The Breath of Our Christian Life

Pentecost Sunday
June 8, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 2:1-11 / Ps 104 / 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13 / Jn 20:19-23
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

Today we celebrate Pentecost Sunday, the glorious culmination of the Easter season and the birth of the Church.  It is a feast of power, promise, and purpose, a day when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and forever changed the course of salvation history.  It is not only an historical event to be remembered, but a living reality to be embraced.  Pentecost reveals to us the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in each one of us.

In the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, we witness the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples.  As they were gathered together in one place, a sound like a mighty wind filled the house and tongues of fire came to rest on each one of them.  They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages, astonishing the people of many nations who had gathered in Jerusalem.  This moment fulfilled Jesus’ promise to send the Advocate and it signified that the Gospel was meant for all people, Jews and Gentiles, near and far.  The Spirit who descended is the same Spirit who continues to inspire and empower the Church to proclaim the Good News without fear.

The second reading, from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, emphasizes the unity and diversity within the Church.  Paul reminds us that, though we have different spiritual gifts, it is the same Spirit who gives them.  Just as a body is one, though it has many parts, so too is the Body of Christ.  We were all baptized into one Spirit, forming one body.  This image of unity and diversity is crucial in a world that so often divides and isolates.  The Spirit is not a source of confusion, but of communion.  Our varied gifts are not for our own benefit, but for the good of all.

In our gospel reading, John takes us back to the evening of Easter Sunday.  The disciples, afraid and uncertain, are behind locked doors.  Jesus appears in their midst and says, “Peace be with you.”  Then He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  This gesture of breathing recalls the moment of creation when God breathed life into Adam.  Now, Jesus breathes new spiritual life into His apostles, commissioning them to continue His mission.  He entrusts to them the ministry of reconciliation: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”  The Spirit is given, not for comfort alone, but for mission—mission rooted in mercy and peace.

These readings are intimately connected by the movement and action of the Holy Spirit.  In Acts, the Spirit empowers.  In Corinthians, the Spirit unites.  In the gospel of John, the Spirit recreates.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that Pentecost is the full revelation of the Holy Trinity.  (CCC 731-732) It is the moment when the Church is made visible, Catholic, and missionary.  It marks the beginning of the Church’s outward journey to bring Christ to the world.  The Church is Catholic because Christ is present in her.  Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church.  In her subsists the fullness of Christ’s body, united with its head.  This implies that she receives from Him the fullness of the means of salvation, correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and an ordained ministry in apostolic succession.  The Church to us, in this fundamental sense, is Catholic on the day of Pentecost and will always be so until the day of Parousia.

In the New Testament, Parousia means the Second Coming of Christ.  The way in which our Lord spoke of this Second Coming is connected to His other sayings referring to the establishment of the Kingdom of God here below and the destruction of Jerusalem which took place in 70 A.D.

In summary, the celebration of Pentecost represents 1) the day in which the Church received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit;  2) the founding of the one holy, Catholic, and apostolic church that has the fullness of the means of  salvation;  3) the beginning of the age when Jesus communicates His work of salvation through the liturgy of the Church;  4) the beginning of the dispensation of the Church’s sacraments;  5) the ordained ministry and apostolic succession;  6) the arrival of the invisible kingdom on earth in Jerusalem, a kingdom already inherited though not yet consummated.

St. Augustine beautifully reflected on this mystery when he said, “You breathe in the Spirit when you are silent, you speak with the Spirit when you preach, and you live by the Spirit when you love.”  His words remind us that the Holy Spirit is not simply a momentary experience, but the very breath of our Christian life.  In silence, we listen.  In speech, we proclaim.  And in love, we truly live.

How should we respond to this great gift of the Spirit?  First, we must open our hearts through prayer.  The apostles were gathered in prayer when the Spirit came, and so must we be.  The Holy Spirit does not force His way into our lives.  He waits to be invited.  Second, we must recognize and use our spiritual gifts.  Every baptized Christian has been given gifts by the Spirit, gifts meant to serve, build up, and bring life to others.  Third, we must strive for unity.  In a time when division, polarization, and isolation abound, we must be agents of reconciliation and communion.  The Spirit bridges differences and builds harmony.  Fourth, we must be on a mission.  Pentecost is not the end of the story.  It is the beginning.  The Spirit sends us forth to bring the peace and joy of Christ to the world around us.

In today’s world, marked by war, injustice, fear, and loneliness, we need the Spirit’s gifts more than ever.  We need wisdom to discern what is good and true.  We need courage to stand for justice.  We need understanding to listen deeply to others.  We need patience and gentleness to be peacemakers.  The Spirit is not far from us.  He is here within us, beside us, and working through us.  We must only say, “Come, Holy Spirit.”

Pentecost is not only a celebration of what God did once.  It is a proclamation of what God is still doing.  The Spirit continues to breathe into our lives, to rekindle the fire of faith and to send us out into the world.  Let us open our hearts to receive Him.  Let us speak His word with boldness, live His peace with joy, and love one another with a love that reflects the very heart of God.

Come, Holy Spirit.  Fill the hearts of Your faithful.  Kindle in them the fire of Your love and You shall renew the face of the earth.    

Share Your Joy

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
June 1, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 1:1-11 / Ps 47 / Eph 1:17-23 / Lk 24:46-53
by Rev. Mr. Mark De La Hunt, Permanent Deacon

Though it is the seventh Sunday of Easter, in our diocese, we are celebrating the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord today.  It is the prequel to Pentecost, which is celebrated next Sunday, and that concludes the Easter season.

There are a couple of other things to note about next weekend.  First, Holy Name of Mary seminarian, Deacon Sam Hill, will be ordained on Saturday and will celebrate his first Mass as a priest next Sunday at St. Andrews Basilica in Roanoke, and he invited me to serve on the altar with him.  Second, Pentecost marks the end of year three of the Eucharistic Revival, the year of mission.  The year of mission ties powerfully to the Ascension of our Lord, so that is the focus of this homily.

Before I preach on mission though, I want to share some teachings on the Ascension from some greats in the American Catholic Church.  Scott Hahn, speaking about the Ascension on YouTube, says that, when Jesus ascended, He took our humanity into the divinity, thereby completing our redemption. Jesus’ Ascension unites us to the Trinity.

Bishop Fulton Sheen, also speaking about the Ascension on YouTube, explained that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God because He shares in God’s glory and is mediator between God and man.  As mediator, Jesus is constantly showing His Father His wounds, saying, “Father, I love them.”  Jesus can say this because He entered into all our brokenness and experienced all our temptations, and He sympathizes with us.  We know this because, from the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” (Lk 23:34)

Now let’s discuss the relationship between the Ascension and mission.  In his reflections on the rosary’s Glorious Mysteries on the Hallow app, Bishop Robert Barron speaks of the Ascension (the second Glorious Mystery of the rosary), listing four things related to mission:

1) Notice that Jesus ascends after commissioning the disciples to take the gospel to the whole world. (Acts 1:8; Lk 24:47-48)

2) Jesus ascends but does not leave us.  By ascending, He is now with all of us all the time, for He is no longer bound by space and time.

3) Those who focus on heaven do the most good here on earth.  Those who pray most intently are most effective in the practical realm.

4) Jesus’ Ascension is an invitation to us to go on mission.  He exited the stage of God’s “theo-drama” so that we could enter the stage and continue Jesus’ mission under the direction of the Holy Spirit, who enters the theo-drama on Pentecost.

Reflecting on the third Glorious Mystery, Bishop Barron said the descent of the Holy Spirit enabled us to “go on mission.”  He elaborated, saying that living in the Spirit removes fear and even brings joy in persecution.  And Barron noted that the Holy Spirit appeared as tongues of fire.  He likened this to those living in the Spirit having fiery speech that is public.  We see this courageous missionary spirit in the early Church.

It has not been that way as much lately.  I am not sure when Catholics, especially in Europe and North America, stopped thinking in missionary terms, but we did.  In a survey of various Christian traditions, Catholics ranked well below other traditions in missionary focus or evangelization.  In the United States, I would say we are in the early stages of reversing that.  We are beginning to understand two things.  One, to quote Bishop Barron, “Catholicism is smart…beautiful…colorful and textured. It engages the mind, body, and soul.”  Second, is that if we care for others, we should want them to encounter the healing power of Christ in the Sacraments and in the Mass.  We should want them to experience the divine life and joy we are experiencing and that Jesus’ Ascension made possible.

Speaking of joy, the joyful moment described in Psalm 47 today, “God mounts His throne to shouts of joy,” is a prophecy fulfilled (like the other three hundred prophecies Jesus fulfilled) in today’s gospel.  St. Luke wrote, “As He blessed them, He parted from them and was taken up to heaven.  They did him homage (worshipped Him) and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”  That joy led them to “continually praising God in the temple.” (Lk 50-53)

Now let’s bring these reflections closer to our personal lives. About twenty years ago, I was a catechist teaching fifth-graders.  One of them asked me, “Why should we want people to become Catholic, even other Christians?”  I gave an answer, but it was not very good.  It bothered me that I could not give a confident and clear answer.  His question is so important, for in the answer is both our mission and our inspiration to evangelize.

To me, joy and love work hand in hand in being a missionary disciple who brings people to Jesus through the Catholic Church and brings fallen-away Catholics back to Jesus. The joy we have experienced we should want others to experience, especially if we love them.  Jesus asked us to love others as He does.  That means we should love everyone and want all to know the joy we know.  Bishop Barron says, “The surest sign that God is alive in you is joy.”  This is what Jesus meant when He said, “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (Jn 10:10)

Through the Catholic Church, Jesus touches the mind, heart, and the body.  This should give us confidence as evangelists and missionary disciples!  Catholic Christians can literally bring people to Jesus. Our faith awakens all five human senses.

Chris Stefanick, on the topic of evangelization on Formed, got me thinking about the following:

Other churches can say, “Jesus forgives your sins,” but the person they are speaking to might wonder, “How will I know Jesus heard my prayer and how will I know for sure that He has forgiven me?”  We Catholics can say, “Jesus forgives your sins through His priest, who will be sitting there with you.  You will hear that priest, an emissary of Jesus, say, “I absolve you from all your sins.”  You will feel unburdened and receive grace to strengthen you against temptation and to be more compassionate toward others who sin.  And you can share your personal testimony, “I know this, because I have experienced Jesus’ power in Confession.”

Other churches can say, “You will be fed God’s word at our church.”  We can say, “You will be fed by God’s word and Jesus Himself in the Catholic Church.  Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (Jn 6: 51). He does this through His priests, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  During worship, you literally receive the bread Jesus spoke of and that the earliest Christians, such as St. Justin Martyr in 155 AD, wrote about!  And you can share your personal testimony, “I know that bread is really His flesh, because I have experienced healing and peace after eating it.”

Do you see how compelling our Catholic faith is?  It engages all the senses and the mind and literally feeds our soul.  My answer to that fifth-grader’s question now is something like, “I want others to become Catholic, including other Christians, because I want them to encounter Jesus’ love and healing not just spiritually, but physically, for that is the ‘living life to the full’ Jesus said He desires for us.  I want them to know my joy.  I want them to have not just a personal relationship with Jesus, but a physically intimate one.”

How do we bring others into the Church? We emulate Jesus by going to those who are seeking something more and just cannot find it.  Jesus reached out to the seekers of food, good health, and freedom, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and freeing the sinner.  They listened to Him, because He gave them a vision of a better life and showed them the way there and gave them the grace they needed to follow the way.  People who are suffering are often ready for change and so respond to our invitation more readily.

Who in your life is seeking and ready for change?  Show them the way to encounter the true God in the physical vehicles of grace we call Sacraments.  The Sacraments are concrete things you can smell, touch, taste, and hear that put us in touch with the divine.  Prayer, praise, and song are all amazing, but Jesus gave us even more.  He did not leave us alone with hungers that cannot be filled.  He feeds, heals, and forgives us through His holy priests.  Not holy in and of themselves but made holy through the Holy Spirit in yet another Sacrament that is tangible, Holy Orders.

What an amazing gift we have received and that we can share with others.  I am not preaching solely an intellectual argument here.  I am preaching the person of Jesus who came to me physically in the Sacraments and saved me.  My life was a mess when His grace broke upon me through another tangible Sacrament, marriage.

Now let’s pray for the grace to go on mission:  Lord Jesus, keep us mindful that “we draw close to heaven and enter heaven to the extent we draw close to You and enter into communion with You.” (Magisterium AI, on the Hallow App) At the right hand of the Father, You continually offer Yourself for us, and You sent the Holy Spirit to your Church so that your heavenly offering may be made present in the Eucharist on this altar at every Mass.  May the Holy Spirit give us the courage, joy, and love we need to bring others to encounter You in the Sacraments of your Church. Amen.

Not As the World Gives You Peace

Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 25, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 / Ps 67 / Rv 21:10-14, 22-23 / Jn 14:23-29
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

When I was in my 20s and had just been ordained a deacon and was working in my diaconal assignment, the pastor with whom I was working was quite a character, to say the least.  He was a brilliant man, but sometimes with some rough edges.  I don’t think he would mind my saying so.  In any case, when the gesture of peace would come around, I was with him on the altar, of course, and he was a powerful man.  He wasn’t large of stature, but he had some real oomph, I would say, and he would come to give me the gesture of peace in what today would be similar to a chest bump.  He would grab me and look at me and say, “May the peace of Christ always disturb you.”  The first time it happened, I said, “Well, and with your spirit.”  I didn’t know quite what to say, but I did think to myself, “Boy, I hope this doesn’t catch on.”  But it caught on to me.  The reality is that it comes right out of today’s gospel.

“Not as the world gives you peace.”  Not that complacent, calm, serenity business, not that kind of peace.  This is His farewell discourse.  This is what He’s saying right before He gives Himself up to death for our sake.  These are the chapters in which there is so much richness. He’s proclaiming all of this to his friends, His kind of last will and testament at the Last Supper.  The whole new world is about to dawn, and they don’t have a clue as to what is about to transpire.  I don’t just mean the trouble but what the trouble will usher in—the shattering of an old world is about to happen.  To call “peace” peace and place it in the context of what’s coming.  Everything He says is true, but wow!

Not as the world gives you this peace; it’s a peace that will disturb you.  When you, peaceful in My love, see hatred, it’ll make you crazy.  You won’t like it.  You’ll feel viscerally the presence of evil when you’re in its presence and, you know, that’s psychologically true.  When we’re in the midst of something very wrong, we feel it in our gut.  Jesus feels this way when He raises Lazarus from the dead—He knew this was wrong.  It’s the peace that allows us to see that things really aren’t the way they’re supposed to be.  It’s reaching back into that primal instinct from our first days before the Fall, where the remnants of that time that we only glimpse once in a while still linger in our ancient memories.  It’s that peace that tells us this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.  And we have spent how long, how many thousands of generations trying to bury it because it does disturb us?   We throw our hands up.  There’s nothing I can do about it.  It’s not my job.  My little bit won’t help.

Thank God for the Saints, regularly appearing in the midst of that denial to remind us that the disturbing peace of Christ does, in fact, do wonderful things.  Oh, that’s not just a story.  We all know that.  Anybody here happily married?  If you are happily married, even with all the struggles in that happy marriage, you felt this peace.  Why else would two normally sensible people look at each other at the ripe old age of 18, 19, 20-something, and say, “I’m going to be with this person forever?”  Right.  Yes.  Why would a man lie on the floor of a cathedral and say, “I will foreswear sexuality and my own will for the obedience to a Bishop I don’t even know, and I will live with God’s people as my family until I’m as old as McCarron and longer?”  Why?  Because the peace of Christ disturbs us enough to have a glimpse of what the world is like when we listen to it. And so, when we don’t listen to it, what do we get?  We get dry, and wizened, and dark.

The readings today are filled with fabulous one-liners.  I mean if you are going to embroider something, go to these readings.  Put them on a cushion.  Like the second reading from the Book of Revelation, one of my favorite books in the scriptures.  Of course, it’s everybody’s favorite for all the right and wrong reasons.  In this wonderful, wonderful statement where John says, as he looked at the new Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven, that no sun or moon was needed for light in the city of God, because the glory of God shone on it and the Lamb was its lamp.  You hear what he is saying?  He’s saying that, when you have Jesus, you don’t need the lesser lights, the lesser lights that we rely on.  We all rely on a lot of things to protect ourselves from what people think or say, to build ourselves up.  John is basically saying, if you’re relying on Jesus, you don’t need to rely on anything except His choice of you.  Don’t rely on your worthiness, because you ain’t got it!

I was a vocations director for about 18 or 19 years in our diocese, and I remember asking one person what was preventing him from becoming a priest.  He said, “Well, I don’t think I’m worthy for priesthood.”  I looked at him and said, “Really?  What sacraments ARE you worthy for?”  And the answer is none, but we are chosen for all of them.  The Lamb is its lamp.  When we are in love with Jesus Christ, when we spend time with Him, and yes, sometimes that is time for prayer, and sometimes it’s time before the Blessed Sacrament, but it’s also time before the blessed sacrament that is your husband, the blessed sacrament that is your wife, the blessed sacrament that’s your girlfriend, the blessed sacrament that is your boyfriend, your brother, your pesky little sister.  It’s spending time before them.  Do you think your guardian angels are looking at you and they linger because of your good looks?  Sorry, they see in you the spectacular gift of the Lamb shedding light in the image of God.  You are that gift, and the persons you live with are, too.  How cool is that?

And if that weren’t enough, of course, we have in today’s first reading the sending of this letter.  These poor people are getting bombarded by folks telling the Gentiles, well, it’s OK, you are welcome to be a Christian, but you’ve got to become a Jew first.  And they meant it!  They said that God made this covenant, and God’s covenant is made full in the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who is a Jew and a rabbi, and so you must follow what He followed, and He followed the law.  So, the apostles didn’t know what to do, because the Gentiles weren’t having any of that.  I mean, you can imagine, I want to be a Christian, but you have to be circumcised first.  Never mind!  And you know, they weren’t being silly.  I mean, obviously, there was pain involved, but that wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that the pain involved could be lethal.  This wasn’t the days of antibiotics and antiseptics.  The knife you were doing a circumcision with today was the one you used to cut your fish with tomorrow and the day before.  People died of circumcision; they said, there must be something wrong with this.

And so, they say in their letter that “it is apparent to the Holy Spirit and to us.”  Don’t you love that line?  Can you imagine using that line when your teenage son comes home after curfew, and he knows he’s wrong?  You know he’s wrong.  He gets to the door and you go, “It appears to the Holy Spirit and to your mother and I that you are grounded for a week.”  I mean, what is he going to say?  The Holy Spirit said it had to happen.  The reality is that Jesus is giving us that Holy Spirit that allows us to see through Him the very way the Spirit is working.  That’s the peace that disturbs—when we see the way the Spirit is seeing, when we don’t just see through the vision of Christ in the Holy Spirit, we see WITH the Holy Spirit, and suddenly we see that people are people—not a race, not a religion.  The people who have hurt us are people who have hurt us.  The reality is that I’m bigger than any hurt I can receive.  There was no light in the city, no light in my life, no light in my dryness, no light in the hurt, no light in the sins I’ve committed, no light in all these things I need to be forgiven for, BUT it had no need of those lights because the Lamb was the light.

That’s the peace that disturbs us; it disturbs us enough to believe that when I look in the mirror, I really am God’s chosen one, but I’ve done this, and I’ve done that.  Do you think He doesn’t know that?  Oops!  If I had only known he was such a jerk, I would never have asked him to be mine.  God’s not surprised.  You cannot disappoint God, because disappointment means surprise and God’s not surprised by anything.  He knows whom He calls, and when He calls us to the table, when He gives us his very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, it is to transform us.  It’s to make us different.

In a few moments, I’m going to read a prayer that says that basically everything we are is being placed into the bread and wine that’s being offered to the Father, who will receive it and transform it by the Holy Spirit into the Body and Blood of the Son.  That means that all of us, all of our ups and down, our sins, our foibles, all of that is being picked up, put into the bread and wine, and offered to the Father who accepts it.  The light is the Lamb, and as long as we have our eyes on Him, well then suddenly that girlfriend that we burn for is a daughter of the King, that guy that  we can’t live without is to be respected as the Holy Sacrament, that we should treat our sexuality with the same kind of reverence we give to the Eucharist, that we should look at those who have hurt us and pray for them.

I get in a lot of trouble because I watch the news and my heart is heavy, and I see these horrible people who have done horrible things, and I hear all of these things about people wishing they were dead, and they belong in Hell, and blah, blah, blah.  I pray for the perpetrator.  Do I think he’s good?  No.  I think he is a good person who has done horrible things, but he’s the one in danger.  He’s the one chosen who has thrown away his chosen-ness.  I’m disturbed by the hatred that he feels for himself.

I heard a story about a young priest who went into a little town in Italy, and he was sent there because it was an awful little town and he wasn’t a particularly good priest.  He didn’t know much and didn’t have a lot of education.  His superiors didn’t have a lot of hope for him.  So, as a young priest he went there, and he got up the morning after he arrived and opened the doors and he went outside. He walked down the center part of the main street in town, and he said, “Repent.  Believe the good news.  It’s awesome.”  Then he went back home.  He went about his priestly business, but every single day, the entire time he was there, he’d get up and he’d walk out and he’d shout at the top of his lungs, “Repent.  Believe the good news.  It’s awesome.”  One day, after about ten or eleven years of doing this, a little kid came up to him and said, “Father, with all due respect, you haven’t done anything.  The place is still a mess; everybody is still who they are.  You haven’t done a thing to change them.”   The priest stopped and looked at the little kid, and he said, “Change them?  I’m trying to keep them from changing me.”

The peace of Christ that disturbs us keeps us from being like our society.  The peace of Christ that disturbs us makes us see things that no one else will see, keeps us from being blinded to the goodness of those who hate and those who are hated, makes us see in the immigrant, and the poor—people who aren’t a problem to be solved, but a family member to be helped.  It’s not outside our grasp, and if it seems like it’s too big of an issue, well, okay, start at home.  Feed the hungry child who desperately just needs Dad’s attention.  Feed the teenager who’s beset by a thousand options, all of them alien to the Gospel, by proving in yourself as a parent, that it’s awesomely joyful to be a Christian and a Catholic.

Today, you and I will receive the Body and the Blood and the Soul and the Divinity of Christ.  The same One upon whom St. John, who wrote the second reading, lay his head at the Last Supper, will be in our hands or on our lips.  The same One.  If we sit down without a smile on our face, if we sit down without that peace that’s disturbing us, and maybe prompting us to write that letter to the elderly aunt we haven’t talked to in so long, or to tell our teenage kids how much we love them, or to tell a husband or wife you’re still the best looking thing I’ve ever seen, then maybe we should rethink how we are receiving Him and try again.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless You, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.  If that’s not peace disturbing you, I don’t know what is.

I Make All Things New

Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 18, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 14:21-27 / Ps 145 / Rv 21:1-5a / Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

Our gospel reading today is incredibly rich.  It’s also ancient, proclaimed in the Church’s lectionary since about the fifth century.  So once again, we’re in a part of the lectionary that allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants, as they say, our forebears in the Faith.  The reason that it’s here is that it is a pivot point.  This gospel serves as a hinge from the Easter season into the anticipation of Pentecost and the season that follows immediately after, with the great feasts and solemnities.

You’ll notice that in the first part of the season of Easter, we talked a lot about the Resurrection appearances.  We talked a lot about where our Lord was, what He was doing, what He was saying to His disciples who witnessed Him.  But now we’ve jumped back to another place.  It’s not Eastertide; it’s the Last Supper.  This is part of what is called the Farewell Discourse.  And it’s a part of the Farewell Discourse that follows pretty much the plan that John sees our Lord setting out:  His service to His people and then all of the great proclamations of His love for us that we can only do by the Holy Spirit, which is what we’re awaiting.  And so, the lectionary is pointing us towards Pentecost, which is only a couple of weeks away.

I would suspect that this gospel sounds a little bit difficult to understand.  I mean understand if, for no other reason, is all the “glorified”:  God is glorified in Him and God will glorify Himself and if He glorifies Himself, He will glorify Him rightly.  After a while, you say what’s the point?  But it’s a really big point, and it’s the point upon which the pivot happens because it says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified.”

Now this is the Last Supper and “Now is the Son of Man glorified.”  What’s happening now?  He’s about to be crucified.  That’s God glorifying Him?  That’s a very powerful statement.  You remember He’s at the Last Supper, and Judas has just gone out to betray Him, and Jesus says to the rest that now it’s happened and that the Son of Man is glorified by the Father.  And He’s doing it right now, right here in this room at this table and we would have a right to say, “It sure doesn’t look like a lot of glory.”  Especially to them.  We have the wonderful gift of reflection of two thousand years and know that a Resurrection is going to happen after this, but the people here did not know that.  It’s telling us something.  It’s telling us something about what it means to believe in the power of Easter, but also the wonder of Pentecost.

One of the great sins of our society — in fact, it’s the great heresy that grips our society — is cynicism.  Cynicism, which anybody over the age of about eighteen, or even younger than that, will be afflicted by, is a belief that things just don’t change.  Nothing’s going to change. The world’s always going to be this way.  I don’t change; this is just the way I am.  A lot of people, as we get older, just kind of shake our heads and say that these are habits I’m never going to break, on and on and on and on.  It really is out there, and it’s a very particularly serious heresy for Catholic Christians, because it robs us of hope.

Hope is the understanding that in fact what you see is not what you get.  That in fact what we taste is a better sign of what we’re going to get.  That moment when she says, “I do,” and our whole world just lights up with fireworks?  That’s a taste.  It’s not always going to be that way.  The fireworks will turn into a bonfire sometimes.  But the reality is that you knew then more truly than you’ve ever known.  I say to couples on their wedding day, you are seeing more clearly the truth right now, today, than you ever will.  Remember what you see, because sometimes it’s easy to forget you see.

When Jesus says He’s going to be glorified, He’s saying it in the midst of the understanding of a living hope that the evil which is about to capture Him and torture Him and bury Him is not the end.  He dispels and destroys any basis for cynicism.  If God can take the cross (the most horrible, obscene evil that human beings can ever do to each other, much less the Son of Eternal Father) and turn it into the greatest good that ever has been (the absolute power of life over death) so that the greatest  it’s-never-going-to-change death (which all of us feel when we lose somebody) is broken, what could He not do with us?  What sin in our past that nobody knows about that we think makes us unlovable can He not forgive?

The fact of the matter is, He knows us best, and He loves us the most.  The power of His love is to birth hope.  Hope that no matter where we are, whatever situation we’re in, however lackluster or lukewarm we’ve been in our faith, He births a hope so that the glory of God is revealed in the midst of our difficulty.  Why?  Because there in the midst of our difficulty, even at our desperation point, if we have hope, we’re seeing beyond it.  We’re seeing bigger than it, we’re seeing something more powerful.  If I look at that person that I’ve always had a low opinion of and begin to hope, I’m open to the possibility that there in that person, there may be something I can give to help them.  Or I could be helped by them by forgiving them for the ill they may have done me.  If I look at my children and begin to lose hope for their future, because the world seems so topsy turvy, perhaps I could remember what I understood when I held them first in my arms here or at the hospital, and realize I’d be willing to do anything I could to give them a future filled with hope.

Faith, hope, and love.  The greatest of these is love.  You know why that is, don’t you?  In heaven, we don’t need faith anymore.  What we had faith in we’ll see right before us.  Even in heaven, hope will at last be fulfilled: that thing which points us to a world that’s different, to a belief that’s different.  But we’ll still need love even in heaven.  Practicing that love now, as Jesus says, “God’s going to glorify Me in this,” but how will we see that glory?  By the fact that you love each other.   Because you’ve experienced My love, you’ve come to love each other as I love you.  How do I love you?  I love you the way the Eternal Father loves the Eternal Son.  In just a couple of verses He is going to tell us, not only do I ask you to love that way, I command it.  To love the way God loves.  You can’t be cynical if you have that kind of love.  You just can’t.  It’s not permitted, but it’s also not possible.

In the second reading, from the Book of Revelation, John says, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” and that everything that I thought was going to be here forever, it was gone.  There’s a whole new way of being a human being.  As that passage continues, the Lord says, “I am the Alpha and Omega.”  He says that I am the beginning and the end.  At the end of today’s reading, the Lord says, “Behold, I make all things new.”  Even you and me.

So, if there are patterns of hurt in your relationships that you don’t think you’re ever going to change, now is the time for God’s glory to shine.  If you haven’t had a great deal of respect or a good relationship with your parents, you can change today before you leave these doors.  With the hope and the power of the Eucharist itself, the love of Jesus Christ can make a husband and a wife see each other in all new ways, if we just let it.  We cannot be cynical because the only thing that is forever is God, and God is love, and His love is for us, and that means we’re forever in love with Him.

May Jesus Christ be praised forever.

Leaving the Median

Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 11, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 13:14, 43-52 / Ps 100 / Rv 7:9, 14b-17 / Jn 10:27-30
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

It’s such a joy to be here with you again today and over these next couple of weeks.  It’s exactly the elixir that this retired priest needed:  to have a parish community again for a while.  So, thank you for that gift.

I said to someone at the last Mass, and I would repeat it, especially since it’s happened twice in a row:  8 o’clock is really early.  Especially if you’re coming all the way from Lynchburg, which is not far, of course, but it means that, for me, I have to get up around 4:45 or thereabouts and get the dog settled and myself settled, so that I don’t come out bleary-eyed and mumbling things at Mass.

It’s always a joy for me to have the distance between my home in Lynchburg to this parish here in Bedford because of that drive.  I come out on 460 and, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it at that hour on a Sunday, when there’s almost no traffic, but that drive is absolutely delightful.  It’s not usually delightful, especially if I’m behind you saying, “Hurry up!”  But that’s my fault.  This morning, however, when I came up it was just so awesome.  There was a little haze across the fields, the deer were kind of bedding down.  You could see them heading into the woodlands, instead of the middle of the road, like they usually do.  It was just wonderful and very peaceful and a wonderful way to arrive, of course, to celebrate the Prince of Peace.  It was really a gift.

And so, as I was driving along that 32.5 minutes, according to my GPS, that it takes to get here, I was immediately lulled into those wonderful spiritual thoughts, and I began to think about the median strip.  I mean, really, about the median strip!  I’ve always been fascinated by them.  When you think about it, they’re the victims of violence, aren’t they?  Somebody has come through what was once a pasture or a road, and just created this 4-lane highway, and left there in the middle, seemingly forgotten, this strip of land.

I admit that, if you’re a traffic engineer, and you’re here in the congregation, you shake your head and say “They’re there for a purpose.”  Yes, I know they’re there for a purpose.  They do serve a purpose:  they separate the lanes and keep the lights down; they do all sorts of things!  But there’s a study that says, since the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they began the interstate system and when road construction began to take in things like median strips for safety, a group of animals has begun to adapt to living in median strips.  They don’t live anywhere else, because they can’t get off of the median strip.  And if they do, they don’t get to the other side, generally speaking.  So, there’s a whole life ecosystem going on.

As I’m driving down the road, I’m kind of watching how the wildflowers are coming up, how different things are happening in that median strip.  And I thought to myself, I’d really hate to be a median strip, because they don’t go anywhere.  They always stop at a bridge, or at an intersection, or something.  They don’t go further.  And if you’re one of those lucky animals who has decided this is home, well, you’re wrong because you don’t go anywhere, either.

Today our Lord talks, as he does on this Sunday every year, about the Good Shepherd.  The readings we hear today have been proclaimed in the Church since the fourth century. This is part of the ancient lectionary, as pretty much all of Easter is.  This particular one is called Shepherd Sunday, because all of the readings are about being a shepherd, doing shepherd-like things.

In Jesus’ day, it’s beautiful.  We have this wonderful image of our Lord with a lamb across His shoulders.  It’s very touching.  But, of course, in Jesus’ day, if I called you a sheep, you would be really upset.  It still is not complimentary.  I mean, go to a friend of yours and say “You’re such a sheep,” and see if you get a happy response.  You won’t.

In Jesus’ day, and in ours, sheep are very sweet.  I mean, who doesn’t love a lamb?  You just want to cuddle with them.  But they’re dumb as a box of rocks.  I grew up on a farm that had sheep, among other things, and you just couldn’t help but love them.  They all have different personalities.  But they don’t know anything.  They can get spooked by a branch falling in a field a mile away.  They run, once they’re spooked, until they drop.  They don’t stop; they drop.  If they’re left to their own devices, they exhaust themselves.  They’re a catering service for wolves, basically.  They don’t protect themselves; they can’t.  They run and they are challenged and, if they fall in a creek, they turn over and they can’t turn themselves back.  They get soaked in the wool and they drown.

They need a shepherd, and that is Jesus’ whole point.  Goats are like the cats of the sheep world.  They can do anything on their own.  They have brilliant minds, they take care of themselves, they gather together and they push back any danger.  They don’t really need a lot of help.  Sheep in the wild need an awful lot of help.  In fact, without the shepherd – and Jesus is making this very clear in the gospel of St. John – they won’t go anywhere.  They stop.

But His sheep know him, and when He calls them, they come forward.  This is important for people who are living in the median.  And I hate to tell you, but we’re living in the median.  That is to say, we live in a time when faith has been reduced to a kind of pausing.  Faith has been reduced to trying not to stand out too much.  Faith has become a kind of Catholic agnosticism.  You know God exists.  Everybody in this room believes that.  We’re not sure He does anything.  He doesn’t really intervene.  He doesn’t really get on our side or have our back.  When we are in trouble, we go to a lot of different places before we get to Him.  He’s kind of our desperation point, isn’t He?

You see, Jesus is the Shepherd that we who live in the median – not quite sure, wanting to be sure, but OK about staying in one place – need.  He’s the one who gets us off the median.  We need a shepherd to see us across those four lanes.  We need a shepherd to tell us that there really is life on the other side of that concrete:  the concrete of our prejudices or our own grudges, the concrete of our opinions about ourselves when we look in the mirror and just don’t like what we see if we’re honest, the concrete of the difficulties we have with our kids, or we who are kids have with our parents.  We need a shepherd to show us how to get off of that median safely.

Jesus says that they know My voice.  They’ve heard what I’ve said to them.  And I’ve put them into My hand.  That is to say I will never let them go.  I will never get them to come out into the road unless I can lead them safely to the other side.  I will hold on to them.  Our prejudices can be coming down the road at seventy-five miles an hour, and we could be in the middle of the road, but He’s not going to let us get hit by them if we stick with the Gospel.

When we’re at work, and everybody’s talking about the new Holy Father, and that he’s an American, as though the Holy Father can be minimalized into a nationality, we are able to stand up and profess our faith, and what it means to be one Church of enormous diversity, with an enormous broad Catholic reach.  It means that Jesus, who has called us, has summoned us off the median because we’ve heard the voice of one person who makes more sense than all of the stuff we see on social media, the stuff that our computer can lure us to.  It tells us that our sexuality is some kind of a playground, instead of a sacred gift, as sacred as the Eucharist is – a sacrament to be given to another with faithfulness, permanence, and love.  We may feel like we’re in a pretty unsafe place.  But living on the median, we can begin to think that sometimes the bad behaviors we compromise with, that we accept, in order not to seem different, just pass by. Those bad behaviors can suddenly begin to be a toxin that takes hold of us and changes us.

Today we celebrate Mother’s Day.  We’re glad to celebrate our mothers.  Hopefully we remember a Mom who taught us that there was a difference between love and hate, forgiveness and grudges.  Hopefully, we remember a mother who, by her own example, showed us what she cares about.

Do you know what the first memory that comes to mind of my mother, at my ripe old age of almost seventy-four?  It is of my mother putting rubbing alcohol on me when I was about twelve years old, because I had the flu and my fever had gone up into the dangerous zone.  I don’t remember much else of that fever or of that time.  I just remember her being at my bedside late at night, and bringing my fever down.  Thanks, Moms.  Happy day.  I had a good shepherd.  It looked an awful lot like my mother.

That’s, of course, the point.  “The Father and I are one,” Jesus says.  That means when they hear My voice, and they follow Me, they know that I can get them, allow them, help them, infuse them to be Me to others:  Moms to their children, husbands to their spouses, children to their parents, elderly to the young, and bless the young, to us, who are older in years.

It’s funny to be on the median, isn’t it?  It looks very peaceful, but sometimes it’s a little too peaceful.  The median isn’t the woods.  The woods give life to so many creatures.  The medians give it only to a few that will accept the narrow boundaries as normal.  We don’t.  We’re Catholics.  We have no boundaries.  Our boundaries are as big as eternity, as long and as deep as grace.  And we have a Shepherd who will never let us be extricated from His grasp.  And He’s grabbed us, tight, with a hug that leads to everlasting life.  Does it go somewhere?  It goes on forever, as it should.

May Jesus be praised forever.

Follow Him

Third Sunday of Easter
May 4, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41 / Ps 30 / Rv 5:11-14 / Jn 21:1-19
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

It had been quite the week. It weighed on him more than he could possibly say. They had gone up to Jerusalem, of course, all of them with such high hopes. It was that procession, that raucous, loud, singing procession into the gates. It had all changed so swiftly. Within a week they were running and hiding, afraid to be caught like He was caught. Peter, His dear friend, leader of the rest, hid better than most of them, even denied Him. Three times.

And so, finally it got to be too much, and Peter could not live with his thoughts. And he decided just to go back to normal life, and he said, I’m going fishing. And to his great surprise and pleasure, the others had been feeling the same. We’ll go with you, they said. We’ll go back home. And so, they went fishing and, true to form for the week that had been, it was just like the week: no fish, no nothing. Nothing but a continuous heavy barrage of bad news and, especially for fishermen who hadn’t fished in so long, particularly bad news. At least there were no Romans such was the benefit of fishing at night: no tax collectors, no Romans, no fish either.

And so, as they found themselves drifting up towards the place of the seven springs, where they had often gone after they had fished successfully, where they had cleaned the fish, where Jesus had met them so many times, spending the night on that rock, telling stories, laughing, teasing each other, teasing Him. He was a sight in the morning, and they’d let him know it.

As they drifted toward shore, it was already almost dawn. That kind of half-light of early morning obscured the view, but they could see the mooring spots where they were going, and there was someone there, there on the steps down into the water. And the person cried out, “Children, have you caught anything?” Peter cocked his head.  It was a familiar voice.  But he answered, “Nothing. Nothing, sir.” “Well then, put your nets on the right side of the boat, as opposed to the wrong side of the boat.” And so, Peter did the opposite of what he had done, but as he did, it was becoming more and more familiar to him. Déjà vu perhaps, but more real than that, until John cried out, “It’s the Lord!”

As the fish were being hauled in, one hundred and fifty-three of them, one for every nation known on earth, Peter threw on some clothes, jumped into the water, and swam to Him. There, the smell of charcoal smoke, fish cooking, and his friend. “Tell them to bring it all ashore and bring me some fish. You’ve got a lot of people that are hungry here, Peter. Come, have your breakfast.”

For many of you who know me, I’m Monsignor Michael McCarron. It is my privilege to have been the pastor of St. Thomas More for the last thirteen years, retiring last June. So almost a year into retirement, and I’ve survived so far. I will be a priest for forty-eight years on this Wednesday, which just sounds like a long time, even to me. Not to mention the congregations that have endured me. But I have to say even though that’s the case, every time I come before these wonderful mysteries, the gospels like this, I get nervous. I said to the deacon earlier today as I began, you know it’s the first time I’ve been here for fourteen years. This is the first time we’ve ever been together on the altar. It’s kind of a wonderful occasion. And I said, are you nervous? And he said, yeah, you know, and I didn’t say to him then, but I should have: so am I. I’m always nervous before I preach or teach, and why wouldn’t I be?

You see, I have been given a call. I have been asked to follow Him and right now, I’m standing before you and His call is to convince you somehow, whatever age you are or level of faith you are, to convince you about something that is true. That something is really true, and that is that you have a God who wants to make breakfast for you. Wants to make breakfast for you. You have a God so tender that one of the first things He does after He rises from the dead is meet you in the place where you have always talked into the night. Where the only memory is a memory of goodness and companionship and fellowship. To convince you that, in fact, no matter how many times we’ve denied Him, we will have opportunity, ample opportunity to nevertheless, affirm Him. “You know I love you, Lord. I’m sorry, but you know everything. You know I love you.” And He does.

I’m nervous because I know that I am called to somehow awaken every single heart here. Your salvation has been presented to me, too. The Lord wants me to tell you, Follow Him. Just the way He told Peter. No different message from the gospel. And following Him is what makes me nervous, because to convince you to do that, I’m fully aware that following Him is no easy task. Following Him means, following Him into charity and into forgiveness when they tease you at high school or in elementary school, because you’re a faithful person, and they’re not. Because you’re home schooled, and they’re not; because you live a way that other teenagers don’t live. Follow me and the urges to go to the computer and satisfy them are all there and all powerful; following Him means saying no.

There’s a better way. Even though you might not be able to see it right now, there’s a better way. I’m nervous. Because there’s a message here today that if we have a God who loves us so much that He will make us breakfast, then we had better be sure we believe He’s made us dinner and that He intends to feed us just as surely as He intended to feed them.

“Follow me” is His command at the end of this gospel. And I hope with all that I am that something, somehow, as the Lord speaks through me, blessed be God, will speak to you, whether you’re thirteen or eight, fifteen or fifty, it doesn’t matter. Do we think that a God who would cook breakfast for us is uninterested in anyone here because of their age, their gender, their aptitude, their looks? Follow Him and reject all of the false values the world will give you for acting the way it thinks you should. Follow Him so that the unborn find a voice screaming for life and a chance to live; Follow Him so that the elderly may find themselves, in fact, reverenced as wise for their years and cared for because of their giving.

What a wonderful gospel, but I’m nervous. Because you see, if you believe this gospel, listening to that first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, how can I convince you to go home and gives thanks to God for being declared worthy to suffer embarrassment for the sake of the Lord? No one wants to do that …except those who follow Him, because, where He is, we want to be. Where He goes, we want to go. The meal He prepares, we want to eat, because its dessert is eternal life.

May Jesus be praised forever.

Not With Judgment But With Mercy

Second Sunday of Easter
Sunday of Divine Mercy
April 27, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 5:12-16 / Ps 118 / Rv 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19 / Jn 20:19-31
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

Today, on this Second Sunday of Easter, we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, a feast instituted by St. John Paul II in the year 2000, inspired by the revelations of Jesus to St. Faustina Kualska. At the heart of this Sunday is the message that God’s mercy is greater than any sin. And that we, as followers of Christ, are called not only to receive that mercy, but to live it, breathe it, and bring it into a wounded world.

The gospel today brings us back into the upper room, where the risen Christ appears to His fearful disciples, showing them His wounds and breathing His peace upon them. His first words are “Peace be with you,” and then He commissions them: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

But then the focus turns to Thomas, who wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared. Thomas doubts, and yet Jesus does not rebuke him. He invites him: “Put your finger here… Do not be unbelieving but believe.” Jesus meets Thomas in his doubt, not with judgment but with mercy.

Our Church reminds that Christ’s resurrection is the crowning truth of our faith, and that, through it, we are not only reconciled with God, but also commissioned to be instruments of reconciliation and peace. The Church teaches that mercy is the very foundation of Christian life, not as a vague sentiment but as a mission. To forgive as we have been forgiven, and to heal as we have been healed. This is not just an idea; it is a mandate.  And we have seen this more clearly in our time through Pope Francis.

In the early days of his pontificate, Pope Francis was asked in an interview, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” His response was both humble and powerful: “I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.” That simple phrase captures the essence of Divine Mercy. Pope Francis never spoke of mercy as an obstruction. He lived it deeply and personally.

God’s mercy is our liberation and our happiness. We live for mercy, and we cannot afford to be without mercy. It is the air we breathe. We are too poor to set any conditions. We need to forgive, because we need to be forgiven. If there is a message that has most characterized Pope Francis’s pontificate and is destined to remain, it is that of mercy.

When Pope Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires, he used to sneak out at night to visit the slums, dressed in plain clothes, to meet the poor, the addicts, the forgotten. One night he came across a man who had lived on the streets for years. The man recognized him and said, “Father Bergoglio, you came back.” The then-cardinal sat with him in silence for over an hour. When asked later why he did that, he said, “Because sometimes mercy is not in the words. It is in the staying.”

He taught us that mercy is presence. Mercy is listening. Mercy is not earned; it is offered freely, as Jesus offered it to Thomas.

As Pope Francis said that the Church is a field hospital after battle. “Heal the wounds, heal the wounds… and you have to start from the ground up.” Brothers and sisters, like Thomas we all have wounds. We all doubt. But Jesus meets us with tenderness, not condemnation. He invites us to touch His wounds and find our healing there.  Go to confession, not out of fear, but out of trust that mercy is real.

We live in a world marked by division, hatred, and loneliness. Our culture often says, cancel the sinner. But Jesus says, touch my wound.

Pope Francis reminds us that the Church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners. Let us be people who forgive, who reconcile, who reach out. So many around us are like Thomas, wounded, doubting, waiting for someone to show up. We can be that someone in our homes, parishes, workplaces. Let us be that presence of peace and mercy.

In this digital, polarized, and fast-moving world, mercy can feel countercultural. Yet, it is the very thing our world longs for. In a time when wars rage, when refugees wander, when the poor are forgotten, and when many feel unseen, the message of Divine Mercy and the example of Pope Francis call us to step into the wounds of the world, not with judgment but with love.

Let us visit the sick, feed the hungry, call the lonely, forgive the unforgivable. Let us slow down, listen more, and judge less. Let us also remember that showing mercy begins at home, with our families, our parishes, and even ourselves.

As we reflect on Divine Mercy, let us offer our prayers on this homily as a tribute to Pope Francis, a man whose life has become a parable of mercy. He has taught us not only with encyclicals and exhortations, but with gestures: washing the feet of prisoners; embracing the disfigured; calling the young people to dream; and challenging all of us to build a Church that goes to the peripheries.

In a homily he gave during one of his morning Masses in April 2014, Pope Francis said, “How many of us perhaps deserve a condemnation? And it could be just. But He forgives. How? With mercy that does not erase the sin.  It is only the forgiveness of God that erases it, while mercy goes beyond that. It is like the sky. We look at the sky. So many stars. But when the sun comes in the morning with so much light, the stars are no longer seen.  So it is with God’s mercy. A great light of love, of tenderness, because God forgives not with a decree but with a caress.

May Pope Francis’s example stir within us the courage to love boldly, forgive radically, and serve joyfully. Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be unbelieving but believe. Let us not keep mercy to ourselves, but go forth, as the Father has sent Jesus, so He now sends us. And as Pope Francis once said, “Mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life. All of our pastoral activity should be caught up in the tenderness He makes present to believers. Nothing in her preaching and in her witness to the world can be lacking in mercy.” May we become what we receive, instruments of mercy in a world so desperately in need.

Death Has No Sting

The Resurrection of the Lord
April 20, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Ac 10:34a, 37-43 / Ps 118 / Col 3:1-4  / Jn 20:1-9
by Rev. Jay Biber, Guest Celebrant

In Lexington where I live, we have a little bit of a reading group, and what we landed on at the beginning of Lent this year, was a work which included some homilies, done in 1981 by a German theologian.  His name was Joseph Ratzinger.  You may remember him; he  became Cardinal Archbishop shortly after Pope John Paul II was made Pope in 1978.  This book, by whom I believe now is the greatest theologian of the 20^th century (although none of us knew it at the time), was published in 1981.  This was a series of homilies that he gave in Munich in 1981.  

Looking at the piercing of Christ on the cross, and at the Resurrection, Cardinal Ratzinger took a different starting point.  It was captivating to me.   When you think of the Resurrection, what image comes to mind?  The scripture doesn’t give us that moment that shows what it was like.  We could look at the Shroud of Turin and we’re free to believe that, somehow in its miraculous way, it captures what happened beyond our knowing.  And so, I think we imagine the stories of the dazzling angels.  So, for me anyway, it’s sort of dazzling.  

But actually, when you see all the stories of the Resurrection, whether it’s the Sunday night in the Upper Room where Jesus joins the disciples, He walks through the door.  So, obviously, there’s something very different here, but He’s still in a body.  He’s still got the wounds.  He’s the same, but He’s not.  By the Sea of Tiberius, He makes a point that He’s eating fish for breakfast, like they are.  Other examples are the story of the women who are at the grave – Mary Magdalene thinks He is the gardener.  She sees Him but doesn’t recognize Him.  On the road to Emmaus, He is not recognized until the breaking of the bread.  Something profound is going on.  

Within what we call the west, there are two dimensions and Pope John Paul II was keenly aware of those.  Of course, Cardinal Ratzinger became the main theologian of the Church and then later became Pope himself in 2005.  So, if you look at what is between Greece and Italy, Greece belongs to the eastern part of the empire,  but from Italy all the way over to Germany, Austria, Finland, England, and Ireland are the western part of the empire.  I guess you could say that Poland is in the middle – it touches both the east and the west.  So, in the two parts of the empire, the art is different.  We have our representational art here; it looks like people.  We don’t want it to become idolatry, but it looks like people.  It’s got three dimensions.  In the east the Orthodox art is much more mystical, and so when you see it, you are seeing icons, perhaps the famous icon of the Trinity, or the icons of Mary with the Infant Jesus.  These are clearly not meant to be exact representations of people because they are only two-dimensional, not three.  They are created this way so that we pass through it to the deeper, mysterious, mystical reality that it leads us through.  

It turns out that this was where Cardinal Ratzinger made the point that, as far as the Resurrection goes, in the eastern part of the west, that half (all the Balkans, and Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Greece) have looked at the Resurrection in a very different way.  If you want to see it, you can see pictures of it; just punch in “the Harrowing of Hell” or “Descent to Hell.”  Remember when we pray the Apostle’s Creed, “He descended to Hell,” to the land of the dead, not to the permanent separation of God for those who have rejected or unconfessed, but the waiting, beginning with Adam and Eve, all the just people waiting for God to set things right.  And so, in the east, since there was no image of the Resurrection, the image they developed was the Harrowing of Hell.  Now, a harrow is an agricultural implement that basically roughs up the ground.  After all the vegetables, fruits, and grains are all harvested, the earth needs to be turned over so it can receive the rain, so it can receive the seed, somewhat like aerating a lawn.  The harrow is a machine that churns up, so we speak of the Harrowing of Hell.  Go online; you’ll see icon after icon after icon and with some of them, you can find the commentary, so you can even understand the details of what the symbols are.  

Basically, the Harrowing of Hell, the Descent to Hades (Sheol in Hebrew), is where Christ goes to bust up Hell. It’s very physical because he comes to break open Hell, to break all the locks, to let the light in to where there was only dark.  So, in the icons, first you see the images of Him going to Adam and Eve who have been waiting for so long, and to all the just souls who have been waiting for that great moment of redemption.  This becomes the final act in Christ’s saving work.  He has come to earth, He has taken on our flesh, and now He has died, which permits the final act – to go down to the land of the dead and say, “I did not make you to live in a dungeon.  Come out.”  The story of Lazarus is a foreshadowing of that.   “Come out,” He says to all the souls who were waiting.  So that’s the redemption.  

The harrowing is that He shows no mercy to Satan.  Satan turns out to be a nothing, just a minor thing.  The Satan that had everybody terrorized is now seen whimpering in the corner.  The death that had everyone terrorized no longer has any power. 

Now we read the Psalms with a different mindset.  Think of Psalm 24.  “Oh gates, lift high your heads.  Grow high you ancient doors.  Let him enter, the king of glory.”  He’ll break those gates open.  It’s physical, it’s athletic, it’s muscular.  Who is that king of glory?  The Lord, the mighty, the valiant.  Oh gates, lift high your heads, because death has no sting.  He has entered the world of death for our sake, His love for us, and blown it up at the middle.  

What Cardinal Ratzinger understood too, was that this is the story that applies; this is a pattern that gets repeated all through history.  For Israel certainly had the experience of the Exodus of being set free from slavery, from the dungeon of darkness, of pure solitude and the loneliness of no connection.  All that is done away with.  This is not just for once; this is a pattern of God.  It is a rhythm.  Lost, then found.  Israel would experience not only the Exodus, but hundreds of years later, the exile.  And the Church would navigate in our own way. The new Israel would navigate seas and waves and tides and winds that we could not have imagined,  every generation going through the pattern.  To even up to now; to yourselves and your stories.  Even in those moments when you felt like death warmed over, you somehow experienced that there was a new life under all this and this is true today as well.  

To go all the way back to the story of Abraham going up the mountain with Isaac ready to sacrifice him and Isaac’s asking where the lamb will come from.  Abraham says the Lord will provide.  And there he is bound on the altar and they look and see the ram caught in the thicket, and that becomes the sacrifice.  The derivative of Isaac’s name is “laughter.”  Ultimately, there is joy for the person of faith because this is the way God has set up the world.  It is a joy that courses in a laugh.  Probably most of us have been in certain situations where we thought we would never laugh again.  But no, we have too much evidence to the contrary.  With Isaac, he laughed to see the lamb, as if to say that, Yeah, I need to learn to believe that when God says, “I got this,” He means it.  

Food for the Journey

Holy Thursday – Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
April 17, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Ex 12:1-8, 11-14 / Ps 116 / 1 Cor 11:23-26 / Jn 13:1-15
by Rev. Jay Biber, Guest Celebrant

In your own families I’m sure you have a calendar of your own, just for your family.  It’s not a big calendar of New Year’s Day or Memorial Day, or the Fourth of July, like the great national calendar.  It’s the calendar of your family: the calendar of the birthdays, the wedding days, or maybe the time you first met and where you first met.  It’s the calendar of those big dates and maybe some sad dates, too:  a car accident, or a death in the family, and those things that mark the calendars down through the years.

I love to think of this Holy Week as our calendar.  It’s not a particularly special day for the country or the world, but it’s our calendar.  It is here that we count our time, and obviously, a lot of the people you know don’t recognize this timing.  Why, in the middle of all this on a Thursday, all of a sudden, you’re counting time, you’re marking time, differently?  Maybe that’s where we got that expression, “She marches to a different drummer.”

We have a rhythm.  Our whole creation has a rhythm to it the way we understand it.  It’s not just building material that we can rearrange the way we like.  It comes with a pattern; it comes with a shape to it.  Even in science, for example, there is a pattern.  The Vatican astronomer spoke up in Lexington this year.  He said, “Science is meant to lead to worship.”   We see the patterns of God, and we want to begin to know who is the One behind these patterns?  Who is the One behind these forms?  And so, we measure things a little bit differently.

With this Holy Thursday feast today, especially this year, I was struck because it coincides exactly with the Jewish Passover feast.  It coincides this year, but not every year, because of the course of history.  We’ve asked, “How are we going to measure?”  Maybe by the first day of spring, because that’s the way the sun works.  Or is it the lunar cycles, the cycles of the moon?  There are different ways to measure, and that’s why you have an Orthodox Easter and a Catholic Easter.  The Eastern and Western Churches calculated differently, but what they had in common, together with the Jewish people, is that all this creation of God and all this history is all connected.  It’s somehow all connected.

When we say, “in those years since the time of Christ,” we say “AD.”  If you know your Latin, that means anno Domini, in the year of the Lord.  That way, we’re counting time with Christ at the center point of history, with the incarnation of Christ at the very center point of the cosmos and of all human history.  He’s at the center.  That’s how we count.

Sometimes when people don’t understand what’s going on at the Mass, I’ll say, “Well, you know, it’s okay.”  The Mass is not something that started in America, nor is it something that came over from Europe.  It comes from the Middle East.  What we do always comes from the Middle East.  Those are the origins of our faith, the patterns.

This year, the whole Passover Week is exactly the same as Holy Week.  It began as did our Holy Week, as is the Jewish custom.  A lot of our roots are taken from our great Jewish ancestors.  There are a lot of the roots of this faith.  And so, the pattern for this Holy Week begins when?  Sunset, Saturday night, last Saturday night.  Because in the Jewish reckoning, the day always begins at sunset the night before.  That’s when you start counting it.  So, what we call the Vigil Mass is really a Sunday Mass, but it’s done in vigil, the night before.  That’s when Passover begins.

Holy Week finishes on Easter Sunday at sunset.  That means that the week is right smack on top of the feast of Passover.  It suggests to us, especially in the celebration of Holy Thursday, the many gifts that accompany these celebrations.  Think of the great gifts of today:  the first First Holy Communion.  Some have said the first Mass – I suppose you could, but it was definitely the first First Holy Communion for all the Apostles.  This was the beginning of the Eucharist that is to accompany us, the manna from heaven, built on the Jewish patterns.  And now, we have not the manna that came down during the night, nor the quail that they were able to kill to eat, but the Body and Blood of Christ.

So tonight, we commemorate the gift of the Eucharist, the institution of the Eucharist.  We commemorate the institution of the New Testament priesthood, not the Aaronic priesthood of offering sacrifices, but the New Testament priesthood.  When did that happen?  Well, you’re going to hear it at Mass tonight, when He says, “Do this in memory of Me.”  It’s that simple.  It wasn’t like a Super Bowl half-time show.  In all simplicity, the greatest gift to the Apostles around was: “Do this (what we do tonight) in memory of Me.”

So, think about what went before you.  I think, especially when I’m among Catholics, that every single one of you came from immigrant stock.  There wasn’t one of us who didn’t, if you check back in your family.  Maybe you remember the stories.  I’m old enough.  I guess I got the fresh stories of the trip over:  steerage in the boat, the anti-Catholic prejudice.  I got all the stories.  Maybe you got some of them.  But that’s part of your depth, because those people came with a faith.  When you think of all those in our own families who came over, they didn’t know what they were getting into.

Like a lot of life, if you really knew what you were getting into, you’d beg off.  We’d say, “I don’t think so.  I’m afraid.”  But we got into it and flourished.  We follow the Jewish pattern.  So, what happened that first Passover?  First of all, we hear the command.  Egypt is the slave-owner.  The people of Israel are in Egypt.  They were in Egypt and were enslaved, and they were just pushed harder and harder.  They’re pushed to their breaking point.  It’s Moses whom God chooses to lead them out.  And he gives them their order for Passover.

First of all, Passover is meant to be commemorated in the family or in the local community.  By Jesus’ time, when they were celebrating Passover, there was a rule:  you couldn’t leave Jerusalem.  The whole family had to come to Jerusalem.  The whole family had to get together.  This is a family feast.  The whole family had to get together because that’s where you get your strength.  And there you heard the orders:  to sacrifice the lamb, to eat the meal, a convivial meal.  The rule was that you couldn’t leave Jerusalem, because they said, on this one night, everybody’s got to be there, because it’s so important to keep that tradition.  Otherwise, we risk just falling apart, if we don’t remember.

Of course, then, the eating of the Passover lamb is a foreshadowing of Christ who will become the lamb of the Passover. The understanding is that what was begun in the Passover is continued in the pattern. First of all, the Church is still a pilgrim people.  Israel had a promised land to look forward to.  We have a different promised land, for which we depend on the manna from heaven, and we still know that we are nomadic.  We’re nomadic people in the sense still that there is no lasting city, that we can’t count on making this earth perfect. Pope Benedict said, “If we try to think this world is supposed to be perfected, we’ll make Hell out of it.”   Our lives are carried out in moments of great beauty and in moments of great darkness and sadness, where each generation, and the Church in each generation, has its own challenges on the way, always on the way, looking forward to the final resolution.

And so, we get to take nourishment from, not the manna that came down from heaven, but the Body and Blood of Christ.  On the journey, we always need to be grateful, as God taught Israel to be, for the beautiful things given it.  We must also keep faith through the sad times as well, keeping faith through tough times because Israel’s been through them, and the Church has been through them.  There’s no generation that hasn’t, and that’s a way, I think, to interpret our own lives.

In our lives, there come times of great fullness, when you can’t imagine it being any other way and equal times of emptiness, when you can’t imagine it being any other way.  Yet somehow, in every generation, we turn ourselves over finally to God.  We surrender to this manna from heaven.  So, every generation is able to give its own witness that God did provide.

Obedient, Redemptive Love

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
April 13, 2025—Year C
Readings:  Lk 19:28-40 / Is 50:4-7 / Ps 22 / Phil 2:6-11 / Lk 22:14–23:56
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

Today we stand at the threshold of the most sacred week of the liturgical year.  Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday, begins with joyful acclamations as Jesus enters Jerusalem, and quickly moves into the depth of suffering and sorrow, as we read in the Passion narrative.  The liturgy swings between triumph and tragedy, praise and persecution.  We have palm branches, but we also listen in silence to the Passion.  This contrast is intentional.  It reflects the reality of our Christian journey, a path of glory that comes through the cross.  

Palm Sunday marks the solemn beginning of Holy Week, the most sacred time in the liturgical calendar.  It is a day of paradoxes.  We begin with the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, palms waving and voices raised in joyful acclamation, only to journey with Him into betrayal, suffering, and death.  The liturgy captures the shift, moving from celebration to silence, from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify Him!”  This liturgical tension invites us to enter not just into an event of the past, but into a mystery that speaks powerfully to our present lives.  

The processional gospel of Luke recounts Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, riding a colt, a sign of humility and peace, rather than military power.  The crowds shout, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Yet we know that these same voices will later cry out for His crucifixion.  This moment fulfills the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 portraying Jesus as the Messianic King who comes, not to conquer by violence, but to save through self-sacrificing love.

The Church teaches that this act reveals a fundamental truth about God’s kingdom.  It is rooted in humility and peace, not power or domination.  Jesus is the king who reigns not from a throne of gold, but from the wood of the cross.  

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah introduces us to the suffering servant, a figure who listens obediently to God, offers no resistance to abuse, and endures disgrace with unwavering trust.  “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.”  The Church sees in this passage a foreshadowing of Christ who fulfills this prophecy in His Passion.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Jesus identifies Himself with the Suffering Servant.  He makes Himself an offering for sin, taking upon Himself the suffering due to us.  This invites us to see suffering, not as defeat, but as a pathway of redemptive love when united with God’s will.”

Our second reading presents the kenosis of Christ.  In Christian theology, kenosis, from the Greek word meaning emptying, refers to the self-emptying of Jesus, particularly His voluntary limitation of His divine powers and the assumption of human form as described in Philippians 2:7-8.  Saint Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, presents what is considered one of the earliest Christian hymns.  It celebrates the humility of Christ, who though He was in the form of God, emptied Himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.  This self-emptying, or kenosis, leads to His exaltation:  “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Here we find the heart of Christian discipleship.  The path to glory runs through humility.  It is by laying down our lives, our pride, our need for control, that we share in Christ’s victory.  Christ’s Passion is not merely a tragedy, but a triumph of love over sin and death.

Luke’s account of the Passion offers a deeply human and merciful portrait of Jesus.  We witness His anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane, His betrayal, and Peter’s denial.  He is unjustly condemned, mocked, scourged, and crucified and yet His compassion never fades.  On the cross He prays, “Father forgive them.”  To the repentant thief He promises, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”  Even in death, Jesus remains the face of divine mercy.

Our gospel today invites us to recognize the countless ways Christ continues to suffer today, in the poor, the sick, the lonely, the persecuted.  His suffering is not abstract.  It is personal and He invites us to accompany Him, not as spectators but as disciples willing to carry the cross.

Pope Francis in his Palm Sunday homily of 2020 said, “Let us look to the cross and say, with You, Jesus, I will journey from death to life.  Let us take the path of love.  Only love can save the world.”  This beautifully captures the essence of Palm Sunday.  To walk with Jesus through Holy Week is to embrace the mystery of a love that saves through self-giving.  We are not merely recalling past events.  We are being drawn into them.  

What connects all of these reading is the theme of obedient, redemptive love.  The Suffering Servant of Isaiah, the humility of Christ in Philippians, and the merciful king in Luke, all reveal that God’s glory is manifested not in domination, but in service and sacrificial love.  

Palm Sunday is not just a day of remembrance.  It is a day of transformation.  It challenges us to ask, “Who is this Jesus I follow?  Am I willing to walk with Him, not only in moments of celebration, but also in the shadow of the cross?”  The Church encourages us this week to make a spiritual pilgrimage.  Through the liturgy, we do not simply observe Jesus’ Passion.  We enter into it.  We are called to be present in His suffering, to unite our own sufferings with His and to prepare our hearts for the glory of the resurrection.  

In a world marked by war, division, pride, and consumerism, the Passion offers a radical counter-narrative.  Jesus shows us that true strength lies in humility and that salvation comes through love, not through force.  He teaches us to choose humility over self-promotion, to forgive those who hurt us as He forgave, to stand with the suffering, just as Simon, the Cyrenian, helped carry the cross, and love even when it costs us something.  

Sometimes we may feel that we run out of hope, but then there is Jesus.  Many today carry heavy crosses:  the burden of illness, grief, anxiety, and injustice that weigh heavily on their hearts.  Palm Sunday invites us, not to look away from this suffering but to enter into it with Christ, walking alongside Him and one another with presence, prayer, and compassion.  In moments when we run out of strength and hope, we discover that we are not alone, for then there is Jesus who meets us in our pain and carries us through it.  As we carry palms into our homes today, let them be signs of our willingness to follow Christ, not only in moments of glory, but also in the path of the cross.  Discipleship means standing by Jesus, not just in triumph, but in suffering.  

Holy Week has begun.  Let us walk it with reverence, with love, with a heart open to the grace of the Passion.  In doing so, we will discover the truth at the heart of our faith:  that the way of the cross is the way to life.