Lord, we thank you for people like Thomas who will not let us get away with easy solutions.

St John Paul II declared the Second Sunday of Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday.  First and foremost, Jesus is the face of the Father’s Divine Mercy.  Today is the Day of Mercy -- Divine Mercy.  In the Gospel, Thomas is the recipient of the merciful love of Jesus.  Thomas then proclaims the beautiful statement of  faith – “My Lord and my God.”  Indeed Thomas was invited by the Lord Himself to encounter the merciful love of God.

I invite you to consider the faith journey of the apostle Thomas on this Divine Mercy Sunday.  The popular interpretation of Thomas is that he is ‘doubting Thomas’  -- seen in a bit of a negative light.  I invite you to revisit this Easter gospel and see Thomas as a model of faith. 

Thomas was right to insist before he could believe in Jesus’ resurrection, he must see the holes the nails made in his hands, put his finger into the holes and his hand into the great wound made by the centurion’s lance.

I suggest Thomas is teaching the important lesson that we must not separate the resurrection from the cross.  We are the disciples of the crucified as well as the risen Lord. 

We cannot live the life of grace, the risen life, authentically unless we bear in our bodies the wounds of the cross. What does this mean?  This means being conscious that we develop the capacity to love and be loved only by dying to ourselves.  Our wounds are also a constant reminder of our frailty, and that it is God’s grace that raises us up to new life.

Thank you Thomas for bringing honesty into our faith, for helping to acknowledge at times that there are areas in our life that Jesus is not yet Lord.  Thomas didn’t pretend that he was better than he was. He began by wanting proof and ended by being glad of faith.  He is the patron saint of transitions and steps in faith.  Faith is a journey.  He is the saint of faith in our times.  The community was the place he found faith, having lost it when he tried to go it alone.  Then he came back to the community of faith and went on a journey of life that took him to martyrdom in India.

The Bible describes mercy as a gift of God, a gift that is to be given to those who need it.  Establishing the abiding faithfulness of God, we the Church of the Holy Spirit are to circulate mercy, to pay it forward irrespective of deservedness, inviting one and all to experience the merciful love of Jesus.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, my hunch is that we who are gathered today come from all over the spiritual landscape.  There is a side of us that is a doubting Thomas and there is a side of us that is the believing Thomas.  Each one of us is unique.  This is not by accident.  It is by God’s design that there is no perfect cookie-cutter approach of the journey of faith for Catholics.  We need to dispense with the myth that there is one size that fits all for us as Catholic Christians.

The journey of faith of each one of us is unique.  But it is the plan of Jesus that we are better together as a parish community rather than as isolated individuals.  This was the experience of the apostle Thomas, and I suggest that in this community may you experience again the merciful love of Jesus in the love we have for each other as a parish community.

Jesus is the model leader and spiritual guide.  He is pleased to give Thomas the assurance he is looking for, and then challenges him to look forward to the day when he will believe without seeing – always in the Jesus who passes through death to resurrection.

Jesus on this Divine Mercy Sunday is pleased to give you what you are looking for in your journey of faith.  Jesus does not want His Body, the Church, to remain in the tomb but always raise her up to new life.  Each of us is not to remain in the tomb of our doubts, of our fears, of our anxieties.

Lord, we thank you for friends, leaders and spiritual guides who challenge us as Jesus challenged Thomas.  But may we like Thomas know that we need to see the scars and the wounds for us also to believe in resurrection and new life.  Thomas professes the true faith of the Church.  We too must insist that the Jesus we follow is the true Jesus, the one whose risen body bears the wounds of Calvary.

Lord, forgive us that we want to help those in need without sharing their pain;   we look for their resurrection but do not want to see their wounds.

n  Young people have been deeply hurt and we serve them with pious exhortations;

n  We become impatient with those who mourns the death of a spouse or a child;

n  We think we can restore a broken relationship by merely saying we are sorry;

n  We propose reconciliation between warring factions without acknowledging past wrongs;

n  We pray for peace in the world and do not agonize over its terrible injustices;

We thank you for people like Thomas who will not let us away with easy solutions.  They insist that we must see the holes nails have made in the hands of victims, and only then believe that they have within themslevesthe capacity to rise to new life.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, may live in a state of thanksgiving for God’s redemptive mercy that is shared with each and every one of us.  And may the Gospel we proclaim help us to recognize that scars are the pathway to our sharing in the Risen life of Christ.  This was the journey of the apostle Thomas.  It is the journey for each one of us.

Have a blessed day.

The Lord's Easter message is that all are welcome; all are forgiven; and all are invited to the Eucharistic banquet.

Today is the day of Easter joy.  We are immersed in the beauty of our Easter music.  We can smell the fragrance of our Easter lilies.  You are dressed in your Easter finest.  The joy and the sense of wonder is in the air.  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.  Indeed, in the light that comes from the Risen Lord, the darkness of fear and the darkness of sin is no more.  This Easter candle needs to be lit in the deep recesses of our hearts.

Though this feast celebrates the centerpiece of our faith,  in today’s Easter Gospel, there is no Alleluia chorus or even angels singing God’s praises as in the Nativity Gospel, the Gospel seems to pay more attention to the sluggish growth of human faith than to God’s overwhelming power – until we realize that the two are intimately connected.

Why is it that the Gospels give so much attention to the sluggishness of the disciples’ faith journey?  Today’s readings invite us to assess where we are in the journey of faith.  It is good to remember that there is no bad place to be, and no place where it is impossible to be touched by God’s unconditional love?

I would love all of us to have the opportunity to reflect on how we encounter the Lord on this Easter day  -- as parents who bring their families to this Easter Eucharist, as Catholics who have participated in the other liturgies of Holy Week on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, as Catholics who may have not been in Church since Christmas day, as Catholics who are very distracted by the busyness of life, as Catholics who have recently experienced the death of one you  love or the pain of some significant brokenness in life, or as pilgrims who seek to come to the Lord more deeply in their lives. 

My hunch is that those of us who are gathered today come from all over the spiritual landscape.  Each one of us is unique.  This is not by accident.  It is by God’s design that there is no perfect cookie-cutter Catholic.  We need to dispense with the myth that there is one size that fits all for us as Catholic Christians.  May there always be considerable diversity in the ways each one of us encounters our loving God.  We are a big Church.  There is room for everyone.

If you study the gospel stories about the resurrection, you notice that they are not primarily about what happened to Jesus, but what happened to his followers.  As we pray over the Gospel, all of us – believers and doubters -– are present at the empty tomb.   In today’s Easter Gospel from the evangelist John,   “On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb.  So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciples whom Jesus loved, and told them, “they have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t know where they put him.”  Mary’s first impression was that the enemies of Jesus had taken Him away somewhere.

Peter then enters the tomb and sees the burial cloths, signs of death that are not yet signs of new life.  The empty tomb is not proof of the resurrection.

Then the beloved disciple John enters:  “He saw and believed.”  Love always believes.  The proof of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead happens when our hearts are filled with the love and hope that comes from God and from God alone.

The profound Easter mystery is that the Lord has given His life out of love for us, and there is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.   Yes, this is the Easter mystery.  There is nothing we can do that will stop God from loving us.  So we come to this Easter day from various life experiences:  Some of have labored in the Lord’s vineyards starting from the early hours of the morning; others have come just at the last hour.  The Lord rewards the first and gives generously to the last.    He receives the fruits of labors and but the Lord also accepts good intentions.  You, who are rich and poor, come together.  You who are sober and you who are slothful, honor this day.  You who have kept the Lenten fast, and even if you did not keep the fast, be joyful now.  The Eucharistic table is richly set: come, take from it, all of you, without any scruple.  Let no one go away hungry.  Come, all of you, enjoy this feast of forgiveness.  Let no one grieve because he has sinned again and again.  Enjoy this feast of forgiveness.  Let no one be afraid of death, for the Savior’s death has delivered us.

In every way possible to say it, the Lord’s Easter message is that all are welcome; all are forgiven; all are welcome to the Easter banquet.  Does this mean that anything goes, that our Church is a Church without rules or discipline?   Of course not.   It does mean that the Lord’s love and Risen Life is to be shared by all.  There is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.  Yes, we do need to open ourselves to the forgiveness and reconciliation and love the Lord extends to us.  And as sure as the sun rises each day, when our hearts are touched by the love of Jesus, we are motivated to share this love with one and all.   

What we know from the Jesus of the Gospels is that Jesus has a soft spot in His heart for all those who stand in any need.  Whatever side of yourself which you may judge to be unworthy of the Lord’s love, be assured that that will be the way the Lord is reaching out to you.  If you have not darkened the walls of the Church in many, many moons, the Lord’s message to you is you are loved; you are forgiven; you are welcome here.

The outrageous Easter mystery we celebrate is that the Church is not a gated community.  The love of the Risen Lord is meant for you, for the person sitting next to you, and for everyone.  What will it take for you to be convicted of the Easter message that Jesus seeks to fill this world with His love?  What will take for us to believe that God’s love will triumph over poverty, conflict, violence and war?

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, the Lord’s gift of Easter joy awaits you.

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

The Holy Saturday message is we are never abandoned by what seems to be the silent love of God.

We are in the midst of the great Easter Triduum as we remember and as we celebrate our sharing in the paschal mystery of the Lord Jesus  -- our sharing in the dying and the rising of Jesus.  On Holy Saturday,  remembering that Christ is now buried in the tomb, we gather in silence and in expectation between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

On Good Friday, we celebrated the depth of the Lord’s saving love for us.  He died out of love for us.  His death on the cross expresses the limitless love of God.  In giving up his spirit on the cross, Jesus said:  “It is finished.”  The words of Jesus do not convey the defeat of death; rather “it is finished” communicates that the saving mission of Jesus for our forgiveness and reconciliation is complete.  The mission of our salvation has been accomplished by Jesus.

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate our sharing in the new life of Christ Jesus.   We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.  Jesus Christ is Risen.    All of creation shouts with joy.

But back to Holy Saturday morning, we are in-between.  We are buried with Christ in the tomb.  It is time of silence.  It is time of expectation. It is a time of faith.  God does not abandon us in the experience of grief, of loss, and of death. 

Holy Saturday is about real life when it seems that God is too silent for us.  We can be overcome with grief, despair, and with fear. 

Yet, we called to believe in the silent love of God who grieves with us, who is buried in the tomb with us, who has a solidarity with all who feel helpless and are vulnerable.

But the clear Holy Saturday message is that we are never abandoned by the silent love of God.  We are called to trust in Christ Jesus, to trust that death is the pathway to life, to a sharing in the fullness of the Risen life of Jesus.

In this prayer, we celebrate with our elect from the parish who will celebrate the Sacraments of Initiation this evening during the great Easter Vigil   This is a most beautiful and inspiring liturgy.   It is the mother of all vigils.

Our chosen elect will share in the risen life of Jesus in the celebration of the sacraments of initiation.  We pray for our elect and we pray for all of us, even those of us who have washed in the waters of baptisms many, many moons ago.   We gather in silent expectation on this Holy Saturday to prepare in prayer and in silence to celebrate our baptismal grace of being God’s beloved and to commit ourselves to bear witness to the love of Jesus in all that we say and do.

The disciples of Jesus are to change the world by getting down on their knees and washing the feet of God's poor.

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 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 certainly acknowledging in gratitude the courage of his disciples in having walked with him for three years to this dark night.  He is surely proclaiming that in such walking, despite all that will happen on the next day, they have arrived nonetheless at the threshold of new life.  But most of all, 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.

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.

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.

In the Gospel account we find that Peter was uncomfortable with having Jesus wash his feet.  Peter, who was somewhat of an activist, would have preferred to see himself doing the washing, washing the feet of Jesus, and even of the other disciples.  Sometimes it is harder to remain passive and allow someone else to bathe us than it is to bathe someone else. 

But having our feet washed and washing the feet of others are two necessary components of Christian discipleship.

Peter’s image of God was more of a king rather than a humble servant.  He was imprisoned by his image of who God is.  Jesus was giving Peter a different image of God and saying the only way to stay close to Jesus was to let him wash you.

The first and most essential part is to let the Lord wash us.  As Jesus said to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.  First, the Lord washes us clean so that we belong to the Lord.  Only then are we qualified and empowered to wash the feet of our sisters and brothers. When this truth dawned on Peter, he overcame his reluctance and cried out “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”  For this to happen all that the Lord needs from us is simply to be there, to present ourselves to him and to let him wash us.

The other side of the coin, which is equally important, is that after our feet have been washed by the Lord, we must go and wash the feet of others.  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.  We pledge ourselves to do Eucharist, to do this in memory of the One who gave his life for us.

Isn’t it odd what we experience this evening in this liturgy of the Lord’s Supper?  The meaning of salvation focuses on the voice of God speaking 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.

So, the question I leave with you as we ritually wash the feet of parishioners is:  Where is your towel with your name on it?

We will never perceive the Reality beneath the bread and wine unless we first understand the point of the basin and feet;  we 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.

Have a blessed day.

God wants us to die before we die.

In the first Gospel proclaimed for our Palm Sunday liturgy, 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.

Palm Sunday presents us with a very unusual version of who Jesus is.  St. Paul in the second Scripture reading proclaims:  “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.”

This is the kind of God Jesus preaches and imitates.  God is the one who identifies with and enters into the experience of the people He loves.

God is sending a message through Jesus in this Palm Sunday celebration that states that nothing human is abhorrent to me. 

All of life –even the most horrible kind of suffering, even death – is something so precious that God wants to be in solidarity with it.  God wants to embrace it and transform it.

That’s who our God is.

So, what is it that this same God wants from us?  Jesus wants us to die with him, only the death he’s talking about is not the one when our earthly life is over.  The death in which our God is interested in is the death of our egos.  He wants us to die to our egos.  He wants us to die to that part of us that wishes to enthrone our own selves, that part of us that dreams of being on top of the ladder, to be No. 1, to be among the elite in a self-centered fashion.

God wants us to die before we die.  This is such an important component of our spiritual journey.  As we enter into the mystery of the dying and rising of Jesus during these days of holy week, may we also pray over our sharing in this paschal mystery of dying and rising.  The dying we embrace during these days is the dying to our demons, our sinfulness, and our self-centeredness.  For us to share in the risen life of Jesus, we need to die to all that is in us that does not reflect the Gospel message of Jesus.  Plain and Simple, how do I live more fully in the service of others, how do I wash the feet of God’s poor?

Who is God?  Again to quote Paul, “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.

Have a blessed day.

We are missioned to bring the love of Christ to those imprisoned by a tomb, of fear, a tomb of indifference, or a tomb of stress,

As we pray over this beautiful story of the raising of Lazarus, we reflect on the Lord’s desire to not only to renew our physical life; but much more important, to raise us to the fullness of eternal life by giving us a share in the dying and the rising of Jesus..

Lord, there are many people who are Lazarus in our Church, in our neighborhood, and in our nation, seemingly alive but really in the tomb.

n  Those who are letting themselves by killed by alcohol  or drugs,

n  Those who are cynical, who have no energy or enthusiasm,

n  Those for whom the Church is no longer a part of their lives,

n  Those who have been hurt by someone in the life of the Church,

n  Those young people who are spiritual but do not feel connected to the Church in any way.

We ask you Father to send them Jesus:

n  Someone who will be a friend to them as was Jesus to Lazarus.

n  Will not be afraid to remove the stone that is closing them in,

n  Will ignore us when we protest that they are already four days in the grave and will smell.

n  Will call them to come out, and set them free.

Lord, we pray for the Church of the Holy Spirit:

n  That we may be Jesus in the world,

n  That we may be led to where Lazarus is lying in a tomb,

Fill the Church of the Holy Spirit with the love of Jesus for Lazarus, so that she may call him out of the tomb and set him free.

We can find the mission of the Church in this beautiful Gospel account.  We as a parish community are missioned to our young, to our senior citizens, to the families of our parish, to one and all to bring the presence and the love of Christ to those who seem to be imprisoned in a tomb of fear, a tomb of indifference, and a tomb of stress for whatever reason.  We are missioned to bring the love and the healing of Jesus to our parish community and to one and all.

On this Commitment Sunday, we are asking you to commit financially to our parish so that we have the resources to build up our vibrant community.  Yes, there is a financial dimension to our spirituality.  When we give generously in praise of to God and in service of our community, we indeed are doing the work of God in sharing what has been given us.

If it is possible, and only if it is possible, we are asking you to increase your financial commitment as you are able, so that we as a parish community can proclaim the love of Jesus to all who are in need.

May this be the rhythm of our spiritual lives:  As we are loved, so we love; as we are forgiven, so we forgive; as we receive mercy, so we must be merciful; and we have been blessed, so must we share in support of our Church.

Have a blessed day.