April 2022

Second Sunday of Easter (C) – April 24, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

First day after the resurrection. Here, after 33 years of absence, the Son returns to the Father. Home again. Who will express the joy of their meeting after such a long separation, the need for a celebrated presence that is not disturbed by anything and no one anymore? Father, Son and Spirit – finally are together. And it would be seem that the custom of people – these three Divine Persons should finally enjoy themselves. However, the Gospels record that almost immediately after the greeting, the Son again “slipped away” back to the earth. He talked to Mary Magdalene in the morning; in the afternoon He traveled for several hours with His disciples to Emmaus; in the evening He still had a time to meet in the Upper Room.

Jesus entered the Upper Room on the evening of the first day of the week, where He celebrated the first Mass and said goodbye with His disciples. He stood in the center and, as reported by a witness there, wished them peace. He said, Do you have anything to eat? They gave Him a piece of roasted fish – the Galilean national dish. And as He ate, they felt the fear left their hearts. Peace was slowly coming in this place – the only reality He had given them as a gift. Returning from eternity, He took nothing else with Him, but “the peace”. This word is  unreadable for many people. The word “peace” is more often on the lips of politicians and propagandists than of Christians. And yet –  behind this word is hidden the first and most important gift from God that Jesus brought to man on the day of His resurrection. This gift must be a result from discussions between the Son and the Father.

The world hidden behind the words: Peace be with you is real. This peace given by Jesus to His disciples on Easter evening, it can also be shared by all people in their days. He brings the same gift during the celebration of the Eucharist and it descends upon each one as much as he opens up. The peace must come in the midst of wars below and above, in marriages and in families, in environments and among nations, if they are to survive and to develop. And it will not come into the world except only through human hearts.

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Resurrection of the Lord (C) – April 17, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

It is the greatest miracle in the world! Jesus rose from the dead to testify to the man that there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome by believing in God. We have probably found out about it many times. Remember how many times Jesus helped you when you were in need, when you put your trust in Him. Remember those times that were humanly hopeless, and everything ended well because you believed that Jesus would help you.

There were times when you came out of the grave of your sins to be resurrected and start your life anew with God. It was your miracle of resurrection by the power of Christ who rose first from the dead. This world will be better only when we will be better, when we have the courage to live God’s life. Then, when you live like this, you will be a witness of the Risen Jesus. We must live in such a way that Jesus will be not ashamed of us. We must to resurrect, to wake up and at all costs turn back from this wrong path of pursuit of material goods. Well, you will have many goods and you will not be happy. Your future – heaven or hell – depends on what kind of person you are.

At the final judgment, Jesus will ask you – what good have you done for others? He will not ask you how much you do have in your account, what kind of house and car you had. He will only ask you – did you have a heart for those with whom you lived. A wise man  asks God only for bread, so that he does not stop on his way to heaven, because he knows the time is short and there is nothing to strive to have, but to be. When you die, people will ask you how much have you left on your account? The Lord will ask you – what kind of man you were. I should live each day as if it would be my last. The Lord will knock unexpectedly to our door, and when He knocks you cannot say: Lord, maybe knock tomorrow because I didn’t have my confession yet, I haven’t reconciled with my brother yet, I haven’t fixed the wrong what I had done, I did not reconcile with my wife yet. We need to be vigilant so as not to sleep through the grace of meeting the Lord.

Jesus is alive. He lives in us through holy life. We cannot be like the soldiers guarding the tomb who slept through the moment of Christ’s resurrection. We cannot sleep through our lives. We must proclaim with our lives that Jesus is risen, that he is risen in you!

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Holy Saturday (C) – April 16, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Today, a man can do nothing for God when he sees the empty cross and the stone at the tomb. Today man can only wait. It is true that this is a different expectation from that experienced by Mary, the Mother of Jesus or the Apostles. She waited with hope, believing in the miracle of her Divine Son. They waited without faith that anything else would happen in their lives that would help them overcome their fear and uncertainty for the future.

Today, after so many centuries, we already know what we are waiting for. Holy Saturday, this day of silence and reflection at the Lord’s tomb, is for us a time, if not blessed, then a very necessary time to look into ourselves, into our humanity, in our faith. Hence we have the variety of readings in today’s liturgy – God wants to remind us of everything from the beginning, once more. And we are to, by listening to all these biblical stories, give God another proof of who we are and where is our place. God wants us to re-declare our belonging to Him, initiated by baptism and the profession of faith, by the action of His Son and the saints in our lives, supported by the renunciation of what is bad and what distances us from Him. This Saturday liturgy is to confirm that we are His – Gods’ children and we want to remain with Him through our entire life. And after this Holy Saturday’s liturgy, tomorrow morning, we will stand before the empty tomb of God’s Son and find out that everything what God has promised us – had happened and that the empty tomb is the beginning of our eternity with God.

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Good Friday (C) – April 15, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

On Good Friday, the world stumbles once again over the dead body of the Convict of Golgotha. Stretched on the cross 2000 years ago, and yet almost a billion people stand by Him every day – celebrating the holy drama. The cross shows that Jesus’ agony, His suffering and death cannot be removed, talked about and forgotten. Jesus is crucified! He sees TOMORROW from the cross, although this tomorrow is stripped of Him today. God is in helplessness and suffering. He cannot be separated from the cross.

“The paradox of the cross consists in this – as the Polish priest, Father Janusz Pasierb writes – that what was supposed to kill, gives life. The Middle Ages created a mystical cross – a green tree full of leaves, bearing the fruit of life – the body of Jesus. It is not only a universal lesson in understanding of the human fate, constantly passing through death to life, but also a practical teaching that a man is not doomed to crawl, but that he can do something even out of the dark layers of his suffering. Mahatma Ghandi, not elsewhere but from the Gospel took his basic idea that the suffering accepted voluntarily can be a method of liberation. The cross teaches us not to suffer, but to WIN”.

Jesus immersed in fear, darkness and uncertainty „throws himself into the embrace of God. He is afraid of death, but also expects a new birth from it.” At the bottom of the fear, He sees the future. He sees eternity as an extensive green landscape.

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Holy Thursday (C) – April 14, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Holy Thursday of the Lord’s Supper is the great with the greatness of the Gift – the Sacrament of the Eucharist, that is, the mysterious presence of Jesus Christ under the forms of consecrated bread and wine transformed into the real Body and Blood of Christ – the Food and Drink of Eternal Life. 

This Thursday is the great greatness of the Gift, which is the sacramental participation in the One Priesthood of the New Covenant by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders – the great dignity and ministry of priests in preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments. Especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist, that is, making present the Death, Resurrection and Glory of Jesus Christ present for our and the world’s salvation.

Finally, this Thursday is Great with the greatness of the unsurpassed Love that Christ loved us, giving His life for us through His Death on the Cross, and a great illustration of the Commandment of Love that we love as we are loved: “If I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. For I have given you an example that you should do just as I have done for you ”(John 13:14-15).

If we believe that God is Love, then we must also believe that the more we love, the more we are like God, the more we are of God’s. We may ask ourselves, are we capable of such love? It is the Gift of the Eucharist and the Gift of the Holy Spirit that makes us capable: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). “Do you understand what I have done to you?” (John 13:12)

God knows that we are threatened primarily by ourselves. By our own weakness, naivety, ignorance, and sometimes just our own thoughtlessness. That is why, when the fullness of time is accomplished, God decides to come to us personally. He knows that we really need to experience His presence and His love close. We need the visible love of the invisible God. Christianity is no doctrine, no ideology, no philosophy. Christianity is the story of the most extraordinary love of a God who lives, loves and teaches us to love.

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