12A20.   Jeremiah 20:10-13.    Jeremiah has told the people what the Lord wants them to hear but they refuse to listen.  They said of Jeremiah who has just proclaimed the words of the Lord, “Let us denounce him.” Jeremiah says to the Lord as a response to his enemies, “Let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause.”  He does not fear those who would harm him because he entrusts himself to the Lord.

Matthew 10:26-33.   Four times in this gospel “Jesus said to the Twelve: “Fear no one.”  Do not hide anything of have said to you for fear of what they might do to your bodies.  “Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”  Your Father who cares for even the sparrows will care for you.  If you acknowledge that Jesus is the Messiah, heaven is yours; if you deny him, heaven is lost.

Romans 6:3-4, 8-11.   By our baptism we are called to die to sin.  But death to sin calls us to rise from the dead with Christ so that “we too might live in newness of life.” “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.”  Christ’s death to sin and resurrection, means he “dies no more; death no longer has power over him.”  “Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.”  Jesus now lives in us and we, in him.  Our life now is Jesus who never dies; not this world where death continues for ever.

11A23.    Exodus 19:2-6a.   The Lord said to Moses: “tell the Israelites: You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagles’ wings and brought you here to myself.  Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though the earth is mine.  You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”  God vividly contrasts his violent rejection of the Egyptians and his mighty embrace of the Israelites.  However, he reminds the Israelites that they belong to God, only if they choose to belong to him.  Everything and everyone that the Lord has made is his, but he raises up the Israelites far above everyone else to be his “special possession,” his “holy nation.”

Matthew 9:36-10:8.   “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.”  Jesus calls upon his followers to pray that the Lord will send out those who will cultivate a harvest of followers.  Historically speaking though, too often do the shepherds look after themselves and not the sheep.

Romans 5:6-11.  Paul wrote: “Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.”  Before the Holy Spirit was given to humanity we were helpless to defend ourselves against sin. Only because of his love for us and not anything we ever did, Jesus poured out his love for us by sacrificing his life for us on the cross.  His love for us is his gift to us that has been and is now given to us without our having done anything to deserve his love, so loved are we by the God who is love.  A wonderful sign of his love for is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

CorpChristiA23.    Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  “Moses said to the people: ‘Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journey in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.”   He fed them with a manna that was food unknown to them and proved not to be so agreeable to them but nonetheless filled their hunger.The Lord provides but does it in his own way.The Lord bends us to his will so to make us in his way because he alone knows what is best for us.

John 6:51-58.  John 1:14a says: “and the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  The Word is Jesus, that is, that God’s divine love was expressed or spoken among us in the human form of God made man.  The flesh of the sacrifices offered up in the temple in Jerusalem were offered up to God but also at times consumed as a sign of unity with the divine.  Jesus offers up his flesh, his body, as a sacrifice for us in atonement for our sins.  We consume his sacrificial body as a sign of our unity with the divine.  He is the food of our spiritual life without whom we are spiritually dead even though humanly alive.  He “is the bread that came down from heaven.”

1 Corinthians 10:16-17.  The Liturgy or Mass we celebrate takes part in the drinking of the blood of Christ and the eating of the body of Christ.  So what we are made of is the Person of Christ himself.  We are no longer just flesh and fluid of the earth but children born of the divine by the One who now is our life.

CorpChristiA20.   Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  Moses continued on to say to the Israelite People: The Lord “therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.”  God fed his people then; he feeds us now.  “God let them be afflicted with hunger” “so as to test them by affliction and find out whether or not it was their intention to keep his commandments.”  The Lord tested them or let them fall into temptation so that when they were facing difficulties whom or what they would depend on to help them, their God or some substitute such as a golden calf.  To whom or to what did they really put their faith in or believe in?  Moses goes on to say they must remember it was the Lord who brought them out of slavery, who saved then from the saraph serpents, who saved them from starvation with the manna.

John 6:51-58.   “Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  “ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”  Science studies the material things of the earth.  Biology recognizes human beings as one of the animals of this material world.  When Jesus spoke of life, he was talking of the life that is beyond the life of this world, spiritual life.  To believe that there are spiritual beings,who are in this world here and now who are invisible, was beyond and is beyond what is acceptable to many.  To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus means that he gives his very self to us to nourish and sustain our spiritual life.  HE REMAINS IN US AND WE REMAIN IN HIM.  An animal onlly has earthly life; as material and spiritual beings, we have both earthly and spiritual life in us because Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in us and are life for us.We have Jesus’ flesh and blood as the source of that spiritual life. As the Lord tested the faith of the Israelites, likewise the Lord tests us with the challenge to believe in his invisible yet genuinely true presence in us.  Many people find that belief to be silly, absurd and insane.  The challenge to be alive spiritually and to grow in an inner spiritual life daily drawn from the divine presence within us requires that we must always be going to the Lord to live in him a life that is well beyond our natural instincts.  Without God’s indwelling and nourishing us, we are only animals of this earth.  “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  Our God created us out of a love for us that desires that we share in his love eternally.  The family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all the saints is our family.  He has always had a place for us there, not just a grave for us here.

1 Corinthians 10:16-17.  Ours is “a participation in the blood of Christ” and “a participation in the body of Christ.”  That is a participation in the sanctity of heaven while we are still here amidst the worldliness of earth.  The oneness of the loaf that is Christ himself that we share makes us one body, one people in him.

CorpusA.Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  “Moses said to the people: “Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.  He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger.”  The peoples who left Egypt had been there four hundred and thirty years (Ex 12:41).  Their faith as a Hebrew people suffered because their circumstances were so difficult.  Besides the Hebrews, “A crowd of mixed ancestry also went up with them,” (Ex. 12:38) which is to say, those leaving Egypt where not all committed to the Jewish faith.  The forty years in the desert was to form or reform them as God’s People whose intention it was “to keep his commandments” and so be God’s faithful People “that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.”  It was by their commitment to God’s Will and not by their prosperity and human achievements that they were to have eternal happiness.  The first reading goes on to recall how God cared for his people by giving them the material things they needed when they needed them.

John 6:51-58.  Jesus tells the Jewish crowds, “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”  They found this quite repulsive, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat.”  Despite the fact that they reacted so negatively, he makes his first statement even more explicit, saying in a strong formal way to note how important this statement is, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Of course the life Jesus is referring to is the spiritual life that is forever.  If that were not enough, he repeats explicitly this same statement twice more and implicitly yet twice more.  Jesus makes no attempt to clarify as to how the Eucharist really works but seems to want to challenge their faith.  Believe or leave!  Their negative reaction is deepened so much more that “many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” (Jn. 6:66)  It seems to me that Jesus is saying tohis followers that they should follow him out of faith and not because of miracles, how good he makes them feel or what he says makes so much sense.  All those things are good but what really matters is the faith in Jesus that sustains us in the good times and the bad and that never falters no matter what.  As Yahweh formed his People in the forty years in the desert so Jesus is forming his followers during his public ministry.  “Jesus then said to the Twelve, ‘Do you also want to leave?  Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.’” (Jn. 6:67-70)  As with the Israelites and Jesus’ disciples, the life time of each one of us is a journey when we are being tested or pushed daily to choose Christ as our life.  Do we daily in the good times and the bad grow in faith in God or not?

“Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  Here I think Jesus is speaking of the Father dwelling in him in his humanness and so likewise Jesus lives in us and graces us with his divine life so that our earthly selves are enliven with a heavenly, spiritual share of God’s life in which, as the second reading says, we participate, which is then a part of us.  Jesus’ body and blood, he himself, integrates himself into our being.  Then we are far more than we would be if we were just our earthly selves.  Jesus said, “For my flesh is true food and my blood true drink.”  Faith is living a life dependent on God’s life within us.  Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”  (Gal. 2:19b-20)  Matthew 10:39 says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  To live our lives in ourselves without Jesus is spiritual death.  To live our lives in Christ, in his personal active presence within us, is spiritual life, life forever.

1 Corinthians 10:16-17.   Paul is saying that the Eucharist is a union or communion of ourselves with Christ who draws us together with him in union with all who participate.  The many members of the celebrating community are made one through our participation in the one Christ, in his body and blood.  “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you arein me and I in you,” (John 14:20) united to Jesus, we are put in communion or in a community with one an

other.

 

TrinityA23.   Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9.  As the Lord passed before Moses, “Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.”  Along with Moses we recognize the Lord as the Almighty, “merciful and gracious God.”  We submit ourselves to his glorious reign over us.

John 3:16-18.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  God expresses his might not to obliterate and crush but to raise up and an enrich.  Our God, who can do whatever he wills, wills only the best for all of his creatures.  However, those who reject his love render themselves worthless and condemned.

2 Corinthians 13:11-13.    As the Trinity is three persons bound together to be one God by love, so should we be bound together by our God-infused love for one another.  Let us live in the love that is God who gave his only Son that we may be love as God is love.

TrinA20.   Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9.   Moses goes up to the top of the mountain and the Lord comes down to the top of the mountain.  Through Moses man reaches up to God to come into contact with the God who reaches down to man.  In reaching down to us the Lord manifests himself as God who not only is infinitely good in every way but especially infinitely loving and caring.  He so loves his people that, even though they had just worshipped the golden calf, his mercy is infinitely greater than their sin.  He takes them back as his own.

John 3:16-18.   “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  The Son, while still retaining his divinity, became fully human so that he could offer himself up as a sacrifice on the cross to wash away our sins with his blood.  Only the infinite God could himself satisfy the infinite God to redeem us from our offenses.  However, in order to receive our redemption we must, as Moses went up the mountain, go up to God by putting our whole being into his hands by believing in his Son as our only source of eternal life.

2 Corinthians 13:11-13.   “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  The Christian Corinthians had been a community of many factions who did not get along.  Paul is calling upon them to live in the unity of the triune God, one God yet three persons, the unity in which infinite love is the binding force.  Our home one day in heaven is to live in God whose love is so immeasurable that there is plenty room for billions of saints.

TrinA.  Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9.  Our God is, at one and the same time, all-powerful and all-loving and kind.  With Moses we too bow down to the ground and worship him.  As he took the Hebrew people as his own and went along in their company, so he does with us.  How good it is to have the God who is love as our God!

John 3:16-18.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.  In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) We are God’s creatures, created by him to be loved by him and by receiving his love, to becoming loving as he is loving.  However at times, all too often, we become self-centered, loving ourselves as though what has been given to us is ours by our very nature and is not God-given, in other words, I choose to believe it is I who makes me good and not God.  We can so easily say to ourselves ‘look at me, at what I have done on my own, independent of any source outside of me.’  I can so readily deny that I am God-dependent but believe self-dependent and so I can think that love is not to be shared but to be horded.  The truth is, on the other hand, that God loves me so that I might bring his love to others.  “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.” (1 John 4:11)  To believe in God means to have a pervading consciousness of being God-dependent.  Not to believe in God means to think that I, of and in myself apart from God, have everything I need.  In others words the crucifixion was to no effect for me because I see myself as totally self-sufficient.  I have condemned myself for my lack of belief in God as the source of my goodness and all goodness.  “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:18)

2 Corinthians 13:11-13.  Paul blesses the Corinthians calling upon them to live in the presence of the Trinity: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  He tells them to make their community like a home that God is proud to live in and feel at home in.  “Mend your ways, encourage one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

 

 

 

PentA23.   Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11.   “Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”  The Holy Spirit both enabled them to communicate miraculously and also impelled and ignited them to move the Jewish pilgrims to accept Jesus as the Messiah.  They were on fire with the missionary zeal of the Lord.

John 20:19-23.  Jesus appeared to his disciples, commissioning them to go out and seek others to be believers in him. Then he breathed the Holy Spirit into them to be the life-giving force in them to enable others to live in the holiness of God by forgiving them their sins.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13.  “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”  Only the Spirit can breathe into us God’s life so that we can do God’s work.  The Holy Spirit is God living within us from our Baptism and Confirmation who enables us to live the spiritual life in our material bodies.  Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we cannot live that spiritual life that is infinitely beyond the physical, material life that all the other animals of this world live.

Psalm 104.     “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”  Holy Spirit, fill us with God’s spiritual life.  Jesus said in John 3:4-7:   “None can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.  Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’” That birth is the life that the Spirit who dwells within us gives us.

PentA20.    Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11.  At “the time for Pentecost” “suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind.” “There appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” “Now there were devout Jews from every nation,” who spoke many different languages.  “They were astounded, and in amazement they asked,” “We hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”  One God yet three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  How often have we heard of the Holy Spirit who is the One given to us for our daily sanctification by the Trinity?    Only saints are allowed in heaven; the Holy Spirit enables us to become saints, if we only cooperate with him daily.  Nothing is impossible for God.  The Holy Spirit accomplishes whatever he wishes since He is truly God but God will never force holiness upon us.    We ourselves must choose to die daily to our own self-centered tendencies so as to belong to the beneficent Will and Love of God.  The Spirit enabled the Apostles to speak miraculously.  If we belong to the Spirit, he will miraculously enable us to be holy, despite the devil, our own natural desires and the ways of the world around us.

John 20:19-23.   The first day of week after the crucifixion was Easter Sunday, the same day that John the Evangelist, the author of this Sunday’ gospel, marks as Pentecost, thus differing from the other three gospels writers.  Perhaps it is only that his recall of events was different, leaving our humanness as the reason for the discrepancy.  Nevertheless, John speaks of the locked doors and the fear of the apostles in contrast to the divine capacity of Jesus to pass through locked doors and to bring peace to the fear-filled disciples.  He shows the disciples his hands and his side that had been pierced as proof that he is the risen Jesus and not a ghost or an impostor.  Then Jesus commissions them to go as he had gone out to convert the people.  Next he immediately empowers the disciples by giving them the Holy Spirit so to enable them to accomplish the commission he has just given them.  He next gives them the power to open the gates of heaven through the forgiveness of sins or to keep the gates shut to those whose sins are retained.  Now the gates are opened by a life lived in Christ or retained locked by a life that shuts out Christ.  The power that Jesus had exercised to open locked doors or to keep them shut is given to the disciples and their successors.  The Holy Spirit works through the Church, the followers of Christ, to enable us through the centuries to become holy and so to enter into heaven.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13.  “Brothers and sisters: No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (Please also read Matthew 16:15-16)  In other words, God enables us to declare the truth.  I personally believe that God and only God is the source of ALL goodness.  Even when a person is agnostic or hates God, if they do any good that is truly good, God is the root source of that goodness that they have just done without them knowing that it was God who enabled them to do good. There can be no goodness in this universe unless that good work has God as the one who empowered it to be.  “There are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.  To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”  When we live in union with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit often uses us as his visible instrument in this world to do his work.  If what we do is good, the radical or root source of that goodness is the Spirit who is working through us.  “We were all given to drink of one Spirit.”   The Spirit pours himself into us, the vessels who choose to be open to him, so that the life and gifts we have are from him to build the Church.  In as much as we have chosen to be the instruments of the Spirit without whom we could do nothing good, we deserve a small portion of the credit.  However, by far the credit belongs to the Spirit.