"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.