Category Archives: Easter

5th Sunday of Easter (Year A)
Acts 6:1-7 | Psalm 32(33):1-2,4-5,18-19 | 1 Peter 2:4-9 | John 14:1-12

The Lord is the living stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him; set yourselves close to him so that you too, the holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices which Jesus Christ has made acceptable to God, may be living stones making a spiritual house. (1 Peter 2:4-5)

It bears remembering that a church is not just a building of concrete and glass.

It bears remembering that a church without an active faith community…is just a building.

It bears remembering that we are the church.

We are the walls made of living stone, building with each other an edifice to the glory of God, with Christ as the keystone.

We gather together, bonding tightly against the assailing winds of worldly temptation, moving together against the earthquakes of secular assaults, always linked in one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all.

We may live independently in this world, each journeying through life as best we can, choosing different directions that could change at any time.

But when we come together as a church, all these I‘s are subsumed in an all-encompassing WE, one voice hailing the great I AM.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

My parish is currently going through a rocky period, as we all try to adjust to our “new management”. When “Wait, you want us to do what? WHY?!?!” becomes a distressingly familiar anthem, it can be hard to remember our place in God’s plan.

We are living stones.

We gather around Christ.

We form one church.

Let us build a house where prophets speak,
and words are strong and true,
where all God’s children dare to seek
to dream God’s reign anew.
Here the cross shall stand as witness
and as symbol of God’s grace;
here as one we claim the faith of Jesus.
All are welcome, all are welcome,
all are welcome in this place.

https://youtu.be/Sba9cHv9TG8?t=76

Amen.

Friday of the 4th Week of Eastertide
Acts 13:26-33 | Psalm 2:6-11 | John 14:1-6

The Lord said to me: ‘You are my Son.
It is I who have begotten you this day.’ (Psalm 2:7)

Or, as my choir sings at every Christmas Midnight Mass, after leading off with “Silent Night:

Dominus dixit ad me: Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genuite.

It’s a good way to begin every morning, by acknowledging that, after the “death” of much-needed sleep, we are “born” afresh each new day.

What went before informs us of who we are, what changes we need to make in ourselves, and what amends we may need to make. Outside that, there’s nothing worth dwelling upon.

So let us not waste the day’s opportunities to show the world at large what it means to be God’s children:

To love, as best we can.

To serve, as best we can.

To be holy, as best we can.

Amen.

Thursday of the 4th Week of Eastertide
Acts 13:13-25 | Psalm 88(89):2-3,21,22,25,27 | John 13:16-20

After he had washed the feet of his disciples, Jesus said to them:
‘I tell you most solemnly,
no servant is greater than his master,
no messenger is greater than the man who sent him. (John 13:16)

Jesus is the acknowledged Master, yet he deigned to kneel at the feet of His own disciples, and cleanse them with His own hands.

Does that not make Him…a master servant?

It’s like an employer, who ladles food onto the plate of her maid, as they sup together with the family.

Or a young man in pressed sleeves and tie, who helps an old cleaner carefully push a wobbly trash bin to the food court dumping area.

It’s the boldest of statements: I may be superior to you by some earthly measure, but I’m neither a superior being nor your lord, just a fellow traveller in this journey through life. Here, have some love, no charge.

Let us take in this signature lesson from the Lord, and master the art of serving with love and abandon.

Jesus, our Teacher and our Lord,
stooped to wash the feet of His disciples,
and He told them: “This is an example;
just as I have done, so you must do.”

Amen.

Wednesday of the 4th Week of Eastertide
Acts 12:24-13:5 | Psalm 66(67):2-3,5-6,8 | John 12:44-50

If anyone hears my words and does not keep them faithfully,
it is not I who shall condemn him,
since I have come not to condemn the world,
but to save the world.
He who rejects me and refuses my words has his judge already:
the word itself that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. (John 12:47-48)

In my consulting work, I sometimes have the unpleasant task of telling my client that their inspired idea or grand plan Just Won’t Work:

That new filesystem with spanking new control software won’t be worth a hill of beans, when a power glitch crashes the customer’s database server, and it gets stuck at boot time trying to fix itself, while your engineer’s halfway across the world.

That 100Mbps network pipe to your data collection server won’t help when you have 200 clients pumping 1Mbps of data each. (I actually had to write this simple equation on a whiteboard, to make someone see that what he said could be done was physically impossible.)

Hard disk died? What happened to the backups I kept telling you guys to set up since day one? Sorry, I’m not Jesus; your data’s gone!

And then I get the Evil Eye for making them look like fools, for torpedoing a young engineer’s dream project, for not being a miracle worker.

It usually takes a while for them to realize that I’m not condemning them. I’m just trying to save them from themselves.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

Every one of us probably remembers a time in our childhood when we turned a deaf ear to our parents’ advice, and ended up both regretting it…and blaming them for our misery.

Jesus has been on the receiving end of that too, millions of times over.

As Catholics, we have the benefit of receiving His Word of Love and Life through an unbroken apostolic heritage. If we continue to turn away from that Word, to live our lives in hedonistic bliss, that Word would be our literal downfall at the end of days.

We’ve also been charged to spread that Word to others around us. When we keep the commandments that we’ve heard, rest assured that others will notice, and perhaps come to believe too.

And if we don’t, it’ll be one hell of an afterlife.

Lord, You have given us Your Word out of love for all mankind. Help us to take that Word in, and meditate upon it, and live it daily, so that all who know us may some day come to know You too. Amen.

Tuesday of the 4th Week of Eastertide
Acts 11:19-26 | Psalm 86(87) | John 10:22-30

The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice;
I know them and they follow me.
I give them eternal life;
they will never be lost
and no one will ever steal them from me. (John 10:27-28)

Last week, the venerable American dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster triggered an Internet firestorm, when they added the word “sheeple” to their product. Their currently-listed example is fairly neutral, but the original text was a rather uncomplimentary observation by CNN’s Doug Criss back in 2015:

For those of us who aren’t immersed in the tech world: The more vocal Android smartphone users love to call Apple users “sheeple”, in reference to the late Steve Jobs’ uncanny ability to mesmerize millions into buying “second-rate products with sexy shells”. Apple fans retaliate in turn against “fandroids”, who “blindly chase technical specifications without appreciation for overall product quality”.

This long-running “sheeple-fandroid” war of words had actually simmered down to a bare murmur; each side mostly ignored the other, with a few renegades taking a handful of pot-shots each time a new product is released on either side.

Merriam-Webster, by inadvertently “legitimizing” the Android fanbase’s derision, fanned the glowing coals into a raging inferno. No wonder they backpedaled with remarkable speed, though also without a mea culpa.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

It’s no secret that the non-Christian world at large vocally criticize Christ-followers as “sheeple”, and some Christians even taunt us Catholics as “papist fanbois”. It’s enough to make those of us whose faith is already shaken for one reason or another to simply quit St. Paul’s race altogether:

I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7)

That doesn’t mean that Jesus was wrong when he said “they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from me”. It is we who walk away from Him; blaming the secular world for stealing us away from our Lord is merely pushing the blame from where it rightly belongs, resting heavily on our own shoulders.

We will be lost…if we choose not to actively follow Christ, by faithfully attending to our faith formation through daily scriptural contemplation and regular Eucharistic celebration.

We will be stolen away…if we choose to listen to the sensual song of the siren that is worldly impiety.

If following Christ in love makes me one of the “sheeple”, then I gladly bear that moniker of “shame”.

And I can think of many worse “fanboi” obsessions than the promise of eternal Life, the fullness of joy in God’s presence.

The secular world thinks of us as fools, being led like sheep to the slaughter.

But I say to you, brothers and sisters, that we are being led by our Saviour like sheep to the ever-after.

As a modern take on Psalm 100 might proclaim:

We are his sheeple, the peeps of His flock.

Jesus fanbois, unite!

Amen.