3rd Sunday of Easter

Our Gospel story today is one of the passages we as Catholics point to in the Scriptures where Jesus sets Peter apart from the other Apostles, in which we read the beginnings of the papacy and the pope!  God gave us a great gift in our pope, a leader and figurehead meant to keep Jesus’ Church united as ONE body.  Jesus’ great prayer was that all of his followers might be one, as He is in the Father and the Father is in Him, that we would all be ONE…at present there are over 40,000 different Christian denominations.  Thanks be to God for our ONE Catholic Church, united throughout the whole world, for the gift of the pope to keep us united (even in the midst of struggles and difficulties and disagreements – kind of like the head of a family), and for the gift of the Eucharist where we become what we are: ONE in the Body of Christ!

2nd Sunday of Easter

Is it wrong to question God?  Is wanting to know how or why something happened considered a weakness or lack of faith, or even a sin?  In the Gospel today Jesus appears to His apostles, but Thomas isn’t there.  When Thomas comes back and all of the others are claiming that Jesus is risen, he refuses to believe unless he sees it himself.  Is that wrong of him?  I think not!

6th Sunday of Easter

Love requires both intention AND action: a good action without good intention is not love; the best intention without action is not love.    Our readings today challenge us to love if we are to remain in God.  But how can we remain in love all day long in the midst of our many different obligations and mundane duties?  The good news is that every daily, ordinary action we do can be transformed into an act of love when we attach it to a good intention by offering it up with a short prayer!  In our faith life, too, love is intention AND action.  Intending to love God isn’t enough: we actually have to act on it!

5th Sunday of Easter

All day, every day, we are making decisions.  Ultimately, what we do and don’t do, how we respond or don’t respond to different people and situations, is our decision.  I believe everyone WANTS to be a good person: a good mother or father, husband or wife, family member, friend, worker and coworker…but it’s our daily decisions (regardless of what we say we want to be) that determine whether we actually ARE any of those things.  In the Gospel today Jesus challenges us to remain in Him always.  God never stops being with us, but we often, on account of our many obligations and pressures and duties, choose not to remain in Him.  But those things are only excuses, because our decisions are entirely ours.  What will I decide to do this week to remain in God just a little bit longer each day?

4th Sunday of Easter

Peter says in our 1st reading today, speaking about Jesus Christ, “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”  If salvation is only in Jesus, then who can be saved?  Can non-Catholics go to heaven?  Can Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims go to heaven?  And what part do we have to play in it?  Listen and find out!

3rd Sunday of Easter

When Jesus appears today to His disciples and says, “Peace be with you,” they at first think it might be a ghost.  Ghosts and the supernatural are not talked about very much in our current Church culture.  What do we believe as Catholics about ghosts?  What if we or someone we know claims to have experienced a presence beyond this physical world?  Should we be afraid?  Can they hurt us?  Or can we help them?

2nd Sunday of Easter

In our Gospel, Jesus appears to the disciples behind locked doors and rather shockingly (since most of these people deserted Him during his arrest and crucifixion) He says, “Peace Be With You.”  Then He shows them His wounds – His hands and His pierced side, still present even on His resurrected and glorified body.  God wants to give us a deep, abiding peace in this life.  The path to that peace, however, is counterintuitive: it involves admitting and confessing just how much we have wounded others and God along the way – our sins – because to the extent that we admit our sinfulness, we experience God’s amazing mercy; and to the extent we experience God’s desire and love for us even in the midst of our brokenness, we experience God’s peace!