4/10/2024 Robert (Bob) Foster
4/5/2024 Seeing Isn’t Always Believing Christ is risen! We celebrate the Easter season with great joy at the gift of new life God has given us. However, I would imagine that many of us have not beheld the true face of Jesus as he is in Heaven, nor have we seen the Risen Lord like his disciples did in today’s Gospel. I know I have not (at least not yet). Yet Jesus calls us to believe even if our eyes have not seen him. Not only that, but we are also to have peace in the midst of our suffering knowing that he is there, even if our eyes fail us. When we look upon the Eucharist, our eyes tell us, “It’s just a piece of bread and some wine.” Yet the eyes of faith and the eyes of belief know that it is Jesus. Not metaphorically, not symbolically, not in any muddied fashion, no. The Eucharist is Jesus. It is his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. The King of All Glory lowers himself, taking the form of bread and wine, that we might be close to him. What a gift and a humbling reality. God, who created all things, chose to become bread and wine for the rest of time for you, for me, for all of us. What can motivate such humility and sacrifice? Only love. Love is the Lord’s Commandment, to love others as he loves us. The 10 Commandments are certainly a guide for us to love. Jesus himself affirmed them. In our second reading, St. John affirms them as well, saying that we love God when we obey his commandments. Also, the Holy Spirit guards not only us who are washed in Baptism and sealed in Confirmation, but also guards God’s Word in the Gospels and the Bible. The commandments are the blueprint for love and God is the Divine Architect who created the wonderful world we live in. We live in this great universe that God has made. We are called to love God and love neighbor. We are called to be of one mind and heart in our love and life, that guarded by the Holy Spirit we may know the truth and believe, even though we might not see. Let the house of Padre Serra say: God’s love is forever! Alleluia! Riley Paolella Parishioner 3/28/2024 He is risen! Alleluia! For the women in today’s Gospel, nothing is as they anticipated. They expected to need help opening the tomb, but found it open. They expected to find Jesus’ body, but it was gone. They expected to be alone, as they gave their final loving care to their Lord, but found a man dressed in white. They thought the story of Jesus had come to an end, but heard that, not only was Jesus raised, they would see him again in Galilee. They thought their mission was the preparation of a dead body, but were given the responsibility for spreading the good news of the resurrection to the disciples and Peter. It’s a lot to take in! Did the women believe the young man’s report? The story doesn’t say, so we can only guess. We only know what they did. The last sentence of the Gospel, just one verse later explains, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” This, according to the scholars, was the original ending of Mark’s Gospel, the remaining verses having been added later. It’s a genuinely startling way to end a Gospel, with the greatest news ever, that Jesus had been raised from the dead, followed by the women’s fear and silence. I would like to suggest that the author did this to make us process our own reaction to the resurrection. If you’re puzzled, and maybe even uncomfortable with the way the women responded, saying nothing, how do you feel about your own reaction to the resurrection? Are you amazed? Do you doubt? If you doubt the universal witness of all four Gospels to the resurrection, what do you believe? That God and Jesus couldn’t do this? — that’s not likely. Or that God wouldn’t do this, perhaps because it hasn’t been done for any other figure in human history? God broke a lot of steady patterns, though, in the life and ministry of Jesus. If you believe, are you dedicating yourself to the Risen Lord, or to other pursuits? Are you proclaiming this extraordinary news to a world that needs the Good News of Jesus’ triumph over darkness, over oppressive high priests, over tombs and death itself? Or, are you, silent, too? Mark’s author seems to hope we’ll ponder these questions, be disturbed by the women’s silence, and act. So ... what shall you do? I hope that your Lent was terrific, your holy week genuinely blessed, and that Easter can build on that foundation with miracles! He is risen! Alleluia, Fr. Patrick Pastor |
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