Fifth Sunday of Lent A March 17, 2024
Fifth Sunday of Lent A
March 17, 2024
So often in life the first impression we have of an individual rarely gives us the full picture.
For example, when we hear about the Apostle Thomas, we immediately give him the name “doubting Thomas” because after the resurrection of Jesus he asks for proof of the resurrection by touching Jesus’ wounds of the crucifixion. Yet in the gospel from today it is Thomas who says, “Let us also go to die with him.”
When I hear the name of Martha, I hear the words of Jesus earlier in the gospel when he says to Martha,” Martha you are concerned with many things…. Mary has chosen the better option, and it will not be taken from her.” The picture of Martha is that she is the bad sister while it is Mary who sits and listens to the Lord. Yet, in today’s gospel it is Mary who sits at home weeping and Martha who says. “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
Thomas, Martha, Mary, Lazarus, you, and I are challenged to have faith in the words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
For the last three weeks we have been hearing from the gospel of John. These readings are given to us as we continue our journey to Easter and belief in the resurrection. The story of the Woman at the well spoke about how faith becomes living water that encourages us to have faith in Jesus. As this faith grows, we develop living water in our lives.
Last week we heard about a man born blind. The issue became who sinned and caused the man’s blindness and who sinned in performing a healing on the sabbath. We discover blindness is not simply about the inability to discern objects, but blindness can be blindness to the truth of seeing a person for who they really are. The blind men in this story are the temple officials who are blind to a miracle and blind to seeing that healing is more important than laws.
Today we encounter faith and faith in resurrection.
We all can relate to the experience of losing a loved one. Death is a challenge to our faith; we like Martha and Thomas are invited to have faith in the promises of Jesus. We have faith in resurrection. Faith in resurrection has an effect on our lives. When we place faith in resurrection we come to live in a different way.
This is how Carlo Carretto puts it:
"When the world seems a defeat for God and you are sick with the disorder, the violence, the terror, the war on the streets; when the earth seems to be chaos, say to yourself, 'Jesus died and rose again on purpose to save, and his salvation is already with us.' . . .. . .
"Every newly-opened leper-hospital is an act of faith in the resurrection.
"Every peace treaty is an act of faith in the resurrection.
"Every agreed commitment is an act of faith in the resurrection.
"When you forgive your enemy
"When you feed the hungry
"When you defend the weak
"you believe in the resurrection.
"When you have the courage to marry
"When you welcome the newly born child
"When you build your home
"you believe in the resurrection.
"When you wake at peace in the morning
"When you sing to the rising sun
"When you go to work with joy
"you believe in the resurrection."
We go forth to like Thomas, Martha and Mary to place faith in the resurrection.
Solemnity of Peter and Paul June 29, 2025 Peter and Paul are called the saints of Rome. Partly this is because, both died in the city. You may visit their burial places. The grave of St Peter is under the Basilica bearing his name and St. Paul is buried under the church of St. Paul outside the walls. (Being a Roman citizen Paul was buried outside the walls of Rome, while Peter was killed and buried in the city of Rome.) More about the churches later. Paul and Peter couldn’t be more different. It is said “God draws straight with crooked lines”. Why did God choose these men? A good question. It has been said “God doesn’t call the qualified, God qualifies the called.” Paul was a well-educated, Pharisee. An official of the temple. Paul spent his early career persecuting the followers of Jesus, until he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Peter was a simple fisherman. He often said the wrong things and at times had flashes of insight, as in today’s gospel. Peter spent time with Jesus and denied knowing Jesus the night before his passion and death. Later Peter was asked 3 times “do you love me” by Jesus. Peter was the apostles to the Jews, while Paul was the apostle to the gentiles (the non-Jews). The Basilica of St. Peter is probably the most famous church in the city of Rome. For years it was thought that the church held the remains of St. Peter. This was confirmed in the 1940s when excavations took place to find more room to bury popes in the crypt of the building. Workers found and ancient cemetery under the church. Today we can take the tour, often given by seminarians from the North American College Seminary. Be sure to reserve the tour before you arrive in Rome. The tours are limited. At the end of the tour, you will come to the Marble box with the bones of St Peter in it. When the bones were tested, they were found to belong to a man from the first century. After Constantine made Catholicism the official faith of the republic, He constructed a simple church over the cemetery. Later it was added to and today it is the large church we know of as St Peter’s Basilica. You may visit the Constantine chapel in the crypt of the church to see where the first church was located. When I was on my sabbatical in Rome in 2008, I invited my family to visit me and I arranged to offer mass in the Clemintine chapel. After mass I noticed that one of the metal doors on the wall was open. We crawled in and went behind the altar to tough the marble box where the bones of St Peter were placed. What a thrill to be so close to the great saint’s remains. To visit the tomb of St Paul you need to travel outside of Rome to the church of St Paul outside the walls, most of the tour buses do not go here, so be carful which tour bus you take. The church is next to a monastery with a nice cloister garden. On the base of the dome are faces of the popes. Years ago, excavations took place, and the bones of St Paul were found in the base of the church. Today we honor the great saints of the early church. It is due to the preaching of St Paul that we the gentiles, non-Jews are here. A few months ago the successor to St. Peter was a man from our nation, Pope Leo the XIV. Let us give thanks for these great man and these great saints.
Corpus Christi June 22, 2025 Today we celebrate the feast of the body and blood of Christ, the eucharist. The second Vatican council reminds us that the eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. All we are, has its source in this celebration. At this celebration we are given the most ancient text about the last supper, the institution of the Eucharist. In Paul’s letter to the community of Corinth he tells us what took place at the night before Jesus suffered and died. In this account Jesus says to the disciple “do this in remembrance of me.” This remembrance is not simply calling to mind something that took place over 2000 years ago. The remembrance is about living the life Jesus has asked us to live. We live his example, Eucharist for us is about who we are and how we live. Each week we come to be fed with the word of God and the gift of the eucharist. This Sharing in the one bread and one cup becomes a moment of transformation. We are changed by this celebration. We go forth to live what we have experienced. In the gospel today, we hear of the feeding of the 5000 with the five loaves and 2 fishes, Barbara Reed askes an important question in this month’s issue of Give us this day, “Did Jesus actually multiply the loaves and fishes. Or was it a miracle in which everyone was prompted to share with others what they had brought? A better question is: How do we replicate the giving of our whole selves, body, mind and spirit, to the One who is the source of all nourishment so that we may be broken up in love for the life of the world?” What we do on the weekend does not end at the doors of the church building. We go forth to live the Eucharist. This is what deacon Myers meant when he wrote his book “Living the real presence”. After we come forward to receive communion we have a moment of silent prayer as we contemplate how this celebration will remain with us for the days to come. Then we stand for the post communion prayer, our home work. The prayer tells us how we live what we have received. This is why we stay after communion. We stay to pray as the body of Christ and to hear what we are do next. Here is the post communion prayer for this mass: Grant, O Lord, we pray that we may delight for all eternity in that share in your divine life, which is foreshadowed in the present age by our reception of your precious body and blood Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Each time we come forward to receive the Eucharist we come as a community. We come as the body of Christ. The communion reception is a sign of unity. We come standing to receive. We are united in voice as we sing the communion hymn. We receive communion. We do not grab it we open our hands to receive. We are all receivers of this gift. All that is given to us if a gift and we receive this gift which is freely given by our God and then we go forward to give this gift all who we meet. The miracle of each mass is the gathering of the body of Christ and what we receive we freely give to others. The mass goes on and on throughout our days for our whole life.
There is a widely-held truth of Christianity that is expressed in the statement, “There is no such thing as being a Christian in isolation.” It has also been expressed as, “There is no such thing as being a solitary Christian.” The fundamental reason that there is no such thing as being a solitary Christian or being Christian in isolation is that God, the God of our Christian faith, is a God of relationship — a God in relationship! That relationship is what we celebrate today in the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit — one God, three persons — each with unique roles in relationship to one another: God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sanctifier. If, therefore, the God we believe in — the God we profess, the God that we worship and pray to, the God we trust in — is fundamentally a God of and in relationship, it follows that we, who are created in the image and likeness of that God of and in relationship, cannot express what we believe , cannot BE what we profess by being what our God is not: Christians in isolation; solitary Christians. We say that God is Love, and so God is. We sometimes identify the Persons of our Triune God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — as the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love between them . There is a mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, and mutual giving and receiving in which each shares and receives all that they are with each other. This expression of love of the Holy Trinity is communion . And it is the highest aim of the Love of God to draw us into the life of love of the Holy Trinity that is that communion. The Church teaches that “the dignity of [humanity] rests above all [emphasis added] on the fact that [we] are called to communion with God” (Catechism #27). That is why today is of such high importance among our days of worship that we deem it a solemnity — The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Above all , we are called to communion with God. In the first reading we hear that the Wisdom of God, the Holy Spirit, “was poured forth before the earth...playing on the surface of God’s earth” and the Spirit of God says, “ and I found delight in the human race." Our responsorial psalm, Psalm 8, reminds us that we are made “little less than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor.” These verses signal that we are created for communion with our creator. In the second reading St. Paul tells us that “ the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” That sounds like communion, doesn’t it? Indeed, the very incarnation of Christ is the manifestation of our God coming out to us to draw us into the life of the Trinity! Therefore, if we are called into communion with God, then we, as the Body of Christ, are called into communion with each other . The very indwelling-dance of love of the Holy Trinity that we are invited and drawn into, invites — and also urges — that we go out and draw others into this dance of love. That's what the communion of our God does. That's what the love of our God is. The love of God poured into our hearts, as communion with the Holy Trinity, is to be poured forth from our hearts into this world in imitation of our Triune God: in little acts of love as simple as reaching out to make a connection to someone to let them know you were thinking about them, and greater acts of love through service that gather us, feed us, caring for each other in mind, body, and spirit; acts of mercy. For we are not Christians in isolation. And we cannot be Christians in isolation.
