April 27, 2025: Second Sunday of Easter/Divine Mercy Sunday

The joyful reality of the Resurrection persists.  It is powerful enough to break through locked doors, bringing the living Presence of Christ to those in fear and those in need of healing, physical and spiritual.

We behold Christ now, Who is in great might, the One Who holds all time and all existence together.

Furthermore, He renews all of Creation by His Resurrection.  It's a powerful gesture when Christ breathes on the apostles to grant them the Holy Spirit, which allows for the forgiveness of sins.

Thomas, having missed the encounter with Christ, wanted proof in the most physical way of Christ's Resurrection.  It's not directly clear in the text if he actually touched Christ's wounds when He appeared.  Yet we know He expressed great faith when he declared, "My Lord and my God!"

Even though we cannot have the same physical experience, we are blessed when we recognize how Christ is present and active in our midst, a sign of our faith when we encounter Him and let the reality of His Resurrection transform us.

Indeed, I rejoice because tomorrow is the anniversary of my baptism, when I joined Christ in dying and rising into newness of Life, that continues to transform me daily so I can bring this glorious reality into the world.

April 25, 2025: Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist

Easter Friday in the Octave of Easter is superseding this Feast.

Yet in the spirit of Easter/Resurrection Sunday, we behold the Gospel by which we understand the reality of the Risen Lord Jesus.

He breaks through our fears and doubts with His very real living Presence.

And He sends us forth to proclaim to the whole world this joyful Truth that transforms all Creation.

April 20, 2025: Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

Christ has risen from the dead, and we are forever changed.

Not just an event of history centuries ago, but an encounter we have anew today.  Christ continues to offer us His new Life, transforming us so that we can live as witnesses testifying to His life in us.

At first, we, like those first disciples, may not be able to make sense of the empty tomb, since emptiness is often a sign of something lacking. Yet we realize it is the new reality of God at work in our world because this emptiness is a sign that God has reversed the curse of sin and works His power of redemption in our world.

Now, we turn away from what is earthly, and we focus our gaze upwards because Christ has made possible the path to His Heavenly Presence.

And His Living Presence continues to abide with us so we can bring this joyful reality to change the world.

April 19, 2025: Holy Saturday Easter Vigil

It is a glorious night:  Throughout the ages, God worked to bring His people back into right relationship with Himself.  This work of salvation culminates in the night that great light shone when Christ rose victoriously over death.

God indeed created us good, and restored us so gloriously.  Through baptism, we die to sin, leaving behind all that leads us away from God, and we join ourselves so closely, living now His life.

So we continue to realize the awesome reality of the Resurrection.

April 18, 2025: Cross Friday

We behold the Cross, an instrument of shame, for Christ willingly bore the Cross, suffered, and died upon it in obedience to the Father.

By the Cross, He brought us salvation, joining in our sufferings so that, just as He redeemed the Cross to be the means of salvation, our sufferings, and even death, are redeemed by His Power.

We have great consolation and hope that Christ joined us in suffering, and that they will give way to Resurrection.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote about how the fate of a nation was riding that night of April 18, 1775, as the British colonies inched closer to independence.

How more so did the world change that day when Christ died upon the Cross, and brought us freedom from the tyranny of sin so that we could live devoted fully to God's Kingdom.

April 17, 2025: Maundy Thursday

Christ offered us His Body and His Blood as the sacrifice at the heart of the New Covenant established at a Passover meal. Moving beyond the deliverance of God to His people from salvery in Egypt, God has delivered us from slavery to sin.

He commanded us to do this in remembrance of Him.  He also commanded us to follow the example of love He gave us in giving of Himself.

April 13, 2025: Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem to great acclamation from the crowds, but also with great humility, riding on a donkey.

As He would display later in the week, He came to deliver His people victoriously, not like a mighty conquering warrior, but as a King Who would die in an agonizing way for the sins of the people.  He did so, entrusting Himself to the Father in the face of immense suffering.

From His death, He would rise and be greatly exalted by the Father, so that we now worship and adore Him, all in Heaven, on Earth, and under the Earth, as we do this day when we begin Holy Week.

Furthermore, we recognize the immense power of His forgiveness, noted when Christ says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do", and again when a repentant thief calls to Jesus.  That thief knew his sins and knew that Jesus could forgive him because Jesus died to make forgiveness possible.  Then we enter into His Kingdom, like in the spirit of what Jesus says when He bestows a Kingdom on the apostle.

We are called to enter anew into this Paschal Mystery of His salvation, following His way in great humility so that we can join Him in dying and, through Christ's redemption, rise to Newness of Life.

April 6, 2025: Fifth Sunday of Lent

God is doing something new, as the first reading from Isaiah proclaims.  He is making a way for His people to be restored.

Jesus makes a new way in the Gospel story for both the woman forcibly brought before Him and the people who brought her.  Instead of responding to their question about her punishment, He turns the question on them to consider their own lives and their sins.

When they all leave, rather than throw a stone at her, Jesus emphasizes the point that no one has condemned, and neither will He.  So then He sends her forth with the directive to "sin no more".

God demonstrates that He has the power to offer us compassion and mercy so that we can be forgiven of our sins and then they leave behind as we live in His righteousness that He imparts to us through the Paschal Mystery.

We can follow Christ's way, which is the ultimate gain, more so than anything else the world can offer us, because He imparted new life to us through the Cross, and in it, we live by His righteousness.  This way is what drives us to live purposefully as we keep pursuing to grow in relationship with Him Who saves us.