Month: April 2016

4th Week of Easter, Wednesday (2)

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Today’s First Reading speaks of the word of God growing and spreading. In today’s Gospel Our Lord, just before the account of the Last Supper in John’s Gospel, says his word will judge those who accept or reject it, not him. He teaches us today that his word goes beyond him, beyond his humanity to not only being the word of God, a word that cannot be discounted, but a word of truth. When we stand before him at the end of our lives and are judged, he won’t need to say much of anything. Everything he said and taught will be evidently true, as well as whether we heeded his words or not. There’ll be no spin, no legal chicanery, just things presented as they are.

Our Lord in today’s Gospel doesn’t just lend credence to his word because he has said it. He lends credence to it because his Father has taught him and told him to say it. As believers we too have been taught by Jesus and told to share his teachings and truth with others, because they are the word of God. His word, as the First Reading reminds us, has great power.

The word of God is eternal life. Let’s not stay in the dark and help others come to hear it as well.

Readings: Acts 12:24–13:5a; Psalm 67:2–6, 8; John 12:44–50. See also 4th Week of Easter, Wednesday.

4th Week of Easter, Tuesday (2)

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The disciples in today’s First Reading were dispersed, but not defeated. They were making a name for themselves in places they would have never imagine sharing the Good News, the name of “Christians” for the first time. If it hadn’t been for the persecution and difficulties among their own people of their own culture maybe the Gospel would have never reached other peoples, other cultures. Every Christian echos the voice of Christ, and, as he described in today’s Gospel, his sheep hear his voice, and hearing is voice is necessary for belief. We help people to hear his voice.

The thought of breaking out of your cultural group to share the Good News may seem intimidating, but the “hand of the Lord” will be with you too: he is preparing people to hear his voice through you. The greatest enemy of Christianity is complacency, especially considering how many people in the world still haven’t heard the Gospel and how many Christians are suffering persecution for simply being Christian. It may be logical, when under attack, to dig in, consolidate, avoid exposure and risks, but Christians throughout history, including those in today’s First Reading, show that this tactic does not come from the Christian play book.

Share your faith today without fear; the hand of the Lord is with you.

Readings: Acts 11:19–26; Psalm 87:1b–7; John 10:22–30. See also 4th Week of Easter, Tuesday.

4th Week of Easter, Monday (2)

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In the Acts of the Apostles there is a gradual discovery of how big Our Lord’s plans are in regard to the world’s salvation. Some of the first Christians, since all of them were converts from Judaism, believed only the Jews would be saved. Others believed that all believers, whether Jewish or not, should be circumcised and follow Mosaic law. regarding diet, who they associate with, and so on. When the “circumcised believers” confront Peter in today’s First Reading for entering into non-Jewish homes, a source of ritual contamination, Peter explains that the Holy Spirit sent him to do so and the Spirit showed him that the Gentiles were to be saved as well.

Some people even today think that Christianity shouldn’t be imposed on people, and they’re right: proselytism, which means forcing your faith on someone against their will, is wrong, and it doesn’t work. You can’t force anyone to believe in Christ. However, evangelization is not proselytism; evangelization is sharing with others who Christ is and what we believe he means to us and to them. It’s extending an invitation, an invitation that the invitee is free to accept or decline. Sharing with others who Christ is necessarily involves sharing with others who we are, therefore every Christian should be free to do so and, sadly, in some countries that brings hatred and persecution.

Moreover, evangelization is not just fact-sharing, a public awareness campaign. It is also the work of the Spirit who moves believers to invite non-believers, non-believers who are also moved by the Spirit, as in today’s First Reading, to seek out others who’ll help them find the surest path to salvation: knowing and believing in Christ.

Let’s be open to what the Holy Spirit is inviting us to do, and also not be shy about extending the invitation to know and believe in Christ.

Readings: Acts 11:1–18; Psalm 42:2–3, 43:3–4; John 10:1–10. See also 4th Week of Easter, Monday.

World Day of Prayer for Vocations (4th Sunday of Easter, Cycle C)

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I’m happy to celebrate a special anniversary with you all today – the anniversary of a prayer answered. This Sunday we are celebrating the 53rd World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Twenty years ago, on April 28th, 1996 – the 33rd World Day of Vocations, I was the reader for Sunday morning Mass, sitting in the front pew of my home parish, and right before the Eucharistic Prayer the priest celebrating the Mass reminded everyone “let us pray today on this World Sunday of Prayer for Vocations that young men and women come forward to answer the Lord’s call to work in His harvest.”

I knew those prayers were pointed right at me.

It was a bucket of water in the face: so many ambitions and expectations were doused as illusions, and also a chord struck deep within my soul: that what I’d sought all my life, my deepest aspirations, would be found in God by following the path he traced out for me from all eternity. So I followed him. A year later I entered the Legionaries of Christ, and ten years later, on December 8th, 2006, I was ordained a priest.

Each of us has a dream for our life. We aspire and yearn for something greater, and in our hearts it becomes a dream we hope for and strive for whenever and however we can. God has a dream for us too, a dream he shows to John in the Second Reading today: that all be united to him and around his Son – the Lamb – for all eternity, washed clean, bearing the palm of victory, and rejoicing. The white garments in the reading show us kept clean by Baptism and kept clean by living a Christian life and receiving the sacraments, but it is all thanks to the blood that the sacrificed Lamb – Jesus – shed for us, taking away the sins of the world.

God’s dream is our dream, and answering his call is how we follow it and achieve it. In the First Reading Paul and Barnabas extend God’s invitation to follow the dream the People of Israel had long awaited – but many declined the invitation. We can fall into the same trap, thinking that making God’s dream a reality through living our life in this world is just the job of priests and monks and nuns and, forgive the expression, “Holy Rollers.” If that were true, Paul and Barnabas would have stopped right there when the Jews rejected their message. But God’s dream was bigger than the Jews’s or the Gentiles’ earthly expectations: Jew and Gentiles – everyone – are called to help God make his dream for us a reality in this world and through how we live our life in this world.

The Gentiles were eager and overjoyed to receive the dream and spread it. Following our dream broadens our horizons and opens us up to unimagined possibilities. How much more so is this true when we have faith that God’s dream and our dream are one and the same thing: God doesn’t just have any big picture in mind – he has the biggest picture in mind. Jesus, the Lamb in the Second Reading, shows us in eternity what Jesus, the Good Shepherd in today’s Gospel, shows us in history – both our history and his history. God became flesh and won our redemption because how we live this life does matter. If we heed the Good Shepherd’s voice, God’s call in each moment of our life, he will lead us to the Father and to our dream: eternal life, not just for ourselves – something good in itself, but incomplete – but for everyone we love.

God’s dream and ours – deep down – is that everyone get their dream, the dream that is really possible and really will make them happy: eternal life, the answer to all the aspirations and yearnings they have in this life.

Let us pray today on this World Sunday of Prayer for Vocations that young men and women come forward to answer the Lord’s call to work in his harvest. Let us pray for all those who’ve answered God’s call, that they may continue to follow it. Let us pray for all those discerning God’s will for their life, that they may receive clarity and courage to follow their true dream. Let us pray for each other, that we may all seek our dream by following God’s dream for our lives.

Readings: Acts 13:14, 43–52; Psalm 100:1–3, 5; Revelation 7:9, 14b–17; John 10:27–30.

3rd Week of Easter, Saturday

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Today’s readings provide a great way to take spiritual inventory of how we our living our lives when faced with adversity and difficulty in matters of faith. Today’s First Reading shows the blessed aftermath of the persecution that began with Stephen’s martyrdom and ended with Saul’s conversion. The Church was at peace, growing, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. Peter was performing miracles in Our Lord’s name just like Jesus did. It was a Church full of dynamism and enthusiasm that had weathered difficulties and remained strong in faith.

In contrast, we have today’s Gospel, years earlier. The teaching on the Eucharist was too much, and many disciples abandoned the life Jesus had taught them. Their faith when challenged was anemic, and Our Lord already knew who was welcoming grace into their hearts and who wasn’t. Those who did persevere in faith and in living as Christ taught were blessed in abundance. We can imagine what was going on in Peter’s heart in the First Reading today when he was kneeling before the corpse of  Tabitha and praying for the Lord to restore her to life. Who knows whether they had called him just to pray for their deceased friend or for a miracle, but a miracle is what they got.

Our Lord continues to work miracles through his Church. Just as Our Lord performed wonders, and Peter after him, he has entrusted his Church to continue teaching and breathing new life into believers. Today’s individualism often tempts us to try and work out spiritual matters on our own, a la carte, on our terms, and without anyone else’s “interference,” but as the First Reading reminds us today, the Church has been established so that believers can help believers. Let’s examine our life today and see whether we’ve drifted from what Our Lord has taught or doubted that his teaching now continues through his Church. Many times this results from a teaching difficult to accept. Like Peter in today’s Gospel, let’s believe first, in order to then be convinced through grace that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

Readings: Acts 9:31–42; Psalm 116:12–17; John 6:60–69. See also 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.