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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.

Third Sunday of Lent C - March 23, 2025

By Fr. Christopher Welch • March 24, 2025
After Moses has his conversation with God in the Burning Bush, Moses asks God for what name he should use in referring to God. God gives the vague answer, “I am who I am.” Asking for someone’s name is a common occurrence. When we refer to someone with their name, we honor them. We all like to be referred to by name. This is one way we honor a person. Not all of us are good at remembering names, but when we do remember and use the name of the other person, we honor them. One of the names for God is taken from our psalm, “The Lord is kind and merciful”. God is also patient. The parable from the gospel about the fig tree is a parable about God’s patience. God, being the gardener, is willing to wait a year for fruit. God works the same for all of us. God is patient with us. Not everyone comes to faith in the same way or the same time frame. Some take less time, others more. When we see a new face in church we don’t ask “What took you so long?” or “Where have you been?” We simply say, “Welcome! It is good to have you here.” We ask and learn the name of the new person and we speak to him or her each week using their name and making them feel welcome. Maybe you have been a fig tree or known someone who is or was a fig tree. This is a good reason to give thanks to the patient nature of God. Remember the kingdom is in the future and now.

2nd Sunday of Lent - March 16, 2025

By Fr. Chris Welch • March 16, 2025
2 nd Sunday of Lent C March 16, 2025 One of my memories of being a student at SUCO in the 1980s were my trips to sit and pray at Table Rock, just above the Hartwick Campus. At that time, I could look down on the world’s largest train roundhouse. Going up high gives one a new perspective. The disciples saw Jesus in a new way. Going down the mountain meant continuing their journey to Jerusalem. As we know when Luke uses the word Jerusalem he is speaking about passion, pain, and death. Resurrection comes later. Standing on a mountain top the world feels very different. The problems of the world are far below us. One comes down off the mountain with a new vision. Even if they were allowed, how could the disciples describe what happened on that mountain. Mountain top moments is one way we speak of the spiritual moments in our lives. A mountain top experience may take place anywhere and at any time. I am reminded of the moment Thomas Merton describes in Louisville. “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” When have you had mountain top experience? Where did it take place? What were you doing at the time? ( Pause here ) Lent is a season for adjusting how we look at ourselves and the world. In Two weeks, we have gone from the desert to the mountain top. Next week we will stand before a burning bush and ask God what do we do now? Last Sunday I joined 200 Catechumens who placed their names in the book of the Elect as they prepared to celebrate the rites of initiation at the Easter vigil. For the past year of so they have been looking for a relationship with Jesus and the Community. These 40 days of Lent are their final retreat as they adjust their vision to be disciples of Jesus. We journey with them as we fast, pray and give alms. Let our disciplines of Lent help us to invite “mountaintop” experiences into our lives.

First Sunday of Lent, Year C

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • March 9, 2025
One of the enduring memories that I have growing up on the farm as a boy and young man was the annual spring ritual of picking stones from the fields that we had tilled for the planting of corn or a new seeding of hay crop. After the fields had been plowed and then harrowed, we would enter into the field, often the whole family, accompanying our tractor with its bucket loader. Each of us would begin this methodical search for stones that were large enough to cause damage to the crop planting and harvesting machinery. When we found those stones, we would then pick them up and throw them, or carry and drop them, into the tractor bucket. With the largest stones, the best we could do was to pry them up out of the brown earth with our hands and roll and flop them into the tractor bucket. The image in my mind’s eye of the barren stony field with its brown tilled earth, and our methodical wandering back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in front of the tractor searching for stones to pick, conjures a parallel image of the Israelites wandering in the barren desert, a story we are reminded of by Moses in the first reading we heard today — a story not just of the Israelites wandering in the desert alone but, as Moses reminds them, wandering accompanied by God who heard their cry, saw their affliction, their toil, and their oppression , and led and accompanied them out of that. They were not alone; God was with them in the midst of their deserts and provided for them. We are encouraged to remember this today, as we wander in our own desert fields, picking stones from our lives: God is with us, by our sides, in our midst. And God the Son, Jesus Christ, invites us to seek his help in doing so. He tells us: “Come to me, all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11:28) It is desert and stones again that we hear of also in the Gospel passage. Jesus Christ has been in a self-sacrificing fast in the desert, is hungry, and is tempted by the devil to use his power to turn stones into bread and to feed on them. He resists the temptation — pointing to and drawing strength from reliance on God. Are we often tempted to feed on the stones that we carry in the desert fields of our lives? How often are those stones temptations, not to feed on something seemingly desirable, like bread, but rather to feed on that which is unpalatable — such as stones of bitterness, animosity, anger, discord, fear, discouragement, or useless anxiety. I think those are just as often the weighty stones we carry in our desert fields and that we may be tempted to feed on. It takes conscious effort to reach out to God for grace, in even the simplest of prayers, to resist these temptations, recognizing that often God’s grace comes through others around us who help us, support us, and love us. Let us not forget that we have in Jesus Christ one who, like us, has been similarly tested through what he endured; he is able to help us who are being tested ( cf Heb 2:18). One who invites us: “Come to me, all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Jesus invites us to give him our burdens, our stones — whatever they may be: bitterness, animosity, anger, judgmentalism, fear, discouragement, anxiety — all of the things that ultimately rob us of the joy God and Christ desire for us.  We have an invitation and a choice to give these over to Christ —to let go of these stones. It is an invitation and choice that is mirrored symbolically in our parish invitation in the bulletin over the last few weeks to leave a stone at the foot of Christ’s Cross here in the well throughout Lent. A ritual act of handing over, letting go, and letting God; letting God take our stones which do not and cannot feed us, and instead feed us with his True Food and life-giving Word and Spirit. If you have not thought to bring a stone from home, fear not; there are a bucket of them here in the well. And, don’t worry about dropping your stone on the burlap desert sands; there is plenty of padding underneath! And as we leave our stones behind, maybe we can pick up and take away with us the kindness Fr. Chris invited us to share in his homily on Ash Wednesday; kindness that we feed each other with, looking out for each other, loving each other. It’ll be the same kindness that will end up feeding us .
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