Lord,

as daylight slowly permeates the sky,

send Your light to guide us.

Fill our lives with Your grace so we mirror Your love,

grant us Your wisdom and care,

to help us on our way.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.  [Dcn. Kelly]

– Amen.

“… Pope John XXIII (now Saint) observed: ‘We are not on earth to look after a museum, but to take care of a garden in bloom.’”  [Embers in the Ashes, p. 10] 

We are called to live in the garden of Christ.  We are responsible to be hospitable to those who visit the garden of Christ, especially the garden of His Church!

We are responsible to offer cups of cold water, i.e. acts of kindness to those who enter and those we should invite to join us.  We are responsible to live our lives for Jesus Christ into whose life, death & resurrection we are baptized!  Hospitality is the root of community, in particular, Christian community.  Hospitality touches the soul. 

The Gospel is a wake-up call to what is important in life!  Maybe this story can help shed light on important things in life.  “The company threw a lavish dinner to honor its CEO upon his retirement….  At the … dinner, the CEO addressed his remarks to the company’s young executives: ‘I know you all want my job.  Let me tell you how to get it.

Last week my daughter was married, & as I walked her down the aisle, I realized I did not know the name of her best friend, or the last book she read, or her favorite color.  That’s the price I paid for this job.  If you want to pay that price, you can have it.”  (Table Talk, Cycle A, p.155)

In our ever increasingly secular culture those who put God 1^st are and will be ridiculed, mocked and ignored.  That CEO reflects Secular Values: me first, who needs God!  Jesus calls us to an ever-deeper relationship with Him; He should be # 1 in everything we say or do!

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart & Don Black wrote, Love Changes Everything:

“Love, love changes everything

Hands & faces, earth & sky

Love, love changes everything

How you live & how you die

Love, love changes everything

Days are longer, words mean more

Love, love changes everything

Pain is deeper than before 

Love will never, never let you be the same!”

When you fall in love with God, you will never be the same.

May God Be Praised!

Origen, a Greek scholar and early Christian theologian writing about the Eucharist said, “So you must not think that these events belong only to the past, and that you who now hear the account of them do not experience anything of the kind.”   

We celebrated the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ last Sunday and it reminded us that the Eucharist has a twofold meaning: Jesus’ Presence in the Eucharist and Jesus’ Presence in us.  

Jesus gave us the gift of the Eucharist so by receiving Him, we could grow spiritually and our relationship with Him would grow ever deeper and more intimate.  Strengthened by the Eucharist we can bring Jesus’ Presence into the world through our lives.

Generally we can divide people into three kinds/types:

tourists – visit and leave,

pilgrims – visit and travel,

& settlers – visit, stay and live.

When we receive the Eucharist Jesus calls us to be SETTLERS.  He calls us to:

                        VISIT,

                        STAY,

                        & LIVE.

To VISIT Him frequently, to allow Him to STAY in our hearts, and to allow Him to LIVE in our lives.  “The truly shocking thing Jesus did by calling himself the living bread … was declaring that in his very humanity he embodied divine life being offered them” [Celebrations, June 18, 2017]

The famous hymn of Fr. John Foley S.J. captures it well: “One bread, one body, one Lord of all; one cup of blessing which we bless;

and we, though many throughout the earth, we are one body in this one Lord.”

May God Be Praised!

Doubting is part of Believing!

Thomas, the Twin, sought God, and he was a natural pessimist.  His hopes in Jesus were crushed on Good Friday and he didn’t want to get his hopes up fearing another heart break!  We are called to be optimists because we have been saved by Jesus Christ!  Thomas the Seeker of God said, “unless I put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand in his side, I will not believe.

 

When St. Teresa of Calcutta’s, (a.k.a. Mother Teresa) diary was made public in 2002 it caused a great sensation.  She experienced an absence of Jesus for a long time, it was her cross to bear and it became her gift.  Her doubts, like Thomas, were real and painful; she to wanted to touch the wounds of Christ, which she did in the streets of Calcutta.

Thomas experienced the risen Lord and his doubts were ended.  You and I, like Mother Teresa, must live with our doubts when our family and friends die after we pray for divine intervention, when wars, terror and the mayhem (like the COVID -19 Pandemic) continuing, after we pray for God’s intervention!

We live with our doubts as we cling to our faith in a secular humanist culture that denies and mocks God and those who believe.  We need to pray “Lord help my unbelief!”

Jesus gives us the Sacraments to help us, He reminds us to pray frequently and to seek spiritual advice when we are unsure, fearful or anxious.  God’s Mercy is freely given, but we must ask for it.  Mercy is somehow contained in unconditional forgiveness and unconditional love.  Pope Francis in his book (The Name of God is Mercy), wrote “Mercy is the divine attitude which embraces, it is God’s giving himself to us, accepting us, and bowing to forgive.” (Pp. 7,8)

Remember the Prodigal Son, the woman caught in adultery, Peter and the Apostles, remember the forgiveness God gives to you and to me in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  God’s mercy is only limited by a pride-filled heart.

Today take a few minutes to reflect on God’s mercy while you give Him your burdens!

May God Be Praised!

On Sunday we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.  Today I would like to take a few moments to reflect on that great feast.  Pondering on it as we continue to wind our way through the COVID-19 Pandemic and look for ways to remove Racism from our society.

Jesus gave us the gift of the Eucharist, so we remember Him to walk guided by the Holy Spirit.  Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist because He wants to be with us, intimately as we journey in this life.  As our pandemic restrictions easy and we begin to gather once again at the Eucharistic Table.  Bring your sorrows, your joys, your hopes, your fears, your disappointments and your triumphs --- and give them to God!  The story about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is a reminder that Jesus is near, let’s look for Him.  The gift of the Eucharist brings Jesus close to us, so He can nourish us.

   

One of my favorite insights into the meaning of the Eucharist comes from Robert Bly, he wrote, George Docsi’s grew up in Hungary and as a boy growing, he loved dinner… big plates, the maids serving soup; he loved going into the dining room.  One evening he went downstairs and found the dining room in an uproar. 

Another pogrom was taking place in Russia, and his grandfather went to the railway station and brought home some Jews.  Men were in skull caps in the living room, mothers nursing babies in the dining room; he threw a fit and yelled, “I want my supper! I want my supper!  

One of the maids saw this and gave him a piece of bread.  He threw it on the floor and screamed, “I want my supper!”  His Grandfather entered the dining room at that moment - bent down, picked up the bread, kissed it and gave it to George.”  He ate it.  George Docsi said, “… I think there’s a little of my grandfather in me now.”   

(Robert Bly in, The Little Book on the Human Shadow p. 41)

The silent kiss reminds us that Jesus embraces each of us in the Eucharist; the Eucharist that He kisses at the Consecration, changing the wine and the bread into His Body and His Blood.   

The Eucharist is a gift that is beyond us, while being readily available to us.  It is a gift to be loved and adored; to be appreciated and received.  Allow the Eucharist – the Lord God – to form you, to mold you, to feed you, and to lead you.  Spend a few minutes reflecting on the profound gift of the Eucharist.

May God Be Praised!

We are called to be just, to be merciful and to be prayerful.  The prophet Isaiah teaches us that God’s earth is to be a house of prayer.  If our life is a house of prayer, it will be joy-filled.  We will have crosses to carry, hardships to deal with, and evil confronting us.  BUT we will have God’s JOY to sustain us.

Musicians who play stringed instruments like violins …call them “tested” strings.  “Tested” strings are stretched and strained to remove all the unsteadiness; then they are put through a number of chemical tests, until they produce a perfect and full tone.  When installed and tuned, tested strings bring out the full resonance and tone of the instrument … producing melodies that are noticeably warmer and richer ….  Christ promises us that (H)e will keep us in tune … if we trust … his hand ….”

(Connections, 08-10-08)

Jesus challenges us to TRUST Him and His Gospel.  Jesus wants us to life a life centered on Him.  To do that we need to know what is IMPORTANT!  Maybe this story can illustrate that for us, “… Every day, for years, he visited his wife in the nursing home.  She suffered from Alzheimer’s disease; with each day she slipped further and further away ….  Every day he would feed her lunch.  He would sit with her and show her the pictures of their children, telling her the latest family news and stories she would forget as soon as she heard them. 

He would patiently remind her who he was and explain that they were married and (have) been for the past 52 years and they had two daughters and a son and four beautiful grandchildren.  He would hold her hand as she drifted in and out of consciousness.  Before leaving, he would kiss her and tell her how much he loved her and she would never realize nor remember … that he had … been there.

His heartbroken friends would ask him, Why do you keep going when shedoesn’t even know who you are?
  And he would always reply, “Because I know who I am.”  (Connections, 08-17-08)

The husband’s faithfulness accepts what life has dealt he and his wife, with love and trust in God.  We are called to take God’s love, justice and mercy into our lives and from there into our world.

Because we know who we are – disciples of Christ!

May God Be Praised!

O God, we turn to You with humble and contrite hearts, remember us, Lord.

“For though the fig tree blossom not

nor fruit be on the vines,

though the yield of the olive fail

and the terraces produce no nourishment,

though the flocks disappear from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet will I rejoice in the Lord

and exult in my saving God.

God, my Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet swift as those of hinds

and enables me to go upon the height.”  [Habakkuk 3]

Listening to God requires four things:

     Hear with your Ears,

2   Understand with your Mind,

3   Empathize with your Heart,

4   and Act with your Will

Henri Nouwen wrote, “It is a story of God who wants to come close to us, … so close that there is nothing between us and him….” [With Burning Hearts Henri Nouwen, pg.67]

Let us Hear what God has to say to us by reading the Scriptures and praying, by 

studying the Scriptures to Understand them, by entering the scriptures with our heart to learn Empathy and by putting the Scriptures into practice by our Actions, and those actions should reflect God’s Will.

“The grains of sand remind us of God’s plentiful care for us, the ocean reminds us of the depth of God’s love for us, and the sky reminds us of the vastness of God’s mercy.” [Dcn. George Kelly]

May God Be Praised!

The Greek mathematician Euclid developed the theorems and principles

that became the foundations of modern geometry.  When Euclid was a young teacher, he was employed as tutor in the royal household.  King Ptolemy I, who ruled Greece three centuries before Christ, complained about the difficulty of the theorems that Euclid expected him to grasp.

The king insisted that there must be an easier way to approach the subject.  The great mathematician gently rebuked the king:  "Sire, there is no royal road to geometry."

Jesus tells us very clearly, He is “…the way and the truth and the life.”
 
Sometimes we look at the Gospel from our modern perspective and dismiss what Jesus teaches as too unrealistic to deal with our modern complex problems.  We have many demands placed and expectations placed on us, BUT the prophet Micah summarizes what God wants of us:

1.    to do right,

2.    to love goodness

3.    & walk humbly with God!

Today Euclid might say - there is no high-tech, sophisticated, modern road to the Gospel; there is no royal road to the Gospel.  The Gospel challenges us to walk the hard, demanding road of Christ.  Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life, His Gospel is the “royal road”.

His is the Best WAY, the Royal Way, the Only Way!   

May God Be Praised!