives.

As with the first disciples, our empty tomb experiences are the moments of darkness and confusion in life.  As we peer into the empty tombs of the ups and downs of everyday life, we are challenged to see and believe as the apostle John did as he stared into the empty tomb.

 

 

 

May our Easter faith in the presence of the Risen Christ within our hearts fill us with an Easter joy.   Allow yourself to be loved by the God who goes with us in this pandemic crisis.  Yes, we are looking for a vaccine to protect us from this virus, but be assured that with the eyes of faith the vaccine we most need is found in our solidarity with the Risen Lord and in our solidarity with each other as a community of faith.

We are an Easter people.  This means that are not buried in the tomb of our sins, evil habits, dangerous addictions or this pandemic crisis.  Our Resurrection faith gives us the Good News that no tomb can hold us down anymore -- not the tomb of despair, discouragement or doubt, not that of death.  Instead, the joy of the Risen Lord fills our spirit.

May we listen as the Risen Lord calls us by name and welcomes us into the joy of sharing in His Risen life. 

Whenever and wherever we trust and hope in the light that comes from the risen Lord, our spiritual darkness fades away.   May you too be very much in touch with how the spirit of the Risen Lord lives in your family and in our parish family.

We cannot celebrate Easter in one day; we will not come to faith in one Mass.  AS God’s Easter people, we make the journey together over the course of a life time.  Whenever and wherever we trust and hope in the light that comes from the risen Lord, our spiritual darkness fades away.  As surely as the dark of night gives way to the dawn of day, the Lord’s gift of Easter joy awaits you.

Have a blessed day.  Today is our day of Easter joy.

 

 

 

 

 

The message of Holy Thursday is that his disciples are to change the world by getting down on their knees and washing the feet of God's poor.

 

HOLY THURSDAY 2022

 

With this solemn liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, we enter the heart and soul of the entire liturgical year.  We celebrate the paschal mystery – the dying and rising of Christ Jesus.  As the disciples of Jesus, we gather during the Triduum to celebrate the mystery of the ways we encounter the Lord.

In this Holy Thursday liturgy, we encounter the Lord in two significant ways.

In today’s Gospel account, Jesus wraps a towel around his waist, takes a pitcher of water and, on the night before he dies, begins washing the feet of his disciples.  The disciples are stunned.  The washing of feet was usually done by a slave.   It was Jesus who was washing their feet.  Jesus is teaching them that this new life is gained not in presiding over multitudes from royal thrones; it is gained, however, in walking with the humble and in humbly serving this world’s walkers.  When he tells his disciples to do as he has done in washing their feet, he is commissioning them to walk as he has walked and to heal as he has healed.

The message of Holy Thursday is that his disciples are to change the world by getting down on their knees and washing the feet of God’s poor.

This is the authentic mark of the follower of Jesus Christ:  that he and she wash the feet of the beggar, the leper, the miserable sinner rejected by everyone else.  The lesson to be drawn from Jesus’ washing of the feet, I do not decide which lives have value and dignity, God does.

Jesus the teacher demonstrated his life-giving message:  foot washing.  He did not ask his friends to die for one another, but to live for one another.  Holy Thursday is a celebration of life, and life together as a people of God.

 

Notice how we encounter the Lord in this liturgy of the Lord’s Supper.  Shockingly, the voice of God speaks to us through Jesus with a towel around his waist asking us to find the towel with our name on it: “As I have done for you, so you also must do.”

Service rooted in love is the example Jesus gives to his disciples.  It is a radical form of service because it is based on a radical form of love.

 

The second way we encounter is in the mystery of the Eucharist.  It was at the Last Supper on the night before he died, that Jesus said over the Bread and Wine:  This is my Body; take and eat.  This is my blood: take and drink.  Do this in memory of me.

When we gather for Sunday Eucharist Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, we are doing what Jesus asked us to do when He said:  Do this in memory of me.

In this sacred Eucharistic meal, under the form of bread and wine, Jesus is present to us.  We are nourished with the bread of life and the cup of Eucharist.

We encounter the Lord in a most privileged sacramental in the Sacrament of the Eucharist that was instituted at the Last Supper on the night before he died to insure us that Jesus will be present to us all days until the end of time.

On this Holy Thursday, may we ponder over the words of Jesus: “Do this in memory of me.”  Specifically, what is “this” that Jesus wants us to in His memory.

Traditionally, we think of the Eucharist has what Jesus is calling us to do in His memory.  And so, we gather Sunday after Sunday after Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist in obedience to what the Lord as asked us to.

I invite us to expand our sense of what Jesus is asking us to do.  Do this also means to do the meaning of the ritual in real life, to do what Jesus did.  It means to live as Jesus lived.  We are to remember not only what Jesus did at the Last Supper, but we to remember the example in his whole life. Doing this is living this.  

A profound truth of our Holy Thursday liturgy is that these two ways of encountering the Lord are essentially linked together for us as Catholic Christians.  What does this mean?   We will never see Christ in the Eucharist we kneel to adore if we do not first see Christ in those before whom we kneel to serve.

To say it again, we will never see Christ in the Eucharist we kneel to adore if we do not first see Christ in those before whom we kneel to serve.  Where is the towel with your name on it?  That towel is surely found in how you are to love and serve in your family, that towel is around your waist calling you to wash the feet of the person you don’t along with, that towel is to be found for you in one of the ministries of our parish life?

After Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he said to them: “Do you know what I have done for you?  You call me Teacher and Lord – and rightly so, for that is what I am.  So, if I, your Lord and Master, wash your feet, you are to wash the feet of one another.  I have given you an example, what I have done, you are to do likewise.

On this holy night, we pledge once again to use our hands and feet for the work of forgiveness, for the work of loving each other.  We pledge to wash each other’s feet, to hand over our lives for each other for the sake of the world.  As we gather to celebrate the Eucharist on this Holy Night, we do this in the memory of the One who gave His life for us.

We seek by the way we live our lives to be faithful to the words of Jesus:  Do this in memory of me.

 

Have a Blessed Triduum.

These palm branches remind us who we are -- sinners in need of our Lord's grace, and what we can be -- sinners who have placed our lives in the hands of our loving God.

 

Palm Sunday  C  2022

 

Today begins the most sacred week of the Church’s entire liturgical year.   We   will walk with Jesus through Holy Week in the pattern of his death and resurrection.  The week we call holy invites us to enter into the heart of our faith. 

 

St Paul in the second Scripture reading reveals who Jesus is: “Christ Jesus, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality to God something to be grasped, rather he emptied himself taking the form of a slave…he humbled himself.”

 

Who are we as the disciples of Jesus?  Our God wants us to embody the humble actions of Jesus:  The God who emptied himself, the God who humbled himself, the God who sat on a donkey.

 

On Palm Sunday the church gives us the opportunity to hear two Gospels. The first one was proclaimed at the beginning of the liturgy from the back of our church; the second was proclaimed at its normal time. One of the gospels depicts a triumphal march into Jerusalem. The other on a painful, humanly agonizing and struggling march leading to a death. A high and a low. But, which one is which.

 

Our world would assert that the glorious entry into Jerusalem was the high point and that the death of Jesus on the cross was the low point. Our faith proclaims that just the opposite is true.

 

During the two Gospels that make the Palm Sunday liturgy, we go from the joy of a good parade on Palm Sunday to a parade that ends with the suffering and death of Jesus on Good Friday.  The incredible contrast in moods between the two Gospels proclaimed in this Sunday’s liturgy capture well the broad dynamic of the Paschal Mystery.  The opening Gospel proclaimed in the blessing of the palms is the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem with the disciples shouting Hosanna and placing palm branches along the route

 

The second Gospel proclaimed is the Passion Account of the suffering and death of Jesus.  Before this week is ended, the palm branches of Palm Sunday will be replaced by the thorns and nails of the Friday we call “Good.”  Shouts of “Alleluia” and “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” will be drowned out by the mocking sneers and cries of “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

 

 

 

Traditionally during Holy Week, we focus on the sufferings of Jesus.  But it is not suffering, not even the sufferings of Jesus, that makes this week holy.  Rather it is holy because of love -- the reconciling love of God who has come to live among us in the person of Jesus Christ.   God’s love is the only thing that makes sense out of suffering, conflict, and tragedy.  God’s love does not do away with suffering; the very fact of the cross should teach us that.  God’s love makes it possible to deal with suffering, to remember it, to share in it, and, yes, even to celebrate it.  God’s love is the essence of the story of salvation.

 

In the passion account, Jesus looks like a victim.  He is not triumphant as we understand triumph.  Instead he appears to be a failure.  Judging by one set of standards, Jesus has not met our expectations.  But according to another standard – the standard of unconditional love –he has far surpassed our expectations.   At once regal and lowly, he brought healing and holiness to others through his own pain and brokenness.  He would claim victory by being defeated; he would establish his reign by serving and by dying.  His crown would be a weave of thorns.

 

As we gather in prayer on this day, may we be very conscious that Palm Sunday is not about ancient history.  It is about NOW.  As we reflect upon the Passion account, we see the first apostles, despite their closeness to Jesus, do not stand by Him in His suffering. 

 

On the first Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey with palm branches being spread on the road. When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil: “Who is this?” people asked.  In Jesus, God is the one who identifies with and enters into the experience of the people He loves.  Today God is sending a message through Jesus in this Palm Sunday celebration that states that Jesus once again accompanies us in these days.  God wishes to be in solidarity with us.  All of life is so precious that God wishes to be in solidarity with us.  God will embrace and transform our sufferings so that we may enter more fully into the risen life of Jesus.

 

Morning after morning in these days of Holy Week, we strive to accompany Jesus, present here and now in this community of believers and especially in those who suffer, as he continues his journey toward the heavenly Jerusalem through a world that sometimes cries Hosanna, but often, also, Crucify!  As disciples in every age, we resolve to be ready to suffer with our Master, carrying the cross in union with Him, freely laying down our lives in selfless service, trusting as did Jesus that, despite appearances to the contrary, God’s steadfast love will not abandon us but lead us safely to eternal life.

 

As we listen to the account of the passion and death of Jesus, may we be immersed in the immensity of God’s love for us.  May we also listen to the challenge that is given to us throughout the entire passion narrative:  As the master goes, so goes the disciple.

 

Take the palm branches with you today; let them be a reminder that we are entering the holiest week of the year. The week that begins with the false triumphal entry into Jerusalem and ends with the true triumph over death and the cross. These palms challenge us to remember our role in our Lord’s passion – that those great sufferings endured by our Lord were endured for each of us.

 

These palms can stay with us, calling us to not forget who we are – sinners in need of our Lord’s grace, and what we can be – sinners who have placed our lives in the hands of our loving God.

 

Have a blessed day.