Exegetical notes and homily themes to get you started this weekend:
4/7/24 – Easter 2
4/14/24 – Easter 3
4/21/24 – Easter 4
4/28/24 – Easter 5
5/5/24 – Easter 6
5/12/24 – Ascension
5/12/24 – Easter 7
5/19/24 – Pentecost
5/26/24 – Holy Trinity
April 7 – Second Sunday of Easter [B]
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he said this he breathed upon them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit . . . ”
Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
John 20: 19-31
THE WORD:
The Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter (for all three years of the Lectionary cycle) is “act 2” of John’s Easter drama.
Scene 1 takes place on Easter night. The terrified disciples are huddled together, realizing that they are marked men because of their association with the criminal Jesus. The Risen Jesus appears in their midst with his greeting of “peace.” John clearly has the Genesis story in mind when the evangelist describes Jesus as “breathing” the Holy Spirit on his disciples: Just as God created man and woman by breathing life into them (Genesis 2: 7), the Risen Christ re-creates humankind by breathing the new life of the Holy Spirit upon the eleven.
In scene 2, the disciples excitedly tell the just-returned Thomas of what they had seen. Thomas responds to the news with understandable skepticism. Thomas had expected the cross (see John 11: 16 and 14: 5) – and no more.
The climactic third scene takes place one week later, with Jesus’ second appearance to the assembled community – this time with Thomas present. He invites Thomas to examine his wounds and to “believe.” Christ’s blessing in response to Thomas’ profession of faith exalts the faith of every Christian of every age who “believes without seeing”; all Christians who embrace the Spirit of the Risen One possess a faith that is in no way different less than that of the first disciples. The power of the Resurrection transcends time and place.
HOMILY POINTS:
We trace our roots as parish and faith communities to Easter night when Jesus “breathed” his spirit of peace and reconciliation upon his frightened disciples, transforming them into the new Church.
The “peace” that Christ gives his new Church is not a passive sense of good feeling or the mere absence of conflict. Christ’s peace is hard work: the peace of the Easter Christ is to honor one another as children of the same Father in heaven; the peace of the Easter Christ seeks to build bridges and find solutions rather than assigning blame or extracting punishment; the peace of Christ is centered in relationships that are just, ethical and moral.
Jesus’ entrusting to the disciples the work of forgiveness is what it means to be the church: to accept one another, to affirm one another, to support one another as God has done for us in the Risen Christ. What brought the apostles and first Christians together as a community – unity of heart, missionary witness, prayer, reconciliation and healing – no less powerfully binds us to one another as the Church of today.
All of us, at one time or another, experience the doubt and skepticism of Thomas: While we have heard the good news of Jesus’ empty tomb, all of our fears, problems and sorrows prevent us from realizing it in our own lives. In raising his beloved Son from the dead, God also raises our spirits to the realization of the totality and limitlessness of his love for us.
In insisting on placing his hands in Jesus’ nailmarks before believing that Jesus had been raised from the dead, Thomas is no different than we are: Thomas wants something he can touch; he wants a tangible sign of Jesus’ resurrection. After the horrific week since Jesus’ crucifixion, he wants more than a metaphor. Thomas wants real life, life perfected and re-created by God. And Jesus acquiesces. The Crucified Jesus lives again — in us. Our compassionate presence to one another, our embrace of one another in peace and respect, our commitment to the Gospel work of reconciliation and justice are all tangible signs of Jesus’ resurrection.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus appears to his disciples and shows them his hands and his side; later he invites the doubting Thomas to touch the marks made by the nails and the gash from the soldier’s lance. We all have scars from our own Good Fridays that remain despite our small resurrections. Our “nail marks” remind us that all pain and grief, all ridicule and suffering, all disappointments and anguish, are transformed into healing and peace in the love of God we experience from others and that we extend to them. Compassion, forgiveness, justice — no matter how clumsily offered — can heal and mend.
April 14 – Third Sunday of Easter [B]
The two disciples told the eleven and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you . . . These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”
Luke 24: 35-48
THE WORD:
Today’s Gospel is the conclusion of Luke’s account of Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance to his disciples. The two disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus have returned to Jerusalem to confirm the women’s story of the resurrection. While they are excitingly telling their story, Jesus appears.
Luke goes to great lengths in his Easter accounts to make clear that the resurrection was neither the fantasy of a group of crazy zealots nor is the resurrection story a plot concocted by the disciples who somehow managed to spirit the body of Jesus away (according to Luke’s account, the disciples themselves had not gone near the tomb themselves or even expected any kind of “resurrection”). In the details he presents here, Luke is countering the arguments forwarded to explain away the resurrection myth. There can be no mistake: The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a reality, a reality in which all of the Scriptures find their ultimate fulfillment.
For Luke, the power of Jesus’ resurrection is realized in the way it “opens” one’s heart and mind to understanding the deeper meaning of God’s Word and to fully embracing the Spirit of God. In our faith and trust in the Risen Christ, we become “witnesses” of the mercy and forgiveness of God.
HOMILY POINTS:
In the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, God reveals in a specific moment of history, in a specific location on earth, the limitless and eternal love the Father has for his people. God continues to make the miracle of the empty tomb present to us in the caring, compassion and love we receive and give – the love we have witnessed in the suffering of Christ, a love that is victorious even over death. The Risen One walks among us in family and friends who offer their love to us and receive the love we yearn to give.
In today’s Gospel, the Risen Jesus challenges his disciples – and us – to recall what he taught and what they had witnessed. The Easter miracle is God’s assurance that love and forgiveness, even in the most difficult situations, are never offered in vain; in learning to cope without losing hope, in learning from the painful realities of life and in accepting the lessons learned in God’s Spirit of humility and patience, we become capable of growth, re-creation, transformation – and resurrection.
Just as the Risen Christ asks the Eleven for “something to eat,” he asks the same of us today in the cries and pleas of the poor and needy among us. In imitating his humble compassion, we, in turn, discover meaning and purpose that “feed” our own hunger for meaning, for fulfillment, for God in our lives.
Easter faith opens our eyes and hearts to realize God’ hand in every moment of time, transforms our attitudes to realize the need for God’s compassion and forgiveness in every human encounter, lifts up our spirits to hope even in the face of life’s most painful and traumatic moments.
April 21 – Fourth Sunday of Easter [B]
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away . . .
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
John 10: 11-18
THE WORD:
Jesus’ figure of the good shepherd is not an idyllic, serene image. Palestinian shepherds were held liable for every single sheep entrusted to their care; “good” shepherds, motivated by a sense of responsibility rather than money, considered it a matter of honor to lay down their lives for the sheep in their charge, taking on every kind of wolf, wild beast and bandit in defense of the flock.
While the shepherd/sheep metaphor is well-known throughout Scripture, Jesus’ vow to lay down his life for his sheep is something new. It completes Jesus’ break with the mercenary religious leaders of the Jewish establishment who care little for the flock they have been entrusted to serve.
HOMILY POINT:
Christ calls us to the vocation of being “good shepherds”: to seek out and bring back the lost, the scattered and forgotten; to enable people to move beyond their fears and doubts to become fully human; to willingly pay the price for justice and mercy for all members of the “one fold.”
The Gospel image of the good shepherd calls us to look beyond our own expectations, needs and fears in order to become “shepherds” of reconciliation, compassion and charity to others.
To be a disciple of Jesus is not to be simply a “hired hand” who acts only to be rewarded; authentic followers of Jesus realize that every person of the “one fold” possesses the sacred dignity of being children of God and rejoice in knowing that in serving others we serve God. In embracing the Gospel attitude of humility and compassion for the sake of others – in “laying down our own lives” for others – our lives will one day be “taken up again” in the Father’s Easter promise.
April 28 – Fifth Sunday of Easter [B]
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower . . . I am the vine, you are the branches.”
“Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
John 15: 1-8
THE WORD:
From the music of the psalms to the engravings on the temple pediments, vines were a symbol of Yahweh’s many blessings to Israel. In his Last Supper discourse (from which today’s Gospel is taken), Jesus appropriates the image of the vine to explain his eternal connectedness to his disciples, their connectedness through him to God, and their connectedness to one another.
HOMILY POINTS:
In Christ, we are “grafted” to God and to one another. The Risen One calls us to community, to be branches on the same vine, to realize our life in Christ is also life in one another.
We cannot live our faith in a vacuum: Unless Jesus becomes the center of our lives, the faith we profess is doomed to wither and die in emptiness.
The Easter season speaks to us of the eternal presence of Christ in our midst, present to us in the Word we have heard and has taken root in our hearts. Our faithfulness to the call to discipleship demands that we work to enable that Word within us to produce a “yield” of compassion, forgiveness, justice and reconciliation. In the “fruit” we bear as "branches" of Christ do we glorify God the “vine grower.”
May 5 – Sixth Sunday of Easter [B]
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
“I do not call you servants any longer . . . but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.”
John 15: 9-17
THE WORD:
Chapters 13 through 17 of John’s Gospel, Jesus’ Last Supper discourse, might be described as Jesus’ last will and testament to his fledgling church.
Continuing last Sunday’s theme of the vine and branches, Jesus speaks of the love of God as the bonding agent of the new Israel. The model of love for the faithful disciple – “to love one another as I have loved you” – is extreme, limitless and unconditional. The love manifested in the Gospel and the resurrection of Christ creates an entirely new relationship between God and humanity. Again Christ, the obedient Servant Redeemer, is the great “connector” between God and us.
In Christ, we are not “slaves” of a distant divine Creator but “friends” of God who hears the prayers and cries made to him in Jesus’ name. As “friends of God,” we are called to reflect that love to the rest of the world.
HOMILY POINTS:
This is the commandment that Jesus to us who would be his Church: to love one another as Jesus, God made human, has loved us: As Christ gave himself for others, we are to imitate his example of service to others; as Christ brought healing and peace into the lives of those he encountered, we are to bring that same healing and peace into the many lives we touch; as Christ revealed to the world a God who loves humanity as a parent loves his children, we are to love one another as brothers and sisters.
Christ transforms creation’s relationship with its Creator. God is not the distant, aloof, removed architect of the universe; God is not the cruel taskmaster; God is not the unfeeling judge who seeks the destruction of the wicked. God is creative, reconciling, energizing love –and Jesus is the perfect expression of that love.
All that God has done in the first creation of Genesis and the re-creation of Easter has been done out of the limitless, unfathomable love of God. Such love invites us not to fear God but to accept his “friendship” with God, not to self-loathing at our unworthiness but to grateful joy at what God has done in us.
May 12 – Ascension of the Lord [B]
[In some U.S. dioceses and Canada: Thursday, May 93]
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth.”
Acts 1: 1-11
“Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature . . .”
Mark 16: 15-20
THE WORD:
Today’s readings include two accounts of Jesus’ return to the Father:
Reading 1 is the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke's “Gospel of the Holy Spirit.” Jesus’ Ascension begins volume 2 of Luke’s work. The words and images evoke the First Testament accounts of the ascension of Elijah (2 Kings 2) and the forty years of the Exodus: Luke considers the time that the Risen Lord spent with his disciples a sacred time, a “desert experience” for the apostles to prepare them for their new ministry of preaching the Gospel of the resurrection. (Acts alone places the Ascension forty days after Easter; the synoptic Gospels – including, strangely, Luke’s – specifically place Jesus’ Ascension on the day of Easter; John writes of the “ascension” not as an event but as a new existence with the Father.)
Responding to their question about the restoration of Israel, Jesus discourages his disciples from guessing what cannot be known. Greater things await them as his “witnesses.” In the missionary work before them, Christ will be with them in the presence of the Spirit to come.
Scholars call today’s Gospel the “longer ending” of Mark’s text. In style and substance, these six verses are very unlike Mark; the best guess is that these verses were added sometime in the first century to “complete” Mark’s account to include the tradition of the Ascension of Jesus. Before returning to the Father, Jesus commissions his new church to continue Christ’s presence on earth through their proclamation of the “good news.”
HOMILY POINTS:
The fledgling Church is not off to a very promising start. Christ places his Church in the care of a rag-tag collection of fishermen, tax collectors and peasants. And yet, what began with those eleven has grown and flourished through the centuries to the very walls of our own parish family.
Jesus’ Ascension is both an ending and a beginning. The physical appearances of Jesus are at an end; his revelation of the “good news” is complete; the promise of the Messiah is fulfilled. Now begins the work of the disciples to teach what they have learned and to share what they have witnessed.
The Church Jesus leaves to the disciples on the Mount of the Ascension is rooted not in buildings or wealth or formulas of prayer or systems of theology but in faith nurtured in the human heart, a faith centered in joy and understanding that is empowering and liberating, a faith that gives us the strength and freedom to be authentic and effective witnesses of the Risen One, who is present among us always.
Christ entrusts to his disciples of every time and place the sacred responsibility of teaching others everything he has taught and revealed about the Father: God's limitless love, his unconditional forgiveness and acceptance of every person as his own beloved child and our identity as God's sons and daughters and brothers and sisters to one another. Christ also calls us to be witnesses of God's presence in our lives: to bring into the lives of others his healing forgiveness and reconciliation with God and one another, to hand on to others the story that has been handed on to us about Jesus and his Gospel of love and compassion.
May 12 – Seventh Sunday of Easter [B]
“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one . . .
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
John 17: 11-19
THE WORD:
In John’s account of the Last Supper, after his final teachings to his disciples before his passion, Jesus addresses his Father in heaven. Today’s Gospel is from Chapter 17 of John’s Gospel, the “high priestly prayer” of Jesus in which he prays for his disciples, that they may be united in love, persevere despite the world’s “hatred” of them for the Word that they will proclaim, and be “consecrated” in the “truth.”
HOMILY POINTS:
The Gospel challenges us to recognize the prejudices, biases and ambitions that exist within each one of us and to realize how they affect our perception of the “truth” and the decisions we make based on that perception. We are called to uphold, regardless of the cost, the holiness of “truth” – truth that is rooted in the reality of God’s love and in the sacredness of every person as created in the image and life of God.
Jesus call to discipleship demands the courage and integrity to be willing to embrace the “light” of truth – to recognize the hand of God in all things, to embrace the life of God “breathing” in every human interaction, to realize the sacredness of every human being as created in the image and life of God.
The empty tomb of Easter speaks to the simple yet profound truth of God's great love for us. Christ calls us, his Church, to speak the joy of that truth to a world hungry to hear it.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Acts 2: 1-11
Jesus breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit . . . ”
John 20: 19-23
THE WORD:
Pentecost was the Jewish festival of the harvest (also called the Feast of Weeks), celebrated 50 days after Passover, when the first fruits of the corn harvest were offered to the Lord. A feast of pilgrimage (hence the presence in Jerusalem of so many “devout Jews of every nation”), Pentecost also commemorated Moses’ receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. For the new Israel, Pentecost becomes the celebration of the Spirit of God’s compassion, peace and forgiveness – the Spirit that transcends the Law and becomes the point of departure for the young Church’s universal mission (the planting of a new harvest?).
In his Acts of the Apostles (Reading 1), Luke invokes the First Testament images of wind and fire in his account of the new Church’s Pentecost: God frequently revealed his presence in fire (the pillar of fire in the Sinai) and in wind (the wind that sweeps over the earth to make the waters of the Great Flood subside). The Hebrew word for spirit, ruah, and the Greek word pneuma also refer to the movement of air, not only as wind, but also of life-giving breath (as in God’s creation of man in Genesis 2 and the revivification of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37). Through his life-giving “breath,” the Lord begins the era of the new Israel on Pentecost.
Today’s Gospel of the first appearance of the Risen Jesus before ten of his disciples (remember Thomas is not present) on Easter night is John’s version of the Pentecost event. In “breathing” the Holy Spirit upon them, Jesus imitates God's act of creation in Genesis. Just as Adam’s life came from God, so the disciples’ new life of the Spirit comes from Jesus. In the Resurrection, the Spirit replaces their sense of self-centered fear and confusion with the “peace” of understanding, enthusiasm and joy and shatters all barriers among them to make of them a community of hope and forgiveness. By Christ’s sending them forth, the disciples become apostles – “those sent.”
HOMILY POINTS:
The feast of Pentecost celebrates the unseen, immeasurable presence of God in our lives and in our Church – the ruah that animates us to do the work of the Gospel of the Risen One, the ruah that makes God’s will our will, the ruah of God living in us and transforming us so that we might bring his life and love to our broken world. God “breathes” his Spirit into our souls that we may live in his life and love; God ignites the “fire” of his Spirit within our hearts and minds that we may seek God in all things in order to realize the coming of his reign.
In Jesus' “breathing” upon them the new life of the Spirit, the community of the Resurrection – the Church – takes flight. That same Spirit continues to “blow” through today’s Church to give life and direction to our mission and ministry to preach the Gospel to every nation, to proclaim the forgiveness and reconciliation in God's name, to baptize all humanity into the life of Jesus' Resurrection.
The Spirit of God enables the Eleven – and us – to do things they could not do their own: to understand the “truth” of God’s great love for his people that is embodied in the Risen Christ, and then to boldly proclaim the Gospel of Christ. The Spirit empowers us with the grace to do the difficult work of Gospel justice, forgiveness and compassion.
The miracle of Pentecost (Acts 2) is the Spirit’s overcoming the barriers of language and perception to open not only the minds of the Apostles’ hearers but their hearts as well to understanding and embracing the Word of God.
“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
Matthew 28: 16-20
THE WORD:
Ordinary Time resumes with the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. Originating in France in the eighth century, the observance was adopted by the universal Church in 1334. Today’s celebration focuses on the essence of our faith: the revelation of God as Creator, the climax of his creation in Jesus the Redeemer, the fullness of the love of God poured out on us in the Sustainer Spirit.
Today’s Solemnity of the Holy Trinity celebrates the many ways God makes his presence known in our lives, in the manifestations of his love in our lives and our world. This Sunday of the Trinity invites us to look with a new awareness to behold God in our midst: God is the Father and Creator of all life, including our very selves, who fashions every molecule and atom that nurtures and sustains our lives; God is the Son and the Brother, the Redeemer who teaches us the unfathomable love of the God we seek; God is the Spirit of that love that creates and enables us to break out of the isolation that entraps us and become family and community.
Before returning to God, the Risen Jesus commissions his fledgling church to teach and baptize in the name of the Holy One who reveals himself as Father, Son and Spirit. In faith centered in our covenant with the Triune God we find our identity as the people of God.
HOMILY POINTS:
In the Trinity, we praise God as God has revealed himself to us: the loving providence of the Creator who continually invites us back to him; the selfless servanthood of the Redeemer who “emptied” himself to become like us in order that we might become like him; the joyful love of the Spirit that is the unique unity of the Father and Son.
Christ has revealed to us the depth of the Creator’s love and has called us to share with one another the unique Spirit of love that binds Father and Son and now binds Father and Son to us, God’s holy people and Christ’s Church.
Love is the heart of our Trinitarian faith: the Love who created our world and fashioned it with care; the Love who passionately desired to become one of us and for a little while pitched his tent among us; the Love who could never leave us but remains with us to inhabit every moment of our existence.
The core of all of Jesus’ teaching is the revelation of God as Father to humanity: Our God seeks a relationship with humankind based not on the all-powerful Creator demanding homage from the lowly slaves he created but as a loving Parent who welcomes his own children back home.