Our spirituality is rooted in our relationship with Jesus: I am the vine; you are the branches.

On this the Fifth Sunday of the joyous Easter Season, we begin to focus on our mission of discipleship as we head toward the great feast of Pentecost.

The Gospel for this Sunday and next Sunday is taken from the 15^th of John’s Gospel – part of Jesus’ Last Supper discourse on the night before He died.  This chapter is sometimes the Gospel of Friendship as Jesus calls us his friends.  Of the many ways of describing Jesus in our lives -- as Lord, as Savior, as God – Jesus also invites to call Him friend.

In the fourth verse of this 15^th chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus says:  “Make your home in me as I make mine in you.”  Our spirituality is rooted in our relationship with Jesus.  Jesus offers us divine intimacy -- Make your home in me as I make mine in you.

Just as the defining element of family life is the love that is shared by each member of the family, the defining element of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is the love we give and receive from Jesus and the love we give and receive for all of God’s people.

The evangelist John in today’s Gospel account wanted the disciples of Jesus to become with one with Jesus.  This was even more there was an institution of the Church.  After more than two thousand years, the message of Jesus is still focused on making your home in me as I make mine in you.

Jesus uses the beautiful metaphor:  “I am the vine and you are the branches.”  This is such a powerful image of the Church.  Jesus is the vine and the anchor of our lives and we are the branches.  What gives life to us as the People of God is that we are connected to Jesus.

Jesus has told us that without me you can do nothing.  If the branches are cut off from the vine, they wither and die.  If we are cut off from Jesus, we too lose our life-giving qualities.

They tell the story of a dad who was alienated from his children causing considerable pain in the family.  He had chosen to live by myself separated from his family.  His daughter went to visit him this one particular evening and they were sitting quietly near the fire space.  Then Mary quietly removed one of the logs from the fire place.  Her dad immediately reacted and asked why in the name of heaven did you do that?

Mary calmly said that this is how she feels when you, dad, cut yourself off from the love of your family.  With tears in his eyes, dad got the message and hugged his daughter.

What happens when we separate ourselves from the love of Christ?  As a branch cannot live apart from the trunk of the tree, we cannot spiritually live apart from Jesus.  I am the vine; you are the branches,

What keeps the church together at its best is Jesus.  Human leadership, moral authority, ritual dogmatism are not the center of the church.  Leadership can fail, moral authority can take wrong turnings and ritual dogmatism can override the concerns of people. The center of the church is Jesus Christ. Our unity with Jesus is the central bond of the church. He is the Vine, we the branches.

Jesus that goes on to say that every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it bears more fruit.  As to we move toward the great feast of Pentecost in which we are missioned to continue the mission of Jesus, Jesus desires to do some pruning of our very selves.  The goal always is to bear much fruit, to bring as much life into this world as the vine of Jesus originally produced.  No one could pull this off by himself or herself.  It all revolves around being branches of the Risen Jesus.

Recently my computer developed a little virus which managed to give me a bit of a headache trying to figure things out.  Plain and simple, this virus needed to be pruned out of my computer system. 

So too, in your discipleship of the Lord Jesus, what spiritual viruses need to be pruned to anchor yourself more fully in Christ Jesus?  What areas of your life is Jesus not yet Lord?  Could it be that I am too attached to what others think of me?  Our pride, our ego can get the best of many of us.   Am I too attached to the material stuff of my life?  Who is the person that I need to forgive to carry out the mandate that as we are forgiven, we are to forgive one another.

In what ways as a parish faith community do we need to be pruned by the Lord Himself for us to more faithfully witness to the love of Jesus to one another and to all?  Does our celebration of the Eucharist lead to glorify God by the way we live our lives?  Is there an obvious connection between our prayer and the actions of our lives?  Can we share ourselves more fully with the poor and the needy among us?

In the first Scripture reading, when Saul arrived in Jerusalem, the disciples were afraid of him.  Paul is ostracized when he tries to graft into the Christian community.  Barnabas, his advocate, stands in Paul’s defense.  Paul would bring new flavor to the true vine, and they were afraid of him.  Who am I afraid of?

Please God we will always welcome new members who wish to be grafted into our faith community.  The only requirement necessary is that all of us are connected and anchored in Jesus as the center of our lives.

Have a blessed day.

Who and What helps you to recognize the voice of Jesus as the Good Shepherd of your life?

Today is known as Good Shepherd Sunday -- the 4th Sunday of the Easter Season.  This is what Jesus says about himself:  "I am the Good Shepherd...My sheep know my voice.  They hear my voice and follow me."

Think about the voices in your life.  What is the dominant voice that you listen to?  Whose voice do you recognize and then know you are safe and very much loved.  Who are the good voices in your life?

I pray that you are clearly able to identify the voices in your life in which which you know that you are safe and very much loved.  Who in your family speaks words of unconditional love to you?  Treasure and value highly the people you love and the people who love you.  Who in our faith community speaks words to you to assure you that you are very much loved.  We are to be the witnesses to each other of God's unconditional love.

As we reflect on Jesus as the Good Shepherd of our lives, we affirm that our spirituality is primarily about relationships -- our relationship with God and with one another.  Yes, there are rules to be kept  -- no doubt about that,  but more than that, the imagery of the Jesus as the Good Shepherd reveals the depth of intimacy that the Lord Jesus has for each of us.

On  this First Communion Day in the life of the parish, we pray for and celebrate that our First Communicants and their families are even more deeply rooted in the sacramental life of our parish community.  Thanks  be to God.

Have a Blessed Day.

The Easter message is that we are forgiven, and that we are to forgive one another,

Throughout the centuries, Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness has been difficult for Christians to live out.   And yet each and everyday day we pray in the Lord’s Prayer:   “Forgive us our trepasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

We honestly need to ask ourselves:  When you struggle to forgive, what holds you back?”  Are we free to forgive, and if not, why not?  I in my head I forgive everyone on the face of the earth easily.  This is the command of the Lord.  But when my ego has been damaged by a cutting remark from a someone, I too easily get derailed and can stew over a hurt for too long.  Forgiveness then becomes more of a challenge.  Then I have to let go of my own ego and the need to strike back, and open myself up to what God is offering me -- the beautiful, beautiful gift of forgiveness.

Many of us left to our own devices have difficulty forgiving those who have hurt us.  Thus, we need to rely on the grace of God to help us forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven.

Forgiveness is a major theme in Luke’s account of Jesus’ passion.    As Luke reflects on Jesus’ death, he discerns a call for human acceptance of divine mercy.  Jesus forgives the repentant thief on the cross.  Jesus even forgives those who crucify him.

In Luke’s mind, asking for forgiveness is essential to the Christian life; calling others to do the same is crucial to evangelization.  The light of the resurrection frees us from death’s shadow.  Our message is credible only when our words and example reveal that we are truly free to give to others the gift that God first gave us.

A powerful example of the extraordinary grace of forgiveness can be seen in the life of Nelson Mandela -- the first black elected president of South Africa back in 1994.  Before being elected President, Nelson was sentenced to life imprisonment for speaking against segregation and the apartheid policy in South Africa.  He was sentenced to prison for conspiring to overthrow the South African government.

When Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island at dawn on a frigid, rainy morning in July, 1964, it fast became clear to the African prison officials that he commanded great respect among the inmates, that he was a natural leader. As a consequence, they singled him out for punishment and humiliation.

Mr. Mandela was released from prison 27 years later and won the respect and love of his people so much that he was elected president. An aide asked Mr. Mandela to provide a list of people he wished to invite to his inauguration dinner as president of South Africa. The great figures of the liberation struggle would be there, of course, but the sole name on which Mr. Mandela is said to have insisted was that of a prison guard that had humiliated him while in prison.

Mr. Mandela lived an extraordinary life, but he will be remembered for one quality above all others: his capacity to forgive, and to turn that forgiveness into a visible reconciliation. He had a phenomenal, grace-filled ability to rise above bitterness and rancour, and clearly had made a conscious decision that forgiveness was the Gospel path for the liberation of black Africans.

 Not only did it redouble international fascination with him, but even more important, all South Africans began to be credited with the same miraculous capacity for forgiveness.

It is to the heart of the Gospel message that the forgiveness God offers is ours for the asking.  Thanks be to God.  It is also to the heart of the Gospel that we need to give to others what has been given to us.  We are to forgive one another.

Pope Francis in his recently released apostolic exhortation Gaudete and Exsultate says:  “The yardstick we use for understanding and forgiving others will measure the forgiveness we receive.  The yardstick we use for giving will measure what we receive.”

In today’s Gospel, we are to witness and to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  We need to recognize and confess our own sinfulness.  Yes, we are sinners.  In the Penitential Rite of the Mass and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we confess and repent of our sinfulness and ask for the forgiveness of God.

The Easter message is that we are forgiven and we are to forgive.   The repentance we seek is the recognition that we need to die to the demons and the sinfulness of our live so we can more fully share in the life of the Risen Lord.  What demon do your need to die to, and to what demon do I need to die to so that I and we can witness and preach the Lord’s message of forgiveness.

We have gathered to celebrate the presence of the Risen Lord among us. We are called to be the people who bear witness to his victory over death. We are the people who proclaim the Father’s forgiveness to the ends of the earth by being people who are forgiving.

The place to seek for peace and a forgiving heart is at the center of our own lives, then in our immediate personal world, then in the world that touches our lives, and then beyond. May we follow the example of Nelson Mandela who had been unjustly imprisoned and beaten for 27 years.  He was a beautiful example of all the citizens of South Africa of the Gospel quality of forgiveness by inviting his prison guard to his inauguration celebration as president.  Please God we need more government leaders who value the Christ-like quality of forgiveness.  As we seek peace in our hearts and in our world, may we proclaim the Easter message that we are forgiven and we are to forgive.  As you discern the Easter grace of forgiveness, who in your life do you need to forgive as your way of paying forward the forgiveness that the Lord showers upon you?

Have a blessed day.

On Divine Mercy Sunday, first and foremost, Jesus is the face of the Father's Divine Mercy. In the Gospel, Jesus shares with Thomas the merciful love of God.

St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish sister, reported visions and visitations from Jesus and conversations with Him.  Jesus asked her to paint the vision of His Merciful Divinity being poured from His sacred heart and specifically for a feast of Divine Mercy to be established on the First Sunday after Easter.  St John Paul II declared the Second Sunday of Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday on April 11, 2000.

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.  Why?  He was the gracious recipient of God’s Divine Mercy.

When you think about this?  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.  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. 

Lord, we also 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.

The community was the place Thomas 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 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.

The faith journey of Thomas illustrates so beautifully the need of each one to us to grow in our journey of faith in the mist of community, in the midst of the parish community of the Church of the Holy Spirit.  We are better together.  The Easter gift given to us the Risen Lord is gift of new life and we are missioned to be life-giving for others.

On Divine Mercy Sunday, we pray the Divine Mercy chaplet celebrating God’s merciful love; we celebrate this Sacrament of the Eucharist as the supreme example of God’s Divine Mercy given to us.  We also receive and value the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  We are a people missioned to be Forgiven and Forgiving.  God’s Divine Mercy shares the gift of peace and forgiveness with us, and we are missioned to share the gift of forgiveness with one and all.

The Bible describes mercy as a gift of God, a gift that is to be given to those who need it.  Celebrating 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, it is worth reflecting and pausing to see if 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.   Jesus 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 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.

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.

Today is a day of Easter joy. What will it take for you to be convicted of the Easter message that Jesus seeks to fill this world with His love?

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.  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?

May we all be aware of 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.  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.

In every way possible to say it, the Lord’s Easter message is that all are welcome; all are forgiven; all are invited 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.  

On this Easter day, I am grateful for all the ways the Spirit of the Risen Lord abounds in our parish community.

For me, I sense the presence of the Risen Lord when I hear crying in our Church.  This for me does not disturb my prayer, for I think there is no future to the Church if there is no crying.  Crying for me is a sign of family prayer as moms and dads are passing on the gift of faith to their children.  Thank you moms and dads for bringing  your children to Church.

Another beautiful sign of the Risen Lord in our parish life is when our teens led us in prayer on the evening of Good Friday in the Seven Last Words Service.  Our teens bring me to tears when they tell us the story of the last days in the life of Jesus.  In fact, I did learn something new from our teens in this beautiful  prayer service.  Jesus was female.  Anna Baumer played the part of Jesus in an inspiring way.  The only that matched that for me in my memory when we had a Christmas pageant at St Louis Church and Mary and Joseph had twins in the manger of Bethlehem.

Another example of the presence of the Risen Lord: this past Tuesday, I participated in an inspiring organ donation conversation.  I was touched by the story of an organ recipient.  He begins each day giving thanks to his organ donor for giving him the gift of life.  As a heart transplant recipient, he recognizes the incredible gift that was given to him by the heart donor.

The gratitude that he begins each day is also an Easter gratitude because he also recognizes the gift of life given to him by Jesus  – a sharing in the Risen Life of Jesus.

The beautiful gift of an organ donation reminds us of the spiritual gift we have been given by Jesus who has laid down his life so that we may share in His risen Life.

 The Gospel is not merely a story in which we are offered the good example of a man who lived a life of love. It is much more, for it shows us that God has renewed our life totally from within through the Spirit of the Risen Christ who now lives in us.

When we know Jesus in our hearts, there is nothing that we will rob us of Easter joy.  Another  example:  There is a single mom whom I will call Anne barely lives from pay check to pay check.  Anne has four young children who are a handful to parent.  She receives no support from her former husband.  Yet, quite simply and profoundly, Anne knows Jesus and that makes all the difference.  Her heart is filled with an Easter joy and her future is full of hope.  She is an inspiration of a person who knows the Lord.

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.

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.  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.

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