4th Sunday of Easter B April 21, 2024

4th Sunday of Easter B

April 21, 2024

When I hear about the cornerstone that is rejected I receive an image of a singing frog.  Do you remember the Warner Brother’s cartoon One Froggy Night where the man finds a singing frog inside of the cornerstone of a building?  He takes the frog and puts him up on stage, but the frog will only sing for the man when they are alone.  He finally puts the frog in the cornerstone of a new building that is demolished in the future and the worker in the future thinks he will cash in on the singing frog.  We can guess that he will have the same issue that the frog will only sing for him when they are alone.

In the time of Jesus a cornerstone was a stone used to link two walls at right angles, thus holding up a significant part of the building’s weight.  If the rejected stone is used for this job it must have been rejected for a reason.  As in so many of his images, Jesus turns upside down our expectations. With God that which we think is the correct thing often is not. God uses the imperfect, the broken to advance the kingdom of God.

In the cartoon One Froggy Night a singing frog is certainly a foolish thing.  Sadly only one at a time can hear the foolish frog sing.   We don’t expect a frog to sing and dance, so we reject the possibility and fail to be delighted by the show.

St. Paul has referred to himself as a fool for Christ.  The gospel is often proclaimed by the foolish among us.

We began this month with April 1 being All Fools day. On this day it was ok to pull jokes and pranks on others.  Jokes and pranks work because they upset our expectations.  April fool’s day, Holy Thursday this year, was followed by Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.  I am told that in the Russian Orthodox tradition is common to tell jokes on Easter Sunday since the resurrection is a joke on the devil.

Like a singing frog, the resurrection was unexpected and only  a few were able to see and understand what had happened. The truth of the resurrection takes time to unpack and to understand.

Foolish things may be foolish, but that does not mean they are unimportant.

In history it has been the fools who speak truth to power. Foolish ones are those who help us to see the absurd nature of life.

In the plays of Shakespeare the fool is the one who speaks truth to power.    In the history of the Russian church Holy Fools were held up as sacred persons.  The fool is the one who sees in a clearer way.  How often does a joke cut through all the posturing and get to the truth of the matter. 

God has used the fool to advance the kingdom of God. How many of the saints were considered foolish in the eyes of the world.  To embrace the gospel means to be out of step with the rest of the world.

The fool cares about things that and others when the world at large has given up on them.

In the gospel Jesus refers to himself as the good shepherd.  Anyone who has worked with sheep knows they are not the brightest of God’s animals, yet the shepherd cares for them.   Sheep are foolish animals.

 To care for sheep one must get to know them.  The shepherd gives them names and comes to know each one according to its ways of being.  The sheep come to recognize the voice of the shepherd.  Pope Francis has said that good Christians are shepherds who smell like the sheep. 

The shepherd risks life caring for these simple animals.  At night the sheep are gathered into an area with a wall around it and one way in and out. The shepherd completes the wall with his body and sleeps there so the sheep can’t leave and no intruders can get into the sheep fold.

In this season of Easter the joke is on the devil. Our God is the Good shepherd.  Our God loves us so much he was willing to become human, to lower himself to be a fool, a member of the flock. 

The stone rejected has become the cornerstone. The followers of Jesus were stones rejected. They were simple fishermen, fools in the eyes of the world. God used these fools to build the church that has lasted to today.  Peter was a fool who promised to stay with Jesus till death until he quickly denied knowing the man. Judas saw Jesus as a stumbling block to his grasp for power so he betrayed Jesus.  Paul saw the Christians as a problem to be eliminated so the sought them out and persecuted them, and on and on.  These fools became the cornerstone of the church.

We often see children as foolish for they see all as new and speak their minds readily. How much truth and humor comes out of the mouths of babes. St. John in his letter, the second reading from today’s mass, calls us blessed and children of a loving God. He reminds us that we have gone astray like sheep, but have now returned to God.

A singing Frog is a foolish thing for those who can’t hear him. The resurrection is a foolish thing for those who refuse to believe.  Sheep are foolish animals for those who refuse to know them. And our God is a foolish God loving us as we are as foolish children.

Thank God our God is so foolish. For our God loves us and in God’s wisdom we are saved from our foolish ways.

Easter Sunday 2025

By Fr. Chris Welch • May 12, 2025
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Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy), Year C

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • April 27, 2025
How many of you recall the following hymn refrain? Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater… It is the refrain from the hymn of the same title that was composed for the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, which Pope Francis opened in the first week of Advent in 2015 and concluded with the feast of Christ the King on November 20, 2016. You may recall that throughout that Jubilee Year, we opened our Masses with that hymn and sang that refrain. Misericordes sicut Pater… …Merciful like the Father …Merciful like the Father. How appropriate that on this Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, is also the weekend in which we have laid our Holy Father Pope Francis to rest, and entrusted him to the tender, eternal mercy of God the Father. It was no coincidence that Pope Francis declared the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis believed Mercy is the primary expression and experience of God’s love for us, and Mercy is the primary expression and experience of the love that God calls us to share with each other. So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when he was ordained to the order of Bishop, he took as his episcopal motto “ miserando atque eligendo ” ( which roughly translates from Latin as “having mercy, he chose him”). It is taken from a homily written by St. Bede the Venerable, an eighth-century saint and Doctor of the Church, reflecting on the call of St. Matthew by Christ to become an apostle. St. Bede wrote, “[Jesus] saw the tax collector [Matthew] and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me .” So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when Francis was elected as Pope, he kept this episcopal motto as his papal motto. This motto expresses so simply and beautifully truths of our faith: God loves us deeply; God expresses that love to us through His mercy for us in our sinfulness; and that despite our sinfulness, God calls us . God calls us to trust and hope in God’s love for us and calls us to express the same love and mercy for one another. That call is reflected also in the Gospel account of Matthew’s call to discipleship by Jesus, which concludes with Jesus challenging the Pharisees, saying “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice'” (Mt. 9:13). Jesus challenges us in the same way. He calls the Pharisees – and us – out of ritual acts of worship and piety that are not also accompanied by acts of mercy! Jesus is clear about this. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6:36). In his Papal Bull announcing the Extraordinary Year of Mercy, Pope Francis describes God the Father’s mercy for us as like “that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child…a “visceral” love…gush[ing] forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus, no. 6). He also describes God’s Divine Mercy as a ”wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace.” (MV 2). These words bring to mind the visceral atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins, when blood and water sprung forth from Christ’s side as the cleansing waters of baptism. It is that visceral sacrifice which we recall in the Divine Mercy chaplet when we pray, “O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You!” It is that cleansing sacrifice that we recall when we pray in the Anima Christi prayer, “Water from the side of Christ, wash me.” And it is that same merciful cleansing in which we hope and trust, as we place all that burdens us into the waters of God’s grace, as we have done here, symbolically, in placing our Lenten stone-burdens in this fountain of Holy Water from the Easter Vigil Baptismal pool. As we contemplate God’s Divine Mercy, we place our trust and our hope in that Divine Mercy, recalling the words our late Holy Father Pope Francis left us with: “Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive” (MV 3); “Mercy [is] the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever” (MV 2). Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater…

Palm Sunday, Year C

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • April 13, 2025
I have long thought that the Church gives us the two Gospel passages we hear today — the account of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the account of his Passion and death — for very practical reasons: this is the last Sunday before Easter when we will celebrate Christ’s Resurrection and not everyone is able to attend and celebrate the Triduum liturgies during Holy Week. Therefore, the Church places these two critical Gospel passages together so that we hear and experience them in a regular Sunday Mass setting — literally, to ‘fit them in’ before Easter. But there is another equally, if not more, important reason we are to experience these Gospel passages together. And I honestly don’t know if the Church intends this reason or not, but I believe the Holy Spirit intends it. These two Gospel passages remind us as much as any passage that Jesus Christ, while fully Divine, is also fully human. He is like us in all manner except one, in committing sin. He therefore shares with us the experience of the full range of our humanity. In these two Gospel passages we experience Christ moving from triumph to tragedy, from soaring to suffering: the triumphant, soaring entry into Jerusalem and the suffering and tragedy of His Passion and crucifixion. Christ’s human experience is also our human experience, for do not we all experience triumph and tragedy, soaring and suffering? Therefore, we do not have a God and Savior who cannot sympathize with our human experience, but rather one who shares it with us! And we have a God and Savior who not only soared and suffered for us, but soars and suffers with us. Not just two thousand years ago, but right here, right now, in every minute of our lives. For what did Jesus promise? “I am with you always , until the end of time.” (Mt 28:20) When we soar and triumph, Jesus is with us, by our side. And when we suffer and experience tragedy, especially, Jesus is with us, by our side. We are encouraged to give thanks to God in our triumphs and soaring. And we are invited to unite our suffering with Christ’s suffering and offer it up for whatever or whomever is in need. Christ’s suffering was not pointless, and united to His, neither is ours. We offer it up, trust, and hope. Sisters and brothers, that hope comes from our knowledge of the rest of the Gospel story that we will experience with Christ: that His triumph and tragedy, His soaring and suffering does not end in death, but in the glory of Easter Resurrection.