Cycle B

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

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In today’s Gospel the tip of the soldier’s lance and the words of St. John the Evangelist converge in pointing out something to us that the Church has contemplated throughout her history: the Heart of Christ, wounded out of love for us, but loving us unconditionally and without every diminishing. The point of that lance is the concluding punctuation mark to the Passion of Our Lord, but the story of love behind it continues, in each and every heart, throughout salvation history and into eternity. The more the Sacred Heart of Jesus is wounded by humanity, the more is shown how deep that Heart’s love is toward each and every one of us.

In the First Reading the Lord describes his love for Israel, a love spurned, like the wounded heart of a father who only wants to care for his child and in exchange receives indifference and rejection. In the Lord’s words we see how justice in his heart says a price should be exacted for such treatment, but also that love is the true driving force behind everything he does, and he cannot love his children any less, no matter what they do. In the Second Reading St. Paul prays that we have the strength to comprehend and know the love of God. It we truly realized how much God loves us, from the hardened sinner to the saint one step from Heaven, we’d die at the thought, not only from whatever we’ve done to wound his heart, but what others have done as well.

In contemplating the Sacred Heart, wounded out of love for us, we also know what is the most pleasing to his Heart: to show him that we appreciate his love by loving him and loving others, and by showing Our Lord that we “get it” by making reparation for all those people who spurn and reject him, knowingly or unknowingly. Let’s live this day contemplating the Heart of Jesus and trying to console him through our own love and understanding toward him and toward others.

Readings: Hosea 11:1, 3–4, 8c–9; Isaiah 12:2–6; Ephesians 3:8–12, 14–19; John 19:31–37.

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Solemnity of Corpus Christi

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In the Gospel for today’s solemnity Our Lord seals a new covenant with his own blood. The old covenant, recalled in today’s First Reading, involved the shedding and sprinkling of blood; the altar represented God, and by sprinkling the blood on it and the people a communion of life was established and would be maintained as long as they followed the precepts that were stipulated. The Lord didn’t need to do it, but after the sins of humanity the people of Israel did. That covenant was renewed over and over again in Jewish worship through the sacrifice of animals and the shedding of blood, and the violations atoned for.

That covenant was just a foreshadowing of the covenant to come. When God became man he chose to become that sacrifice, to shed his own blood in order to establish a new and everlasting covenant. If the blood of animals produced a spiritual benefit for those who were offering it, the Second Reading today reminds us how much more spiritual benefit from the blood of Christ, the sacrifice of himself for the sins of  the world. Moses in the First Reading ratified the covenant with the blood of bulls; the Second Reading reminds us that Jesus has ratified the new covenant with his own blood. It’s one thing to sacrifice something of value in order to make amends; it’s a whole other level to sacrifice your very self, body and blood.

We celebrate today the Body and Blood of Christ because they are now the one sacrifice to restore and maintain our communion with God. We offer and receive this sacrifice in an unbloody manner, under the appearance of bread and wine, in part because Our Lord didn’t want our squeamishness to keep us from coming to him as the Bread of Life. We remember today that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ so that we never forget that a sacrifice has been made once and for all the forgiveness of sins: our sins, not his. Today let’s remember the love for us that powered that sacrifice.

Readings: Exodus 24:3–8; Psalm 116:12–13, 15–16, 17–18; Hebrews 9:11–15; Mark 14:12–16, 22–26.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

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We always start our prayers by making the Sign of the Cross to remind us of the greatest mystery of our faith: the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. It is not a mystery as seen on TV where CSI checks a crime scene, fingerprints and DNA evidence, witnesses: it’s something so big that it doesn’t fit into our head. We couldn’t have ever figured out on our own that God was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God revealed Himself to us as the Holy Trinity. Jesus came and said he was God’s Son, and that meant God was his Father. And Jesus promised to send his Spirit after he ascended into Heaven, so the Holy Spirit was God as well. This is something so mysterious that we believe it because Our Lord taught it to us and we believe in him.

Toward the end of today’s Gospel Our Lord tells the disciples to go out and baptize everyone in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. On the day of our baptism a priest or deacon poured water on our head three times, and each time he poured it he said I baptize you in the name of the Father … and of the Son … and of the Holy Spirit. And in that moment what St. Paul describes in the Second Reading today happened: we received the Holy Spirit who made us into adopted sons and daughters of God. And so whenever we start our prayers, we remember this day of our baptism by making the Sign of the Cross and remembering the Holy Trinity and how God came into our hearts through our baptism.

So when we pray this week, as we make the Sign of the Cross, let’s thank each Person of the Most Holy Trinity for wanting to come and be in our hearts and show us God as He truly is. Thank God the Father for creating us and revealing himself to Israel as the One True God. Thank God the Son for obeying his Heavenly Father and coming down and becoming man to show us that God was Our Father and to enable us to become his adopted children. Thank the Holy Spirit for transforming us into God’s adopted children and for bringing the Holy Trinity into our hearts and helping us to understand and live this great mystery of our faith.

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32–34, 39–40; Psalm 33:4–6, 9, 18–20, 22; Romans 8:14–17; Matthew 28:16–20.

Pentecost Sunday

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Today is a day to celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the whole Church. In the Gospel today Our Lord gives the Apostles the gift of the Holy Spirit to help them free people from sin and from error, just as today’s bishops and priests do by teaching the Gospel and celebrating the sacrament of Reconciliation. In the First Reading we see the divisions and discord caused by sin, as the Old Testament story of the tower of Babel teaches us, start to be reversed by the Holy Spirit who enables believes to understand each other again and to welcome the Gospel into their hearts.

The work of salvation has been powered by the Holy Spirit from the beginning: it was in the power of the Holy Spirit that the Word became flesh in Mary’s womb, and raised Jesus from the dead. After Our Lord’s Ascension the Holy Spirit gives that vital impulse to help the Church to grow and reach unheard of places, even today. The Spirit continues to make Our Lord present through the sacraments, and pours grace into our hearts. The Spirit helps the Church’s shepherds to remain faithful to the Gospel message handed down from the Apostles and also gives spiritual gifts to believers in every walk of life to help build up the Church.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit today to kindle in us the fire of God’s love so that we may help to renew the face of the earth through our holiness and through proclaiming the Gospel in a way that everyone can understand.

Readings: Acts 2:1–11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29–31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b–7, 12–13; John 20:19–23.

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

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On the Solemnity of the Ascension the Church celebrates Our Lord reaching the finish line. After forty days of being with the disciples after his Resurrection, which we have celebrated during these forty days of the Easter season, Jesus has crossed into Heaven to take His place at the Father’s right hand, as the prophecies foretold for the Messiah. The Father has crowned him with the glory he merited by his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and in turn he is eternally asking the Father for each of us–by name–to receive the graces we need to join him in eternity.

The disciples thought this was the end of the story. Every Jew in those days knew the Messiah was supposed to clean house and establish a kingdom that would last forever, which is why they asked Jesus right before his departure if he was going to restore the kingdom to Israel. We can think the same thing. Something’s not quite right with the world. There is a despair and decay and violence, and sometimes it seems evil is winning. We want God to come and clean house. We even expect it. Which is why we have to remember Jesus’ answer in the First Reading: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons.” We can’t blame them. We all want results and tidy endings. They were still in such shock that the angels had to come and tell them, “why are you standing there?”

We’re often so guilty of the same thing because we don’t realize that Christ reaching the finish line doesn’t mean that the race is finished: we still have to cross the finish line. Jesus is just the first runner across. We’re all in a race like an open marathon. Some run it, some walk it, some make it a family outing, but everyone is heading for the finish line. There are runners who train all year long, who’ve been running morning after morning, training for the hardest race of their life, striving to be the first across the finish line. In the race of life these runners are the saints, who suffered and sacrificed and beat their bodies into submission with their eyes fixed on the eternal prize. We all want to have that glory of blowing through the finish line tape. But we know to that there are those who have been longing for it, and at the end, battered, cramped, wheezing, just manage to drag themselves across. In this race getting across the finish line is what counts. The common denominator for all of us is that we have to set our sights on the finish line and keep moving. We shouldn’t wait for angels to come and ask us “why are you standing there?”

As we prepare over these next ten days for the Holy Spirit to be poured out on us on Pentecost Sunday, let’s ask the Spirit to show us that one thing in our lives that is an obstacle to uniting ourselves more closely to God; let’s ask the Spirit to help us pick up the pace in order to blow through the only finish line that really matters: eternity.

Readings: Acts 1:1–11; Psalm 47:2–3, 6–9; Ephesians 1:17–23; Mark 16:15–20. Author note: in some dioceses the Solemnity of the Ascension is celebrated on the Sunday before Pentecost Sunday instead of ten days before Pentecost, which is the traditional day for the solemnity. I have opted to reflect on the liturgy today, and on Sunday I’ll reflect on the Seventh Sunday of Easter.