From the Pastor

VI Sunday of Easter – “A” – May 25, 2014

From the Pastor /

It’s the night of the Last Supper. Jesus’ heart is filled with fear and foreboding: in just a few hours’ time He will face that most gruesome of fates – death by crucifixion. And yet His thoughts are centered not on himself but on His disciples, “my friends,” He calls them. He knows how devastating His death will be for them. And so He reassures them with the promise, “I will not leave you orphans,” and says, “I shall ask the Father and He will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever.” The Greek word for advocate is rich in meaning – a comforter, a consoler, a counsellor. Jesus has been all these to His friends, and now He assures them that someone will continue His work. This special helper, joint gift of Father and Son, is of course the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and truth; the Spirit who, as love, is at the heart of the Church. Today’s other readings give us glimpses of the Holy Spirit in action. In the first reading the Spirit enables Philip to proclaim, to announce fearlessly, the good news of Christ to the people in Samaria. And then, through the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Confirmation, the newly baptized are strengthened in their faith and their desire to share it with others. The second reading suggests that gentleness accompanies the gift of joy.

The need of the Holy Spirit has not dimnished with the passing of the decades. The word “Advocate,” used of the Holy Spirit seldom gatecrashes: the Spirit normally waits to be called in, waits to be invited. Of course, the Holy Spirit has been with us since baptism; and so what we are really praying for is that we may open our hearts and respond ever more generously to our divine guest. In that way we shall be renewed both as individuals and as Church.

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V Sunday of Easter – “A” – May 18, 2014

From the Pastor /

In today’s Gospel the song of trouble and heartbreak is about to erupt in the life of Jesus. Here, in His final conversation with His disciples, Jesus seeks to strengthen his friends in the face of the coming darkness. Very soon His own heart will be greatly troubled, as He prays in the garden of Gethsemane, knowing that His enemies are closing in. Nobody escapes trouble and heartbreak. Nobody escapes from fear. And yet there is a way out of these dark places. That heavenly place is the presence of God, and Jesus now tells us how to find our way. As His disciples are thrown into confusion, they begin to ask Him questions. Two very important questions emerge: “Lord, where are You going?” and “How can we find the way there?” He is going to God, His Father, and in following Jesus we will find our way there too.

Trouble and heartache come to everyone in this world, and in many different guises. There are issues of injustice, where people do not receive their share of bread in this world; issues of violence, where people’s lives are torn apart by bloodshed, issues of human relationship; issues of bereavement, where people suddenly lose the ones they love. The word of Jesus, spoken first to His disciples at the Last Supper, are repeated to us today: “Do not let your heart be troubled.” The Lord himself is the reason why we are not to lose hope. Today we hear what St. Peter has to say about the importance of others, about the importance of the Church. The Lord is a living stone, and we can set ourselves close to Him. It is only by being set next to one another in the Lord that we can be strong. It is this precious love in our lives that will enable us to have a care for one another, and as a Church to have a care for everyone. To rescue the human heart from trouble is the great work that we can do.

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IV Sunday of Easter – “A” – May 11, 2014

From the Pastor /

Today’s redings do not speak of mighty warships, but take us rather to the other extreme – towards a flock of frail sheep. No single image can convey all that Jesus means to us. As the first reading makes clear, this Good Shepherd of ours who was crucified is Lord and Christ; He is the long-awaited Messiah; He is God in our midst. He is not only our shepherd, says the Gospel, but the gateway that leads to life in all its fullness. “Listening” is a favorite word in St. John’s Gospel: it appears more than 50 times. Today’s reading very appropriate draws our attention to the way in which sheep listen for the voice of their shepherd; and then, they “hear” it, are ready to respond. We live in a world where many alluring voices are raised, where it’s so easy to hear and be swayed by what the Gospel calls “the voice of strangers” – the powerful voices of the media, of politicians, of celebrities, of our own peer group, even when they promote ideas and aspirations that are quite contrary to those of our Shepherd. Today we are invited once again to listen carefully for the voice of our Good Shepherd: on the one hand, not allowing it to be drawned out by other voices; on the other, recognizing that it is to be heard in many, and even in some unlikely situations.

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III Sunday of Easter – “A” – May 4, 2014

From the Pastor /

They…recognized Him at the breaking of bread. Twe depressed, half-believeing disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized the risen Lord in a setting with which you and I are instantly familiar. We are tempted to say, “There is something magic about the Mass,” but that is not right: magic has no place in Christianity. When we first met them in today’s Gospel, these two travellers on the road to Emmaus could not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. They had been His followers, and that made it worse. Jesus had to spend the whole day walking with them, explaining the psalms and prophecies of the Old Testament, to prepare them for the blinding moment of recognition.

As soon as they recognized the risen Lord, They set out that instant and returned to Jerusalem. Their joy was so great that it couldn’t wait till morning. They ran the seven miles back to the city to bring the stunning news. Jesus is alive. Their depression was lifted, their despair had disappeared. If Christ is risen, all things can be hoped for. As men and women of trust, we are oddballs in our secular world, which is grim, sarcastic, sad, expecting the worst, pooh-poohing virtue and unselfishness. We are the opposite. We can bring each day with hope in our heart, because we know that the risen Christ is with us, helping us interpret everything that may happen, casting His light on every encounter, every problem.

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Low Sunday – “A” – April 27, 2014

From the Pastor /

Every Sunday at Mass we proclaim the Creed – the “I believe”. The word “creed” comes from the Latin word “credo”, meaning “I believe”; and the word “believe” derives ultimately from a word related to “love”. When we pray the Creed, when we say we believe, we are making a statement about the person in whom we trust, the one to whom we have given our hearts – just as Thomas did. “The truth is out there.” For the Christians, the truth of the resurrection will never be proved or disproved by scientific reasoning of historical data, but by the effects of that truth in our world and in our personal lives. The first reading gives an indication of some of those effects: a faithfulness to the teaching of the apostles, to the community, to the breaking of bread, to prayer. Perhaps most importantly, the real hallmarks of the risen Jesus are the peace and joy, the healing and reconciliation that this Spirit brings into people’s lives – driving out fear and sadness, overcoming the death-dealing power of sin. This is the real sign of the resurrestion, the truth that we are called to live out and embody, for the healing and salvation of the world.

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Resurrection of the Lord – “A” – April 20, 2014

Frackville, From the Pastor, PNCC /

We read in today’s Gospel that when the beloved disciple entered the tomb, he saw and he believed. What did he see? Not Jesus, certainly, only the empty tomb with the grave clothes. The Gospel tells us that up to this point they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. The disciples were in a state of shock. Their world had been shattered as they witnessed the arrest of Jesus and His death on the cross. It took more than the evidence of an empty tomb to convince them that Jesus was truly risen from the dead. The empty tomb was the beginning of a process that led to faith. Gradually, over a period of 40 days, they had a variety of experiences of meeting the risen Lord, which enabled them finally to proclaim with conviction, as Peter says in today’s first reading. The relationship that the disciples had with Jesus began with an invitation to follow Him. They heard His words; they witnessed His miracles; they saw how He related to people with great love and understanding, and the conviction grew that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God. What this meant was severely challenged whey they witnessed the betrayal of Jesus, His arrest and torture, and the finally His death on the cross. They only really came to understand who Jesus was after the resurrection, when the Spirit came to lead them to complete truth.

Easter is the feast of all feasts. The feast of Christmas did not even exist for the first two centuries of the Church’s life, but Christianity is inconceivable without Easter. The risen Lord appears to those who have received the gift of faith, that gift of the Holy Spirit which brings us into a relationship with Jesus. When we believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we are enabled to die to the things of this world and come alive to the things of God. Our whole sense of values changes, because our life is now hidden with Christ in God. We begin to see with the eyes of Christ so that we can know His Father as our Father and feel His compassion for the needs of the world around us. Like the disciples, however, we have to grow in our faith. Like them, we have to follow the call of Jesus, to listen to His word, to allow a relationship with Him to develop. Without Jesus, our world is an empty tomb. Today let us open our hearts to the gift of the Spirit who will enable us to see what is not visible to the eyes of our body, and to believe that the Lord is truly risen and living among us.

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Palm Sunday – “A” – April 13, 2014

From the Pastor /

Today we are being first-hand witnesses to the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we are being called to watch closely as Jesus undergoes and endures the journey to Calvary. Today we are being asked to decide whether to stay close and walk with Jesus. On the first Good Friday, all of Jesus’ disciples left Him at various times along the route. Today we are asked to make the decision: to stay by the Lord, or to do as the first disciples did and desert Him. The choice is ours. If we choose to stay close to the Lord and walk by His side, then as Jesus takes each step, the horror of what is happening and what is ultimately going to happen becomes clearer and clearer. Everyone has gone, and it seems that even God the Father is gone.

As disciples of the Lord in this present day there is much to do and to learn if we are to be effective witnesses to the glory of Jesus Christ. There are two men who walked with Jesus in His daily life and who were there with the Lord as He was arrested. The two men are Peter and Judas. We can learn important lessons from these two disciples.

First let us look at Judas and see what we can learn from him. There are many theories about the why and wherefore of Judas, but this is not the place to discuss them. The facts from the scriptures suffice, and they are that Judas betrayed Jesus, and then killed himself when he realized what was actually happening to Jesus. Then there is Peter, who in essence did virtually the same thing as Judas. He betrayed any knowledge of the Lord, and when the cock crowed Peter realized what was happening, then left and wept bitterly. He went away and wept, full of shame.
Even if we desert the Lord and run away, He will always be longing to welcome us back.

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Passion Sunday – “A” – April 6, 2014

From the Pastor /

What makes the tears of Jesus particularly striking is that they were not simply an emotional reaction. His emotions are perfectly integrated with His reason, and His reason is undamaged by sin, Jesus always sees to the very causes of all the sin and suffering in the world. One of those causes is, as srcipture tells us, the work of the devil. Tears by themselves, of course do not raise the dead. But because Jesus is also divine, He was, and is, able not merely to return life to a corpse, but truly to resurrect us all.

How do we apply all this to our lives? Part of the good news is that in the first place we don’t have to. In the first place God applies it all to us. Our part is to respond to and nourish this life of grace, to make the Holy Spirit welcome in our hearts and minds. By living a sacramental life in the Church, we are nourished by the sacraments and prayer and good works. But we can always do more to appreciate what God is doing with us.

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Fourth Sunday of Lent – “A” – March 30, 2014

From the Pastor /

The story of Jesus healing a blind man who tells the Pharisees that he can now see is told in today’s Gospel from St. John. Imagine how excited the blind man must have been to see for the first time. He would no longer need to beg to survive and readily shared his joy and acknowledged the healing power of Jesus. The blind man progresses from darkness to light. The Pharisees, on the other hand, first appear to accept the blind man’s healing but then begin to doubt and finally deny Jesus’ heavenly origins. The early Christians saw physical blindness as a metaphor for the spiritual blindness that prevents people from recognizing the divinity of Jesus and following His teachings. Today’s story testifies to the power of Jesus to heal not just the blindness of the eye but, above all, the blindness of the heart.

The Gospel shows that one thing we need to bear witness to Jesus is experience of the person of Jesus Christ. Today the Church invites us to reflect on God’s love and compassion for the whole world and to be joyful because of it. God loves each and every one of us, and today we are invited to say yes to God’s love, to believe in the holiness of Jesus and to recognize God’s presence in our daily lives. We are also called to have the humility to recognize that God works in others too, sometimes through the most unexpected people. How often do we refuse to believe that we can learn from those who oppose us and disagree with us? And what areas of the Church, of society and of our culture need serious healing in our own time? Where can we recognize the light of Christ shining in the world today and in our own community? Let’s celebrate God’s love and healing power as the blind man did after encountering Jesus. God’s divine intervention helps us transform into people who live lives of goodness, generosity and justice, reflecting God’s light.

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Third Sunday of Lent – “A” – March 23, 2014

From the Pastor /

We know what drought is like. We know what is like to see gardens gradually turn brown and die. Farmers worry about their crops and livestock, conscious that their health makes all the difference to their livelihood and the future of their families. Many of us may not become thirsty,but we receive constant media advice on ways of conserving water. On the other hand, an excess of water is equally tragic. Floods also destroy life and hope.

In their loneliness, some people’s hearts are shrivelled and barren for lack of the water of love. We all need to love and be loved. With love, people grow and develop in unimaginable color and texture. Life, however hard, never becomes unmanageable. That is exactly the sort of transformation that Jesus promised the Samaritan woman. He didn’t tell her that she would never again come to the village well to draw water. Instead He offered the new life and hope that can be born of making a fresh start. However many difficulties may fill our days, we will never again face them on our own. Our hearts need not shrivel and die. Instead they can joyfully burst out into a new and everlasting life. All we need is Jesus. His love is the water for which our souls thirst.

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