Easter4C22.  Acts of the Apostles 13:14, 43-52.   Because of the success of Paul and Barnabas in making converts from among the Jews, the Jewish establishment “were filled with jealousy and with violent abuse contradicted what Paul” was saying.  Because those Jews were rejecting Christ as their Messiah, Paul and Barnabas invited the Gentiles to accept Jesus as their Savior.  A persecution was stirred up and Paul and Barnabas were expelled from Antioch.  Though rejected by some but accepted by many, “the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit” that they had served God faithfully in Antioch.

John 10:27-30.  To be Jesus’ sheep means to choose to draw life from the Holy Spirit and to reject being creatures who live from the life of this world.  In John 17:14 Jesus said, “I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”   Jesus’ sheep are attentive to his life-giving direction of our lives.                         The ways of this world are death-giving and destructive.  Following Jesus as his sheep gives us eternal life and we “shall never perish.”  God the Father’s grace enables us to resist the death-dealing yet powerful attractions of this world.

Psalm 100.    “We are his people, the sheep of his flock.”  “Know that the Lord is God; he made us, his we are; his people, the flock he tends.”

Revelation 7:9, 14b-17.  John the Evangelist “had a vision of a great multitude which no one could count” who had “survived the great time of distress” or persecution under the Romans.  What was good or meaningful about their suffering?  Their suffering, like that of Jesus, was the result of being a loving people whose love was not only rejected but was the reason for their being hated, tortured and abused. The world sees love that is not self-serving to be repulsive.   A self-giving love is viewed as an attack against the underlying foundation of what it means to people of this world.  This world makes suffering the price of being God’s self-giving people.  Jesus, whose sacrifice of himself on the cross was love, extends his love to those who have joined their suffering to his.  In his Almightiness, he shepherds those who suffer with him.  He calls upon us not to be so comfortable in the daily routine of this world, in which God is given no role, that we are anesthetized or sedated into avoiding any suffering that Christian love might bring on.  Physical exercise has an expression or saying: “No pain; no gain.”  That is often true of Christian love.

 

East4C19.   Acts of the Apostles 13:14, 43-52.  Paul and Barnabas went to Antioch to the synagogue to announce Jesus as the Messiah.  The next Sabbath the crowds that came to hear Paul and Barnabas were so great that the Jews “were filled with jealousy and contradicted them with violent abuse.”  To the delight of the Gentiles Paul and Barnabas announced to the Gentiles that they were now invited to follow Jesus because the Jews had rejected him.  The Jews “stirred up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their territory.” “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”  To follow Christ is a joy in part because discipleship means that God the Holy Spirit lives in us giving us his heavenly life. This first reading says, “All who were destined for eternal life came to believe.”  I understand this to mean that God can see the future and know who will freely choose Christ and those who will choose to reject him.

John 10:27-30.  Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”  Jesus takes possession of those who have chosen to belong to him.  We listen to him as the only one who has eternal truth and follow him personally each day throughout the day.  We live with great joy because of the security we have knowing that he will never abandon us but will fiercely fight to keep us as his loyal sheep.  Jesus asserts that he says these things, not as only a human being but as God Himself.  His allegiance to us is based on his divinity and can never fail.

Psalm 100.   Know that the Lord is God; he made us, his we are; his people, the flock he tends.”  In Matthew 16:24, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wishes to come after me (follow me) must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.’”  I believe that the cross that is essential to be being Christian is that we must reject belonging to ourselves and our own will but rather to radically accept that we belong to God and his will alone.  To accept the status of being his sheep we must reject personal independence and live in total dependence on Jesus our Shepherd.  He is God alone.  Human nature, every moment of our lives, calls upon us to be independent, god of our own lives.  As long as we live on this earth we only successfully challenge our human nature with the endless help of the Holy Spirit.  Only he can enable us to live as true sheep of Jesus, the Shepherd.

Revelation 7:9, 14b-17.  “John had a vision of a great multitude,” which “stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.”  Massive numbers of saints who had attained heaven stood before their all-powerful God.  They survived great persecution and attained the glory of the crown of martyrdom.  The Lamb, Jesus who offered himself up as the sacrificial offering to redeem us from our sins, shepherded them to heaven.  God wiped “away every tear from their eyes.”

 

EasterC22.     Acts of the Apostles 10:34a, 37-43.     “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.”  Jesus, who to the naked-eye seemed to be just another human being was given a ministry that showed he was “Lord of all.” (AA 10:36c)  The Apostles were witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and so were commissioned “to preach and testify” that Jesus was “appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.”  Jesus is the Messiah, our Savior.

Psalm 118: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.  By the Lord has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes.”  What human beings build will one day crumble.  What God builds lasts forever.

John 20:1-9.   When Mary of Magdala saw the tombstone removed, she assumed someone had taken Jesus’ body away.  When she told Peter and John, they ran to see but did not find the body but only the burial cloths with the head cloth “rolled up in a separate place.”  Apparently what John saw and believed was that the body was not there, since “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”   Although Jesus had told them before that he was to suffer, die and rise from the dead, they were not able to grasp what he had said to them.  To fully take in the reality of the risen Christ is to live so that Christ may be risen in us, giving us his life as the source of our daily life.  “Remain in me, as I remain in you.” (John 15:4a)

Colossians 3:1-4.   To embrace Christianity means to die to everything that is not of Christ so to rise to a life that lives in Christ.  To be Christian, that is, ‘of Christ’ means to belong to him from the depths of our being.  Outwardly we look like anyone else; inwardly, we are totally new and different.  While we are here on earth we do not belong to this world but to God.  Jesus said in John 17:16a, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” “Jesus also said in John 18:36a: “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”  We are his now and forever.

East3C19.   Acts of the Apostles 5:27-32, 40b-41.  “The high priest questioned them, ‘We gave you strict orders, did we not, to stop teaching in that name?’” “But Peter and the apostles said in reply, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’” “After recalling the apostles, the Sanhedrin had them flogged, (this Sunday’s excerpt does not include these previous words) ordered them to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, and dismissed them. So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.” (Jesus)  How can intense pain be a cause for rejoicing?  When our love for Jesus is even greater than the pain, what a joy it is to suffer for the one we love because the depth of our love enables us to have a life that is even deeper than our pain!  In the fishing event at the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus speaks to the apostles not with words but rather through what they experienced with Jesus.  The nets were empty, then the nets were full.  Without Christ there is nothing; with Christ there is everything!

John 21:1-19.   Certain of the apostles fished all “that night (but) they caught nothing.”  When Jesus who was on the shore heard that they caught nothing, “he said to them, ‘Cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something.’ So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish.”  Then they realized it was the Lord!  The symbolism is clear. If the Apostles tried to bring in followers of Jesus by their own efforts alone, it was fruitless but with Jesus at their side all was gain.  Then it is said in response to the three times Peter denied Jesus, now he asserts three times that he loves him, but with each question Jesus is calling upon Peter to commit himself to growing into an endlessly ever-deepening love for him.  Peter will be the principal shepherd who brings sheep, people to follow to Jesus.  Jesus tells Peter that, as he once had to suffer flogging for the sake of the name, he will now suffer death to glorify God.  Then he commands Peter to follow him on the way to the cross and then to resurrection.

Revelation 5:11-14.  John heard the voices of many angels crying out loudly, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.”  And then, “everything in the universe, cry out: ‘To the one who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever.’” Praise of God, worshipping God recognizes through our voices and action the truth and reality of who God is.  In our world God plays ‘hide and seek’.  As we grow in our faith life or life that is a faith that becomes who we are, God reveals increasingly even more of himself.  His glory astounds us ever more and more, eliciting from us an ever growing joy in our amazement at the awesomeness that is God.

Easter2C22.   Acts of the Apostles 5:12-16.   As Jesus worked many miracles to encourage people to accept him as the Messiah, so too his Apostles performed many miraculous deeds.   Some were reluctant to believe, perhaps because they had fear of the Jewish authorities who crucified Jesus.  Nonetheless, “great numbers of men and women” chose to believe.

John 20:19-31.   Opening up this reading is like opening a huge treasure chest of sparkling jewels and precious metals.  On that first Easter Sunday those, inside the room with the locked doors, arose from their fear and hopelessness to be filled with wondrous joy when Jesus entered. As God the Father had sent Jesus to bring salvation, so now Jesus sends his disciples to do the same.  Then Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit to empower them to fulfill their God-given mission.   Salvation or the capacity to enter into heaven requires one to be holy or sinless.  In order to bring salvation the disciples were given the power to forgive the sins of those who would choose to accept salvation and to refuse it to those who would choose not to accept salvation.  Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles, was a man who only accepted what he saw physically and materially present to his eyes. The spiritual or the unseen was not yet something he was open to accept. Even though the rest of the Apostles told him that they had seen the risen Jesus, apparently Thomas thought they were hallucinating.  So he demanded to not only see the risen Jesus, but to put his finger into the nailmarks and put his hand into Jesus’ side. When Jesus did appear to Thomas, stunned into belief, he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”  Thomas was not only accepting the fact that Jesus had truly arisen but also that Jesus was divine.  Jesus, speaking in a sense to us who have not seen, said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” In his glorious risen body, Jesus came with divine power and risen humanity.   John, Apostle and author of this gospel, tells us that the various wonders, he has selected from among the many that Jesus performed, have been written so that we too “may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief (you) we may have life in his name.”

Revelation   1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19.   “Whether or not these visions were real experiences of the author or simply literary conventions employed by him is an open question.”  (p. 1426, The New American Bible for Catholics)   In John’s vision he experiences Jesus as the One who is arisen and is now “alive forever and ever.”  Not only does he hold the “keys to death and the netherworld” but as Jesus himself said in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

East2C19.   Acts of the Apostles 5:12-16.    “Many signs and wonders were done at the hands of the apostles.”  When Jesus himself walked among the people, he called upon them to believe in him because of the miraculous works he performed. In John 14:11 Jesus said, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.”  The miraculous works of the apostles were signs that God the Father was as work in them.

John 20:19-31.  The disciples of Jesus feared the physical violence that the Jewish authorities could inflicted on them as they did to Jesus.  Jesus assures them saying, “Peace be with you,” since he was with them.  He sends them forth with the divine power of the Holy Spirit to bring his redemption of sins to those whom they find worthy or withhold it from those they find unworthy.  Jesus himself will no longer be physically and visibly here; and so he sends them in his place to do accomplish his mission and will in this world.  Later Thomas announces that he believes that Jesus’ death on the cross was final and could not possibly be reversed.  He was a man firmly grounded in the common sense ways of this world. He was not going to be swayed by what seemed to clearly be nonsense.  Jesus could have easily said to Matthew as he did to Peter in Mark 8:33: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Jesus showed Thomas physical proof of his resurrection in the nailmarks in his body just as he demonstrated to the apostles that he was not a ghost or spirit but a real physical person when he ate the baked fish.  When we see physical, material proof, then we have knowledge of that reality.  They did not have to believe or have faith in what they did not see with their own eyes.  I think that Jesus gave them this knowledge of his resurrection so that no one could reasonably claim that Jesus’ resurrection was figment of their imagination and not a genuinely reality.  And so Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”  1 Peter 1:8a says, “Although you have not seen him you love him; even though you do not see him now yet believe in him.”  This Sunday’s Gospel finishes, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.  But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”  The Scriptures are given to us as a divine way to come to know that the love with which the Father loved Jesus may be in us and Jesus himself may be in us.  (John 17:26b)  The divine revelation that  Scriptures make known to us is not so much words or sentences about Jesus but the presence of Jesus his very self in our lives.

Revelation 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19.  This reading begins, “I, John, your brother, who share with you the distress, the kingdom, and the endurance we have in Jesus,..” As Jesus suffered physical violence so did many of his followers.  Persecution for their faith caused them great distress.  However, Jesus always accompanied them giving a sense that already they were a part of his kingdom.   He gave them the strength to endure through it all.  He gives us that same strength in our times of temptations and difficulties.  Jesus says of himself, “Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever.  I hold the keys to death and the netherworld.”  We ask him to protect us by keeping the doors of that world locked for us but rather open the doors to life forever in heaven.

EasterC22.     Acts of the Apostles 10:34a, 37-43.     “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.”  Jesus, who to the naked-eye seemed to be just another human being was given a ministry that showed he was “Lord of all.” (AA 10:36c)  The Apostles were witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and so were commissioned “to preach and testify” that Jesus was “appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.”  Jesus is the Messiah, our Savior.

Psalm 118: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.  By the Lord has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes.”  What human beings build will one day crumble.  What God builds lasts forever.

John 20:1-9.   When Mary of Magdala saw the tombstone removed, she assumed someone had taken Jesus’ body away.  When she told Peter and John, they ran to see but did not find the body but only the burial cloths with the head cloth “rolled up in a separate place.”  Apparently what John saw and believed was that the body was not there, since “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”   Although Jesus had told them before that he was to suffer, die and rise from the dead, they were not able to grasp what he had said to them.  To fully take in the reality of the risen Christ is to live so that Christ may be risen in us, giving us his life as the source of our daily life.  “Remain in me, as I remain in you.” (John 15:4a)

Colossians 3:1-4.   To embrace Christianity means to die to everything that is not of Christ so to rise to a life that lives in Christ.  To be Christian, that is, ‘of Christ’ means to belong to him from the depths of our being.  Outwardly we look like anyone else; inwardly, we are totally new and different.  While we are here on earth we do not belong to this world but to God.  Jesus said in John 17:16a, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” “Jesus also said in John 18:36a: “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”  We are his now and forever.

East1C19.   Acts of the Apostles 10:34a, 37-43.  God commissioned the apostles to preach and testify that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.” “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.  This man God raised on the third day.”  “He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.”  “Everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”  The man who died on the cross was Jesus in his humanity, not Jesus in his divinity.  Divinity cannot die.  If it could, divinity would not be divine.  Nevertheless the humanity and divinity of Jesus were so intimately bound together that we can say that in Christ God the Son sacrificed himself through his humanity to God the Father to give the only divine level of sacrifice that would be the adequate sacrifice for our sins, since the One offended by our sins is divine.  Only a sacrifice that was divine could satisfy for sins against divinity.

John 20:1-9. Mary of Magdala “saw the stone removed from the tomb.” She told Peter and John who went into the tomb.  John and more than likely Peter also, “saw and believed.  For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” What did they believe from what they saw?  I understand that what they believed was what Mary said, “They have taken from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”  Before Jesus’ appearance after the resurrection, they, as with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, “did not yet understand that he had to rise from the dead.”  Jesus had to actually to appear to them bodily and humanly so that he could, as it says in our first reading, make them witnesses, “who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”  Jesus was truly dead and truly came back to life here in this world. He was not present to them just as a memory from the past but actually physically returned to be with them as the Jesus, once dead but now risen back to life in this world.  Our Jesus has conquered sin through his sacrifice of himself on the cross.  He also conquered the death that came from sin.  He has given his victory to us so that we may be former sinners come to a new life, as saints.

Colossians 3:1-4. “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”  Paul calls to mind what Jesus said, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” (John 17:16)   And once again, when Peter rejected Jesus’ prophesy that he had to die on the cross, Jesus said, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (Matthew 17:23c)  As human beings from birth we become imbued with the ways of this world.   Jesus and Paul call upon us to be like fish out of water, being more heavenly than earthly while we are still here on earth.  In Luke 18:27 Jesus said, “What is impossible for human beings is possible for God.”  God enables us to die to the ways of this world even while we are in this world, since he replaces our inner earthly life with a share of life from his divine life.  We refer to that divine life within us as sanctifying grace.  In a sense we die to a worldly life so to rise to a heavenly life.  “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”  We are sinners redeemed from our sins by his redeeming sacrifice on the cross.

PalmC22.      Isaiah 50:4-7.   God gave Isaiah the capacity to speak God’s message to God’s People.  However, the people abused him badly, spitting on him, beating him, plucking his beard.  Yet Isaiah kept on preaching what God wanted him to say, never stopping, setting his “face like flint.”

Luke 22:14 – 23:56.  The scene is of eating and drinking at the table.  Jesus continues that he will not eat or drink until the fulfillment of God’s kingdom comes but that one day his Apostles will eat and drink at his table in the kingdom.  The Last Supper is the first meal of a supper that is being repeated endlessly.  As Jesus commanded us, we eat the bread that is his body and drink the wine that is his blood “in memory of” Jesus that the love by which he gave himself on the cross may be the sustenance that is the life we live in him.  Jesus is the life which enables us to “bear much fruit,” love and holiness.  (John 15: 5c)    Jesus reminds his Apostles that there was a time when their goodness would bring out goodness from others and so others would provide for their physical needs. However, now is a time “for the power of darkness,” when one must take along money, provisions and a means of self-defense.  Jesus’ excruciating suffering that he willing undertook to redeem us from our sins shows the spectacular enormity of his love for us that enabled him to give himself up as a redemptive sacrifice.  Pilate and Herod and Jewish authorities were blind to the spiritual and could only recognize worldly physical force.  The mob that called for the crucifixion of Jesus sought to murder Jesus who only showed love and kindness.   Yet they released Barabbas, who was imprisoned for rebellion and murder.  It was a show of the strength of his love by which Jesus rendered himself weak in the hands of the forces of darkness. He showed he was powerfully in charge when he lovingly sent the good Thief off to paradise.  Evil was allowed to have its day but not eternity.

Philippians 2:6-11.   John 1:14a says “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  God became flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit in Mary.  God became one of us by the cooperation of Mary, who was God’s creation or creature, one of us.  God allowed himself to become human, without relinquishing his divinity, so that he could become an excruciatingly bloody sacrifice in order to redeem us from our sins.  It was out of the strength of his love for us that Jesus chose to submit himself to the brutality of the evil forces that confronted him. That humility was out of love for us, so almighty was his love for us.  Jesus’ divinity did not shield him from the horror he was to suffer but delivered him in obedience to it.  “Because of this, God greatly exalted him” so that “every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  We are loved more than we can possibly fathom.

PalmC19.   Isaiah 50:4-7.  This is the prophecy of the Suffering Servant, probably Isaiah speaking of himself but in Holy Week transferred to Jesus.  “My face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.”

Psalm 22.    Jesus repeats the first verse: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” while on the cross as if to start saying the whole psalm.  “All who see me scoff at me; they mock me with parted lips, they wag their heads: ‘He relied on the Lord; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, if he loves him.’”  Jesus genuinely feels the excruciating pain of his body and the insults.  This is not a sham sacrifice to the Father for our sins; this is the real thing wholly and completely.  By this genuine sacrifice of himself to His Father, we are redeemed.  It could be nothing less.  How great is his love for us!  In spite of the unfathomable horror he is enduring, he never losses faith in the Father, saying to him, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Luke 22:14 – 23:56.  Jesus, referring to the sacrifice he was about to make, offers up in the Eucharistic form his own body, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.”  Although the bread visually appears to be only bread, it now comes in substance to be his body which he himself offers up and commands us to do likewise in our Mass.  Jesus continues the tradition of the Old Testament Law of consuming the flesh of the sacrifice by those who offer it up.  Leviticus 7:6 reads, “All the males of the priestly line may partake of it; but it must be eaten in a sacred place, since it is most sacred.”  Leviticus 7:15a says, “The flesh of the thanksgiving sacrifice shall be eaten on the day it is offered.”  The sacrifice on the cross happened then once and for all; the Mass re-presents that same sacrifice over and over again.  Please read John 6:53-57.  Jesus becomes the food and indeed the spiritual life itself of our being.  “Then an argument broke out among them about which of them should be regarded as the greatest.  Jesus makes it clear to them that service, love in action, is the measure of greatness.  He proclaims to them they will have a special place in his kingdom in heaven.  In the Our Father prayer Jesus teaches to pray, “Thy kingdom come” to God the Father, which I believe calls upon the Father to establish his kingdom here in the hearts of those who believe in his Son Jesus.  Both Pilate and the ‘good thief’ find that Jesus is not guilty of any crime.  Nevertheless Pilate allow Jesus to be put to death, since it was politically expedient not to have news of a big riot get back to the emperor.  On the other hand, the ‘good thief’ rebukes the other crucified thief out of respect for what is righteous.  As with the Apostles, Jesus rewards him with a place in heaven.  That is the same reward that we seek because of our loyalty to Christ our King.  We want to live eternally in the love of the Christ who loved us so deeply and dearly that he died for us on the cross.

Philippians 2:6-11.   God, though magnificently almighty, out the depths of his love for the human beings he created, became a creature of his own creation, a helpless fetus and then infant, genuinely and totally dependent upon another creature, his mother Mary.  “He emptied himself,” taking on humanity so that one day he could offer himself as the redemptive sacrifice on the cross.  “Because of this, God greatly exalted him” so that “every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”