May 1, 2016

Sixth Sunday of Easter C Acts 15: 12, 22-29; Revelation 21: 10-14, 22-23; John 14: 23-29 ‘I see God in you!’ Has anyone said that to you. ‘You were God’s miracle in my life, I prayed for help and you came.’…’You are an answer to my prayers.’…’I always feel closer to God when we talk and interact.’…’You are very special to me, I see God’s love in you.’…’You are a God-send to me.’ When we hear expressions like these we feel uncomfortable and definitely do not have the same opinion of ourselves as the ones who said these things. It is hard for each of us to respond in the affirmative when we hear these things. Is it because we don’t want to have ‘swelled head’s? Is it because we feel totally unworthy or such declarations? Is it because we have problems recognizing the gifts that the Holy Spirit has filled us with? Is it because we feel uneasiness is the way to respond in humility? If we reflect on the first two sentences of the Gospel we will discover that these people are just affirming what Jesus is saying. “Jesus said to His disciples: ‘Whoever loves me will keep My word, and My Father will love them, and We will come to them and make Our dwelling with them. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My Words; yet the word you hear is not Mine but that of the Father who sent Me.’” It is very interesting the verse before today’s reading: Jesus is responding to a question from Judas, not the Iscariot. The question was, “Lord how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Remember that this happened on Holy Thursday at the Last Supper. The Holy Spirit had not been given to the apostles and disciples, that happened on Easter Sunday evening. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ discourses last for four chapters (14-17). The general theme is that Jesus is preparing them for when He will no longer be with them. This will not be a time to be afraid because the Holy Spirit will come and lead them and ‘teach them all truths.’ The Spirit, as we see so often in Paul’s letters, is the gift of the risen Christ. As Reginald H. Fuller in his monumental work, Preaching the Lectionary , the Word of God for the Church Today states, “In the gift of the Spirit, the risen Christ and the Father come and make their home with the disciples. The function of the Spirit is to ‘teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.’ It is not the work of the Spirit to convey ever new revelations, but to unfold in ever new understanding, interpretation, and application the once-forall revelation of Jesus Christ (‘all that I have said to you.’)..This ongoing work of the Spirit gives the disciples peace and takes away their fear, because the Spirit is always there as their helper who stands by them in persecution and martyrdom.” What an amazingly powerful promise that is: if we love God (and we do), and try the best that we can to live by His word (which we really try to do), then the Father loves each of us AND along with Jesus comes and takes up headquarters in us….really, makes a home in each of us so that others can see what OUR home is like and be recipients of the hospitality and love that exists in OUR home with the Father and Jesus. How are we to accomplish such an enormous task? Jesus gives the answer, it’s by the Holy Spirit that all of this is possible. So God wants and does live within each of us and through each of us reaching out to the world with His love and mercy, we are living out our commission. It is by our allowing God to come to us and living out His commands that we open ourselves to His blessings and enable each of us to fulfill this prophetic call. Now when we hear this, our response is that ‘I’m not worthy’. But it is not about worthiness it is about love. We can ask the same question in a different way, ‘Why does God love me?’ He just does…He created each of us out of love so why would He not love each of His creation? Then we all respond that ‘Well, I’m tempted and I sin.’ This is true and will always be true BUT that is why God sent His Spirit. The Spirit’s job, if you will, is to constantly teach us about the Father’s love and to reveal the power and meaning of the Resurrection: God loves us and God has prepared a place for each of us in heaven IF we believe in Him and follow His commands. The more each day that we open ourselves to the Spirit and we listen to and reflect on Jesus’ teachings, our relationship with God will deepen and WE WILL notice ourselves being CONFORMED to His likeness. This is exactly what the people who made those comments I started out with have noticed in you and me. They have noticed us becoming more and more like Jesus….IF we continue to work on this and respond to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Why is this so noticeable to these people? Because the more time we spend with God, the more we will become like Him. Alice Camille in Exploring the Sunday Readings says this very succinctly, “In every aspect of our lives, we seek an authority who will give us the truth and give it to us straight. If our bodies are sick, that authority is a doctor. If we have money trouble, it might be a financial advisor. If we’re accused of running afoul of the law, we may want a lawyer. If there’s something fundamentally wrong with our selves, our ‘souls’ as we say, we head for the priest, guru, twelve-step group, or counselor. Is there an authority above every other authority, a court of final appeal, a source to turn to for the last word on what to do? Jesus offers us such a resource in the promise of an Advocate who will fill in the blanks for us, now and until the end of time. The Holy Spirit is more than a conscience, more reliable than instinct, wiser than the most welleducated brain in the assembly. The Holy Spirit has God leading us forward, outward, upward, inward Let’s go!” So if we are recipients of the ‘compliments’ or ‘observations’ that I listed in the first paragraph, perhaps it is the Holy Spirit telling us of the gifts that He/She has given to me. My response: Do I ever express my gratitude? Do I ever ask the Spirit what this means? Do I ever ask if there is a message the Spirit wants to tell me? Do I ever consider that the Spirit wants to teach me more about God’s love and my gifts? So I reflect on: • How am I living Jesus’ words in my life today? • Can I remember times when the Holy Spirit has led me to a place and a situation where I was totally dependent on the Spirit’s powers and not my own? • How does the Trinity —three in One—call me to live a full Christian life? • Have I ever felt alone in my faith? Is this feeling a positive or negative experience for me? What place does solitude have in my spiritual development? What place does community have? What place does Scripture have? • Where do I need to grow in my faith? Sacred Space 2016 “Jesus gently tries to prepare the disciples for the day when He will no longer be present to them in bodily form. Unlike us, who know the story, they did not know what was coming next, so they are confused, God helps us to grow even in times of confusion. Jesus is inviting His followers not to cling to His physical presence but to be open to a deeper way of being in relationship with Him. Often we find it hard to let go and embrace the new. But in clinging to the past we are in danger of letting the present become dead to us.

April 24, 2016

 April 24, 2016 Fifth Sunday of Easter C Acts 14: 21-27; Revelation 21: 1-5; John 13: 31-35 This week as I reviewed the readings and the Psalm Response, four sentences kept on returning to me to be the focal point of my reflection. “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God…God dwells with us…and we will be His people and God Himself will always be with us as our God…Jesus says, ‘As I have loved you, so you also should love one another…this is how all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another…and my response, I will praise Your name for ever, my King and my God.” It seems to be that this is to be the main focal point of every minute of my life. Is it? No, not really. Nor is it possible, but it is something that I can keep returning to and keep my focus on. Why should I do this? Because these words encapsulate God’s plan for me in His world. The second reading comes from the book Book of Revelation and the passage ends with the statement, “Behold, I make all things new.” What is this “new” thing or plan or reality that God wants me to see and be a part of? We can see the answer to this in the very first sentence of the passage, “Then I, John saw a new heaven and a new earth.” John was on the island of Patmos and shares various visions that tell the story of the final days that culminate in a spectacular vision of a new creation. Now the important part of this vision is that I am a part of it…so is each person who is reading this…as is every person created by the Lord. To ‘envision this’ I have to step aside and look at the whole of God’s picture. It’s like I’m standing in heaven looking out of an enormous picture window and seeing the world: where it came from… what has happened…and the future, which is me and my part. I am looking at the world in a deeper vision and myself on a deeper level. What I see is God’s plan from the very beginning was to bring everyone to Himself. In creating He blessed us with a free will which has been a blessing and our downfall. But all along God has been forming us to be His people. This could only be accomplished if each one realizes that it is not about me and my world and what I want but it’s about all of us together and God’s plan to bring us together to be His people. So I look at the big picture and see how things were before…pretty horrible as I see it but not as God sees it. He was fashioning us and sculpting us and we didn’t know it. It took the coming of His plan in its fullness for us to realize this. There are so many passages in Scripture that bring this out, but the one I think expresses itself most beautifully is the one that everyone knows—John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” The footnote in the New American Bible clarifies the word, gave by stating, “Gave: as a gift in the Incarnation, and also ‘over to death’ in the crucifixion; cf Romans 8:32” So God is calling all to look at His plan before Christ and the way things are now after Christ. Most importantly it is causing me to stop and realize how God views me in His Plan. God is my Father, Jesus is my brother, I a part of their loving creation and their loving plan. I have a very important part in their plan because that’s why I was created at this time and in this place so that I could continue to be Jesus in my world with my gifts and continuing on in this work only through God’s grace. Faith Catholic explains this so beautifully in its reflection on today’s readings. I quote a major part of this that helped me tremendously. It states, “We live in the time that is already but not yet. In HIs anointed one, in Christ, God has ushered in His kingdom here on earth. It is a kingdom that has been established and is now in the process of unfolding among us. Our status with God has been fundamentally and radically changed. Christ has given us His salvation. What we do with it remains to be seen. We live in God’s time, the time that is already but not yet. What is yet to be and what can be for us individually is revealed in the Book of Revelation, which is a book of hope, of promise and of glory. Whether that hope, promise and glory will be ours personally depends on our response to what God has done and is doing now for us. All of this points to the fact that we must have eyes to see and ears to hear. We cannot be passive, thinking that God will give it all to us anyway, even if we don’t respond to HIm. There’s nothing passive about being a follower of Christ. No! We must actively listen; we must actively respond; we must put into action, in our daily lives, the gifts God has given us and is giving us in His Christ. Whether or not we will be ultimately saved and spend eternity in the New Jerusalem depends on us. How will we respond? Will we, with Peter, seek and accept the hope, promise and glory that Jesus Christ offers us all? Or will we sink in this world’s despair? Do you think there’s nothing new in our world? Will we settle for only the glitz and glitter of this world, its thirty pieces of silver and thereby see our souls for nothing more? The answer to these questions, along with our salvation, depends on us. God offers, we respond. When we do, something marvelously new happens within us.” I come back to the ‘focus sentences’ that I started with because they give me a way to continue working on God’s plan. Luke shares in the Acts that I will be undergoing many hardships. I see this in two ways: first just in living there are crosses within and crosses without. Some days it’s easy, many days it’s not. There is pain physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. The devil just does not want people to know that they are loved and God needs them to love—so there are roadblocks galore. As Revelation tells us that God is absolutely always with me and helping me. It has nothing about me, it’s about God’s plan and can only be lived out with God and in God. And how I am to live this out…John shares the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, God loves me,and I am to love by loving those He has placed in my life, directly and indirectly. Is this all…no, Psalm 145 tells me of the greatness and goodness of God and I am to be grateful and BE and God needs me to BE. “The Lord is gracious and merciful” as I am called to BE…”The Lord is good to all” as I am called to BE…”The Lord is compassionate” as I am called to BE…”All Your works give You thanks, O Lord” as I am called to DO. “My mouth will speak Your praise, Lord; all flesh will bless Your holy name forever.” I reflect on: • I find that at the end of the day when I reflect on how I loved that day and most especially how I saw God’s love, I become more conscious of my role to be love. • What does sacrifice mean to me? Sacred Space 2016 shares, “Right through His final meal, Jesus has been revealing the depth of His love for His disciples. Judas’s heart, however, is coarsened by greed; he moves from flight into shadow-land, into the night. Hate replaces love, and betrayal replaces committed friendship. Lord, like Judas, I can turn from You, lured by my own autonomous way. In this place of prayer let me recline on Your heart, as the beloved disciple did. May I thus be attuned to the very heartbeat of God and grow steadily in living in a loving mode.”

April 17, 2016

 4th Sunday of Easter C Acts 13: 14, 43-52; Revelation 7: 9, 14-17; John 10: 27-30 Do I ever wonder how much God loves me? When I look at my infidelities….my giving-in to the temptations of the devil…to my petty jealousy…to my getting even…to my moods of selfishness…to my sinfulness…do I think because of these God has rejected me or God can’t possibly love me? There is no where in the Gospels that Jesus says this. Instead He has a comeback in today’s Gospel where He says, “My sheep hear My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Fathers hand. The Father and I are one.” To really understand Jesus’ words we have to see it in context of what has been happening. There has been an ongoing dispute between Jesus and some of the Jewish religious officials. They felt that Jesus had been keeping them in suspense and not telling them ‘Who He was…it seems that He was claiming to be the Messiah…is this what He means?’ Today they are asking Him again to not mince His words and to speak plainly. Jesus has repeatedly told them He is the Messiah…they haven’t listened…so today He uses the imagery of sheep and shepherd to confront them. He is saying that those who believe in Him are also those who belong to Him. St. Anthony Messenger Press in its exegesis work Sunday Homily Helps says, “It is all about hearing His voice, knowing Him, and following Him. There is a certain paradox in all this. In order to believe in Jesus, one must first be called by God. The Gospel expresses it this way, ‘No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (Jn 6;44) Those who believe in Jesus and belong to Him receive the gift of eternal life. Just as the Father gives life, so does Jesus give life. Jesus and the Father do the same work. So what is true of one is true of the other. No one can take the believer out of Jesus’ hand. This is part of Jesus’ divine mission—to protect and guard all who believe in Him.” So it is not how I feel about God it is how God feels about me. Jesus tells us repeatedly that God loves each of us all the time. Perhaps the bigger reflective question is ‘Why do I need answers…can’t I live just knowing I am loved? Isn’t that enough for me? What more do I need or want to survive here and in the afterlife?’ The Gospel isn’t words, it’s about life…it’s about Jesus who loves me the way I am and says ‘let Me come into you.’ This is what it is all about…this is THE relationship of love…God loving me and what I do sooner or later is to act on that. You see the Gospel cannot happen in our head alone. The Gospel message is about relationship. This God loves me. God is totally beyond me and yet totally within me at the same time. Fr Richard Rohr in his book Yes, And…has a section entitled How Do We Love God? in which he says, “We have put our emphasis on trying to love God, which is probably a good way to start—although we do not have a clue how to do that. What I consistently find in the mystics is an overwhelming experience of how God has loved them. God is always the initiator, God is the doer, God is the one who seduces us. All we can do is respond in kind, and exactly as a wonderful spiritual writer, Meister Eckhardt said, ‘The love by which we love God is the very same love with which God has first loved us.’ The mystics’ overwhelming experiences are full body blows of the Divine loving them, God radically accepting them. And they spend the rest of their lives trying to verbalize those experiences, invariably finding ways to give that love back through forms off service, compassion, and nonstop worship. But none of this is to earn God’s love; it’s always and only to return God’s love. Love is repaid by love alone.” It’s all about God and God in my life and loving me right now all the time. This relationship between each of us (His disciples…His sheep) is brought out clearly in John’s gospel and I think most explicitly in John 14:23, Whoever loves Me will keep My word and My Father will love him/her and we will come to him/her and make our dwelling with him/her.” Jesus is not mincing His words…He is saying it plainly. I think it is good to explore the images that He used and to see how the people He addressed understood those words If we lived in Israel in Jesus’ time we could readily see what He was saying. Sheep were the main source of meat, milk and cheese. Their wool provided clothing and were also used as sacrifices in their liturgy. The sheep were ‘not smart’ but they depended totally on the shepherd 24/7. When night came, the local shepherds would gather their sheep in a pen for safety. One or two together with the sheep dog would stay on guard watching out for thieves or wild animals. Then in the morning each shepherd would call out his own sheep to follow him to pasture. Jesus said this, ‘My sheep hear My voice, I know them, they follow Me.’ They do not follow the other shepherds. Jesus is saying this to us. We have listened to Him, we have learned from Him, we follow Him….sometimes not as directly as we would like, we’ve even wandered from the fold….sometimes far away but it seems that we are always drawn back to God and that is where we are at today reading this blog. We get sidetracked by today’s society and the ads and billboards persuading us to go for material things that really can do a number on us and distract us from spiritual things. And we know that if we want to belong to Him, we do have to pay attention to Him and His voice. This means shutting off all sorts of other attractions and a taking time to pray and reflect and be filled with grace-giving sacraments. The sheep analogy is a good one because sheep may not be smart but they are smart enough to know they need their shepherd and to recognize His voice. This is what Jesus is telling each one of us today… are you listening? Come I have the words of everlasting life. So we reflect: • Where have I heard Jesus’ voice or seen signs of the Spirit calling out to me? • Where has God surprised me? • How am I living today? Am I living with God in view? • Is my head matched up to my heart and my soul? • Do I love me as much as God loves me? • How am I surprised by love? • Do I believe that all people are equal in Jesus’ eyes? • Does Jesus love me any less when I am weak and fail? Does Jesus love me more when I do what He asks? • Why do people put human limitations on Jesus’ love? Sacred Space 2016 says, “Those who identify with Jesus hear His voice and come to know and trust in Him. They follow in love, wanting only to be in relationship with Him. Lord, thank you that You always know me. I am forever held in Your hands in a deep and intimate relationship I pray for those sick folk who no longer recognize the ones they loved, and for those who care for them. Be their Good Shepherd in their valley of darkness.”

April 10, 2016

Third Sunday of Easter Acts 5: 27-32, 40-41; Revelation 5: 11-14; John 21: 1-19 Some amazing quotes today bombard us in the readings: “We must obey God rather than men.” and “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?….Simon son of John do you love Me?…Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” So I ask…am I obeying God? Do I want to specify this statement…and ask, ‘In what way?…Or, in what sense do you mean this? Just plain and simple, Am I obeying God….in what He taught…In the Ten Commandments …In Jesus’ threefold Law of Love’…am I obeying God in terms of loving…in terms of forgiving…in terms of compassion…in terms of caring for those in need in my life…in terms of justice…in terms of mercy…in terms that say that each and everyone is my brother and sister…in terms that we are all one in God…am I obeying God? And Jesus is asking me…do I love Him? Do I love the Father…do I love the Spirit…Do I pray…do I take time to be with the Lord…do I take time to be thankful each day…do people see God’s love in me or some sort of degree of my selfish love? These are very blunt words for each of us today …let’s go deeper into the readings…How do I know I am obeying God…? Or am I obeying myself? Am I doing what I think is best or am I following what Jesus said is best? Am I realizing that I have been called for a mission of love and witnessing? Are people seeing me in Jesus or Jesus in me? When confronted with my faults or inadequacies or my unique selfishness do I cover it by saying, ‘that’s just the way that I am…’ Don’t these somehow deny the possibility of God’s grace entering and changing me to be ‘more Jesus’? The gospel occurs after the Resurrection of Jesus. Did you notice a unique fact that so easily changes the scene but we don’t even notice it, let alone think about it? The fact is that many of the apostles are back home in Galilee. We might say, ‘So what!’ What does this mean…they are back home, no doubt with their families and they are working at their former occupations! This isn’t just a day outing of relaxing and fishing…they are back at the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberius where they always worked. Not all of the twelve are there…only seven and they are doing a routine day of work at their old jobs as if nothing had happened. They had been living in Jerusalem. They had been at the Last Supper. They had seen the resurrected Jesus. Why were they back home? Why didn’t they stay in Jerusalem and continue the preaching ministry of Jesus? Why did it seem just like another nonchalant day as if nothing life changing had happened to them? I can’t answer that…biblical scholars don’t seem sure of the answer for that. In the previous chapter, all were gathered together in the Last Supper room and Jesus appears and Thomas is there. After being told by Jesus, ‘Put you fingers here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” Thomas gives his inspiring declaration of faith, “My Lord and my God!” The Scripture account then gives a conclusion saying “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in His name.” And immediately follows an Epilogue: The Resurrection Appearance in Galilee and John starts by saying, “After this, Jesus revealed Himself again to His disciples at the Sea of Tiberius.” And the seven went fishing and they saw someone on shore and did not recognize that it was Jesus. After not catching anything, Jesus told them to try on the other side of the boat and they brought in 153 large fish. Scholars tell us that 153 has a symbolic meaning as to the apostles universal mission to bring Jesus to all peoples…since that was the number of known species of fish at that time. But still why did they come to Galilee and start working again? What was lacking? SOMEHOW it comes back to Jesus’ dialogue with Peter….And it has important significance to each one of us. Msgr. Eugene Lauer was the supervisor of the Sabbatical programs for priests at Notre Dame. I was blessed to be on this program in 1992. He wrote a book, Sunday Morning Insights commenting on the Gospels for Cycle A, B,C. This is what he concludes today about this passage, “Jesus’ conversation with Peter at the end of the gospel suggests an interesting answer to this question (What was lacking). What does Jesus ask Peter three times? ‘Do you love Me?’ In some way the apostles’ love for Jesus must have been shaky, immature. It was not sufficient, even after all His healing and miracles and resurrection to inspire them to plunge into the risky task of proclaiming redemption to the world Perhaps this is what we are to learn from the gospel this Sunday. Without love, the Spirit does not come. Before all gifts, before all miracles, before all signs and wonders, comes love. Without it, as Paul observed, we are nothing at all. After the assurance of their love for Him by Peter, Jesus can conclude the gospel story this Sunday with a phrase that He had used before but now can say with far more certain meaning: ‘Come, follow me.’ This time they followed Him to death because they understood the meaning of love.” So it comes down to this…do I know the meaning of love? Am I caught up in my own world which is centered on myself and not on God? Am I living the love of Jesus? What about Jesus’ triple response to Peter? Andrew Murray, a pastor and prolific writer in South Africa during the nineteenth century, pondered the meaning of these three words: “Feed My Sheep” and said, “To FEED is to give to others what will help them grow. Every Christian must consider how to help others to grow: How can we explain Jesus’ words so they might understand? How can we nurture a desire in them to turn to God? The word MY means that these sheep belong to Jesus. The work we do in caring for the master’s sheep involves hard work and initiative. But we must always remember that we nurture them for the Lord, not for the fulfillment of our own wishes or desires They belong to Him. And what are SHEEP? Sheep depend upon their shepherds to create an environment that is safe, healthy, and good for their growth. A precious lot are weak and in constant need of care In a similar way, all Christians see in one way or another sheep in need of care. We have a responsibility to care for them and feed them with the food Jesus gives.” Sacred Space 2016 finishes our reflection with this prayer: “Jesus, You meet me at the water’s edge of my ordinary life. You accept me lovingly, You encourage me, You invite me to abundance. Nourished by the food of Your word, warmed by the fire of Your unfailing love, may I in turn nourish, heal, and love those I meet today.”

April 3, 2016

Bulletin April 3, 2016 Second Sunday of Easter Acts 5: 1-16; Revelation 1: 9-13, 17-19; John 20: 19-31 John shares the very first words of Jesus after the Resurrection when He appeared to the disciples: “Peace be with you.” Luke describes what happened in downtown Jerusalem after the Resurrection of Jesus “Many signs and wonders were done among the people at the hands of the apostles.” John shares his mystical encounter which starts out, “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever.” What a contrast: ….Peace……Miracles all around the streets of Jerusalem near the temple…and the call to trust, and not be afraid. That’s a lot of emotions all wrapped into one. I think spending a little bit of imagination and reflection time on these can bring us closer to the meaning of God’s message to our developing spirituality. In looking at the New Testament, all editions start off with the Gospels, first the ‘Synoptic’ gospels then the Gospel of John. Winnipeg helps us sort out the differences for us: “The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is comparatively distinct….” So the gospels concern themselves with Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Essentially the remaining books of the New Testament tell about Jesus after His Resurrection and Ascension and how He continued His work through His followers. Imagine the scene from Acts…I’m sure that not only the apostles and the disciples but a huge population of Jerusalem was ‘afraid’ to come out. The horrid torture and crucifixion carried a point blank message: ‘We are in charge…don’t mess with us…’ This was the message both from the Roman mercenary soldiers and from the Jewish leaders. ‘We know who God is and he certainly wasn’t this country bumpkin.’ The Spirit came and filled the apostles…but the ordinary people didn’t know this. All they knew was that the word was out that these close followers were certainly not afraid and they were walking about and telling about Jesus. Weren’t they afraid….Obviously not! And amazing miracles were happening when Peter and the others walked by…Obviously, the miracles did not stop with Jesus…His followers had ‘the power too.’ ‘Come to be healed’…and they came out from hiding. The hurting and crippled; the blind and diseased; all who were not well off: the poor and beggars. They are ‘uncontrollable’ in a sense that they would not be stopped if they knew they could be healed and respected and loved. The second reading is from Revelation probably written between 81 - 96 AD. This was the time of Emperor Domitian. There was severe persecution among believers at this time. John is in exile on a tiny island called Patmos because he had been preaching about Jesus and the ‘authorities’ wanted to ‘shut him up.’ And the Lord appeared to John and told him not to be afraid because He would never be abandoned. God is always with us. John heard, ‘Do not be afraid.’ Fear is the opposite of trust. When God tells us this, He is saying to ‘Trust Him.’ Do I trust Jesus? Where is my belief and trust challenged? Where do I have problems in this area? A person who is loaded with fear and anxiousness does not know peace. And each of us have definite areas of fear: we fear the growing threat of terrorism. We still fear Iran and other countries in their potential for nuclear warfare. We fear the corruption and seduction of our children and grandchildren. We fear the future of our country…the future of the Church. We worry about our neighborhoods. We fear increasing taxes, identity theft, unsafe streets. We worry about our health and income. We worry about growing older, who will care for us. We worry about dying. We worry if God really loves us especially when we do not really love ourselves. We fear intimacy. This ‘fear’, this ‘worry’ just bottles us up. What did Bette Midler sing in The Rose, “It’s the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance…it’s the dream afraid of waking that never takes a chance.” And I hear comparisons to the ‘doubting Thomas.’ Actually, this is one of the most inaccurate conclusions we can make to Thomas’ search for truth. Fr. Raymond Brown one of the outstanding Scripture Scholars said that Thomas’ words to Jesus, “My Lord and my God’ were “”The most complete affirmation of Christ’s nature to be found on the lips of anyone in the Gospel.’ Thomas believed. Do I believe? Where do I have my problems? Fr. Joe Robinson in Guiding Light, Feed My Soul says, “A lot of times we hear people say: ‘seeing is believing.’ What they are really saying is that don’t believe one word we’re saying, because believing is accepting something without seeing it. Seeing is not believing, but with God the opposite is true according to the gospel. Believing will lead to seeing. But we have to believe first. We have to trust in what we hear (the words of Jesus) rather than in what we see (for the Lord tells us about things that are unseen). And we trust in what we hear because we choose to trust Jesus.” And when we trust there comes a ‘peace.’ It’s a peace that brings direction and purpose to all our relationships, to all our attitude. Msgr Eugene Lauer in Sunday Morning Insights clarifies this, “Peace is the all-embracing condition of a well-lived life; it brings all other virtues into harmony with one another. Peace is, therefore, not simply the absence of war. There can be all kinds of disrupted and poorly directed relationships, even when people aren’t shooting at one another. Peace is not ‘peace and quiet,’ the state of nothing going on, of not being disturbed by anyone, of ‘getting away from it all.’ That can be a vacuum, unreality, emptiness. Peace is the purposeful flow of life. It is an intently adjusting order of things in which the individual never gets lost. Peace may be used to describe the extremely busy day which ends successfully, in which everyone does his or her job lovingly. It describes the crowded intersection in which each motorist and pedestrian gets to where he or she is going without causing any hostile feelings. It describes the large family with a dozen different tasks to do in the same evening, with each caring about the other and all the tasks eventually falling into place. Peace is a sense of purposeful order in the midst of complexity. Peace does not remove all complications—it allows us to see a divine direction right in the midst of them.” And the Peace Jesus gives is the realization that God is present at every moment…leading us…caring for us… helping us…and we say ‘THANKS’. Thomas said, “My Lord and my God” We say Lord, I know You are with me…I can’t do anything without You. I trust You. I believe in You…help my unbelief. I reflect on the words of Sacred Space 2016, “Jesus, You invite me also to touch Your wounds. Then I can find You in my own wounds and allow You to touch me. Touch my hurts and my hardened heart with Your healing hand. Then may I be a gift to others.”