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April 28, 2024 5th Sunday of Easter B

April 28, 2024

5 th Sunday of Easter B

Promise #3 of the 12-step movement is, “ We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” These words come to mind when I hear about Saul in today’s first reading.

It must have been difficult to be accepted by the early Christians when he spent so much time in the recent past persecuting the Christians. Now he wishes to proclaim the gospel of Jesus.   Last Sunday we heard how the people piled their cloaks at the feet of a man named Saul as they killed Stephen.

Saul did horrible things in his past. I am sure many had a hard time overlooking what Saul did in the past. I am sure he had many sleepless nights when he regretted his past, yet his past is part of who he was and is. As he was strident in persecuting the Christians in the past, he was strident in preaching the good news in his present. His past is part of who he is. His nature didn’t change, what changed was his cause and his outlook on life.

We all have things in our past that we are not proud of. We all sowed some wild oats.  What we were is not the end of the story. God uses the most broken to accomplish the building up of the kingdom.  It is said, “every sinner has a future, and every Saint has a past.”  What we were in the past is not the whole story. Saul was a single-minded persecutor of the Christians who became a single-minded preacher of the gospel.  His way of operating has not changed, just what his goal is has changed.

Our past has formed each one of us into who we are. We can’t change the past, we may regret it, but we can’t change it. The best we can do is strive to do better in the future. It is often hard to put behind us our past. Some will judge us according to what we did in the past. Some will not see how we are different.

 It takes someone willing to see beyond our past and look to today and the future.

Barnabas did this for Saul. Barnabas was able to see the man who was there at the moment. He didn’t’ t let the past sway him. He was willing to take Saul at his word and trust that the spirit was at work in him and that he was a new man.

Today we may want to consider what is in our past that we wish to put behind us.  Who has been a Barnabus for us? Who was willing to give us the benefit of the doubt.

Who is a Saul for us in our life? Who are the ones who have a past? Are we willing to let them try on a new way of life, or do we prejudge them according to their past? Remember the saints, “Every sinner has a future, every saint has a past”.

I am not sure I would have liked Paul, but I am thankful for him and his ministry.  Without Paul, few of us would know about the gospel.

As Fr. Scott shared with us this week, each type of person has a sin; sin doesn’t’ t define the person. Our pet sin can be a deficit and an asset for the way we interact with the world. So, it was with Paul. He was, in his past, and after he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, a man with a mission.   He brought all he was and is to his mission to spread the gospel. 

Saul may have tried to get away from his past, he was even given a new name. A new name accompanies a new mission. Abram became Abraham, Saul became Paul. The pope takes on a new name Cardinal Bergoglio becomes Francis.

It must have been hard for Paul and the early church. There were many growth pains in the early church. The Holy Spirit came to help the disciples and apostles form the church. The church was and is made up of many who have a past. Our past is not the end of the story.  As broken as we may be, we are created in the image and likeness of our God.  Therefore, we are created and loved by our God and that makes all the difference in the world.

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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