Thoughts on prayer

 

Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

John 14:7–14

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”  When we pray in the name of Jesus, we are relying on his intimacy with the Father, trusting that the Father will listen to his Son who pleads on our behalf. In the Letter to the Hebrews, we hear that Jesus, like us in all things but sin, a fellow sufferer with us, has entered as our advocate into the heavenly court. Risking a crude comparison, it is as though Jesus is our man in City Hall, a representative for us in the place of ultimate power.  Mind you, this analogy breaks down in the measure that the Father must not be construed as a reluctant and distracted executive, annoyed by the petty appeals of his constituents, which are mediated by a persistent lobbyist. For the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus has become our advocate, precisely because the Father wanted him to assume this role for us; therefore, presumably, the Father delights in hearing us call upon him through his Son.  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the month of May

The month of May, dedicated to Mary, begins with a feast in honor of Saint Joseph the Worker. At every Mass, in the commemoration of the saints, Mary and “blessed Joseph, her spouse,” are named together. This liturgical pairing reminds us that the mission of Saint Joseph, Guardian of the Redeemer and universal patron of the Church, is inseparably linked to the mission of the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God.

Joseph’s place next to Mary in the Eucharistic Prayer highlights his closeness to her within the Holy Family and draws us into the incarnational mystery of God’s plan for our salvation. The Eternal Word takes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and is nurtured, protected, and raised in Joseph’s home at Nazareth. Mary and Joseph, in distinct roles yet one household of faith, become humble servants of the Incarnation.

Since the mid-20th century, the Church has celebrated this dimension of Joseph’s life in the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, established by Pope Pius XII as a response to May Day in communist countries. The intention was to reaffirm that ordinary human labor possesses dignity, because it participates in God’s own creative work. Joseph, a man of manual labor, knew the meaning of daily toil. Yet his greatest work was entrusted to him not in the workshop, but in the home of Nazareth: to care for and raise the Redeemer of the world.

God’s saving plan unfolds through the human family. It passes through the fiat of Mary and the quiet obedience of Joseph. That same plan continues in our lives—in our fidelity to daily responsibilities, patient work, and the hidden opportunities to love and serve God each day. So it is fitting that we begin the month of Mary under the patronage of her blessed spouse, the just man who draws us into the hidden life of Nazareth, where daily life is lived with Jesus at its center, as in the home of Joseph and Mary.

Fr. Richard Hermes, S.J.

Thoughts on betrayal

 

Fourth Week of Easter

John 13:16–20

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus announces his betrayal just after transforming bread and wine into his body and blood. It is of great moment that, immediately after this extraordinary event, Jesus speaks of treachery: “The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me.” In the biblical reading, God’s desires have been, from the beginning, opposed. Consistently, human beings have preferred the isolation of sin to the festivity of the sacred meal. Theologians call this tendency the mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil), for there is no rational ground for it. Therefore, we should not be too surprised that, as the sacred meal comes to its richest possible expression, evil accompanies it. Judas the betrayer expresses the mysterium iniquitatis with particular symbolic power, for he had spent years in intimacy with Jesus, taking in the Lord’s moves and thoughts at close quarters and sharing table fellowship with him—and yet, he saw fit to turn Jesus over to his enemies. Those of us who regularly gather around the table of intimacy with Christ and yet engage consistently in the works of darkness are meant to see ourselves in the betrayer. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on listening

 

        “During the depression, a room was filled with applicants for a job opening as a telegraph operator. The drone of conversation competed with a steady flow of dots and dashes. The door opened and yet another applicant entered the room. He stood there for a minute, walked over to a door marked ‘Private,’ and knocked. A man

opened it and said to the others, ‘You may all go; we have our applicant.’ The others were furious and demanded

an explanation. The man said, ‘Listen!’ They did. The dots and dashes kept repeating over and over again,

‘If you hear this, come in; the job is yours.’”                                   [Mark Link, S.J., Action 2000, p.133]

                                                                                                          

           Because of today’s Gospel this 4^th Sunday of Easter is celebrated as Good Shepherd Sunday. The Good Shepherd still calls us, but like most of those telegraphers waiting to apply for the job, we usually are

not listening. Our world, our worries, our weariness all conspire to drown out the voice of God.

           All of us need to learn to listen more carefully: it’s good manners, and it’s good prayer.

So often we are the opposite of the young Samuel, who was taught by Eli, the high priest and judge of Israel,

to say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:1-18) We, in effect, often pray: “Listen, Lord,

your servant is speaking!”

           If we listen, we can hear the call of the Good Shepherd:

In quiet reflection; in sincere prayer; in Sacred Scripture; in the guidance of the Church; in the worthy reception

of the Sacraments; in the peace and beauty of Nature, art, music; in the voice of those we admire and respect;

in the silence of our heart and our conscience.

           And, if we listen, what will we hear Our Lord say?

• I created you, and I still hold you in existence.
• I have a plan for your eternal life and happiness.
• I know you better than you know yourself.
• I love you with a love beyond all imagining.
• I am with you always.

           But everything we may hear from Our Lord is not always consoling and inspiring; sometimes it must be           challenging:

• I will give you my grace, my Divine help, to break that sinful habit.
• I will help you to pray more, and be with you whenever you take the time to talk to Me.
• My grace is enough to help you change, as you know you should.

           Hearing Our Lord say these things consoles, inspires, and challenges us to follow the Good Shepherd in

our thoughts, words, and deeds.

           Sheep are not perfect: they are stupid, and they stray. Still, the Good Shepherd always seeks us and

draws us back, if only we will accept His infinite, perfect, eternal love.

           Good Shepherd Sunday is also World Day of Prayer for Vocations – specifically, religious and priestly vocations. More than ever, we need to encourage young people today (in this loud and distracting world)

to hear the call of the Good Shepherd to follow Him as a priest, deacon, or religious. 

           May we learn to listen and hear the call of the Good Shepherd in our lives. Also, may we pray that many young people today be like that clever telegrapher with the keen hearing. May they hear that God has a job for

them.



Fr. Don Saunders, SJ

Thoughts on the Ascension

 

Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist

Mark 16:15–20

Friends, today’s Gospel gives us Mark’s very laconic account of the ascension: “Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.”  Now, don’t literalize this language—there aren’t chairs in heaven—but take it very seriously indeed. What Mark is suggesting is that Jesus is now reigning; he’s in the attitude of a king on his throne. This means that he is directing the things of earth from his place in heaven. Again, don’t think of this spatially, as though heaven were a long way away. Think of heaven as a dimension that overlaps with earth, that impinges on earth.  And this is why the ascension forces us to come to grips with a key question: Whom do we finally obey? Whom do we finally serve? Who, finally, is the king of our life? We legitimately obey all sorts of figures—political, cultural, artistic, etc.—but there is always an ultimate king, someone (or something) from which we take our definitive marching orders. Bishop Robert Barron

More thoughts on the Eucharist

 

Third Week of Easter

John 6:52–59

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares that “unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you.” The talk that Jesus gave concerning the sacrament of his body and blood was quite literally revolting. It is a rather remarkable understatement when John writes, “The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?’” So what does Jesus do when confronted with this objection? One would think that he would offer a metaphorical or symbolic interpretation of his words. Instead, he intensifies what he had said. How do we appropriate this shocking talk? We honor these unnerving words of Jesus, resisting all attempts to explain them away. We affirm the doctrine of “real presence.” Vatican II re-expressed the traditional Catholic belief when it taught that, though Jesus is present to us in any number of ways—in the proclamation of the Gospel, in the gathering of two or three in his name, in the poor and suffering—he is nevertheless present in a qualitatively different way in the Eucharist.  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Eucharist

 

Third Sunday of Easter

Luke 24:13–35

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus joins two disciples on the road to Emmaus, but they do not recognize him. In the course of their conversation, he opens the Scriptures to them, disclosing the great biblical patterns that make sense of the “things” they have witnessed. The interpretive key is none other than his own suffering and death, his willingness to go to the limits of godforsakenness in order to save those who had wandered from the divine love.           And through this process they begin to understand the Bible in its totality, and their hearts burn within them. The two disciples press him to stay with them as they draw near the town of Emmaus. Jesus sits down with them, takes bread, says the blessing, breaks it, and gives it to them—and in that moment they recognize him.          The ultimate means by which we understand Jesus Christ is not the Scriptures but the Eucharist, for the Eucharist is Christ himself, personally and actively present. The embodiment of the paschal mystery, the Eucharist is Jesus’s love for the world unto death, his journey into godforsakenness in order to save the most desperate of sinners, his heart broken open in compassion. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on water

 

Second Week of Easter

John 6:16–21

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus demonstrates his authority over nature by walking on the sea. Water is, throughout the Scriptures, a symbol of danger and chaos. At the very beginning of time, when all was a formless waste, the Spirit of the Lord hovered over the surface of the waters. This signals God’s lordship over all of the powers of darkness and disorder. In the Old Testament, the Israelites are escaping from Egypt, and they confront the waters of the Red Sea. Through the prayer of Moses, they are able to walk through the midst of the waves.  Now in the New Testament, this same symbolism can be found. In all four of the Gospels, there is a version of this story of Jesus mastering the waves. The boat, with Peter and the other disciples, is evocative of the Church, the followers of Jesus. It moves through the waters as the Church will move through time. All types of storms—chaos, corruption, stupidity, danger, persecution—will inevitably arise. But Jesus comes walking on the sea. This is meant to affirm his divinity: Just as the Spirit of God hovered over the waters at the beginning, so Jesus hovers over them now.  Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on reading

 

           Years ago an older priest friend of mine taught me an important lesson about reading. Father Austin Garvey, for many years the pastor of St. Patrick’s Church, Soho Square, London, was a  constant, avid reader, who devoured books. However, they were frequently the same books. At first, I thought this rather odd, but upon rereading favorites, I have become a firm believer in the practice. Every year Father Garvey reread most of Dickens and P.G. Wodehouse; every year he reread all of Raymond Chandler. He also read new books, but more often went back to what he knew and what he loved, having an encyclopedic knowledge of his favorites.

           Maybe you do more rereading than new reading, returning to favorite stories you are drawn to again and again.  Perhaps you tell favorite anecdotes again and again. Maybe you watch favorite movies over and over.

           Our Church has a number of wonderful stories preserved in the Sacred Scriptures that we also return to again and again: the infancy narratives of Christ’s birth, the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Lost Sheep, the post-Resurrection appearance on the Road to Emmaus.

           The story of the Road to Emmaus is, perhaps, the best loved Resurrection appearance. It’s a good story: engaging, well structured, clearly thematic, inspiring. Because of its narrative perfection, some scholars have called it the “greatest short story ever told.”  We can relate to it. We become part of it because we, like those two disciples, are frequently blind to God in our world, concerned mainly with our own worries.

           At every Mass we can enter that story in a special way. What happened to those two disciples, happens to us:

• We hear the Scriptures, which are usually explained in the homily.

           [Of course, during some sermons our hearts do not burn within us!]

• We break the bread. We celebrate the Eucharist.
• We realize the presence of the Lord.

           The Road to Emmaus is the road to “meeting Christ at Mass,” and like the disciples, recognizing Him in the Breaking of Bread. So, whatever the name of the road in front of our parish church, the street is meant to be our Road to Emmaus that has brought us to meet Jesus Christ. That street can also become our address: we live on the Road to Emmaus if we hear the Scriptures, take them to heart, and receive the Most Holy Sacrament, in which Our Lord is truly present. Perhaps even our hearts will then burn within us as we realize His presence.

           Many of us may have favorite stories we enjoy returning to again and again.

But may we not simply reread that last chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Rather, may pray for the grace to live the best story of all: frequently meeting Christ at Mass; frequently recognizing Him on our Road to Emmaus.

Fr. Don Saunders, SJ

Thoughts on eternal life

 

Second Week of Easter

John 3:31–36

Friends, today’s Gospel promises eternal life to those who believe in the Son of God. In almost every religion, the life of faith has something to do with a creature’s relationship to the Creator; nearly all religions speak of the creature’s dependency upon God, of his subjection to the divine providence, and of his need for grace and forgiveness. Christianity, too, articulates these basic relationships, but it pushes beyond them because it speaks of the incarnation and the gifts associated with it. We hear in the third chapter of John’s Gospel that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This well-known verse summarizes the Christian faith and gives expression to its distinctiveness, for it speaks of the possibility that a creature might share in God’s own life.  The purpose of the sending of the Son was to gather the human race into the divine life—the rhythm of the Trinitarian love—so that we might relate to God not merely as creatures but as friends. You see, love becomes complete only when there is another who can receive fully what the lover wants to give. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Devine Mercy Sunday

 

Whoever lived through the twentieth century would have witnessed World War I and World War II, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the rise of communism, the decline of faith, the legalization of abortion, numerous genocides, and a host of other tragedies.  It thus stands as one of the darkest centuries in all of human history.  We should not be surprised then to hear that Heaven did not leave us without guidance or hope. In 1917, Our Lady appeared to the visionaries in Fatima.  She warned them of the impending travesties which would take place if the world did not repent and take refuge in her Immaculate Heart.  In this way, she gave us the warning, the cure of praying the Rosary and faithfully undertaking penances, and promised the triumph of her Immaculate Heart and Christ’s Sacred Heart. Additionally, in the first half of the same century, our Lord Jesus Christ appeared numerous times to St. Faustina Kowalska.

Throughout these visions, our Lord graced her with the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and the Divine Mercy image.  Christ knew that the world would be in desperate need of His mercy, and rather than leaving us to despair, He gave us the unshakeable promise of His love. If we heed Our Lady’s advice and turn to the Lord through prayer and penance, if we die to ourselves, then we may also enjoy the glory and victory of Christ’s resurrection.  It is by being washed in the blood of Our Savior which He so generously poured out for us that we can be cleansed from the sin and disorder which plagues our hearts and this world.  He is our only hope, but He is a most sure and beautiful hope! For this reason, the Church has decided that we should end the Octave of Easter today by joyfully celebrating Divine Mercy.  Let us then hopefully join our hearts in this prayer: “Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion — inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself. Amen.” In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Christopher P. Wendt International Director Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima

More thoughts on Doubting Thomas

 

Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)

John 20:19–31

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Thomas says that he will not believe in the Lord’s resurrection unless he puts his finger in Jesus’s nailmarks and his hand in Jesus’s side. Thomas is a saint especially suitable for our time. Modernity has been marked by two great qualities: skepticism and empiricism, the very qualities we can discern in Thomas. And when the risen Jesus reappears, he invites the doubter to look, see, and touch. But then that devastating line: “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” If we stubbornly said—even in the area of science—that we will accept only what we can clearly see and touch and control, we wouldn’t know much about reality. This helps us to better understand Jesus’s words to Thomas. It is not that we who have not seen and have believed are settling for a poor substitute for vision. No; we are being described as blessed, more blessed than Thomas. God is doing all sorts of things that we cannot see, measure, control, fully understand. But it is an informed faith that allows one to fall in love with such a God. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Doubting Thomas

On the Octave of Easter, this 2^nd Sunday of Easter, we always hear the Gospel of Doubting Thomas.

Thomas would not believe the testimony of the other Apostles, as he defiantly proclaimed, until he put his "finger into the nail marks" and his "hand into [Jesus'] side." To believe that Jesus was alive, Thomas needed to see and even to touch Jesus. And he does finally believe, becoming the very first of the Apostles to proclaim the Faith of the Church:  "My Lord and my God."

           What about us who have not seen and touched the Resurrected Lord? Why do we believe, and what do we believe concerning our Lord and the assertions of our religion? Do we believe only what the Bible says?

At the end of today’s Gospel, St. John says that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book.” In other words, Jesus said and did many things that are not recorded in the Bible.

           “Divine Revelation,” which means the truth God has revealed about Himself, is more than the Bible.

Divine Revelation is transmitted to us in two ways: through Sacred Scripture, the Bible, but also through what is called Sacred Tradition.

           It is Sacred Tradition that St. John is alluding to when he says that Jesus did many other things not specifically recorded in the Bible. After all, how could any book, or any number of volumes, contain everything? Sacred Tradition means the truths not contained in the Bible but still revealed by God through Jesus and the Apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Many of these truths are from the preaching and teaching of Jesus and the Apostles that have been handed down in the oral tradition.

Some examples of Sacred Tradition include:

·        The fact that Scripture itself draws from Sacred Tradition, because – think about it – the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles pre-date the Bible. It was the Church that had to decide what would be included in the canon of Sacred Scripture. The Church came before the Bible. The Gospel of Mark dates to around A.D. 70, and the First letter to the Thessalonians was written around A.D. 52. 

Other examples of Sacred Tradition include:

·        Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

·      Assumption of BVM

·     Perpetual virginity of BVM (always a virgin, before and after Jesus’ birth; no other children)

·       Role of Pope, bishops, priests in Christian ministry

·        Infallibility of Pope teaching officially on faith and morals

·        The understanding of the sacraments and their place in Christian life

           Our Catholic Faith relies on the Bible, but not only the Bible. Much of the truth of what the Church teaches comes from Sacred Tradition, which together with Sacred Scripture, forms what is called the one “Deposit of Faith.” It is this Deposit of Faith that comprises all of Divine Revelation: the truths we must believe and the principles of conduct that we must live. The Deposit of Faith is taught, interpreted, and handed down by the teaching authority of the Church, the “Magisterium,” which is guided by the Holy Spirit and given to the bishops (successors of the Apostles) united to the Pope (successor of St. Peter).

           Thomas’s faith was formed and made firm by his seeing and touching the Resurrected Lord, which we read in today’s Gospel, from the Bible. But our Catholic Faith is formed and made firm by the entire Deposit of Faith, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the truths not contained in the Bible but still revealed by God through Jesus and the Apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

           May we always read and revere the Holy Bible. But may we also revere the teachings of the Church handed down in God’s gift to us of Sacred Tradition.    

                                       

Fr. Don Saunders, SJ

Thoughts on the risen Jesus

 

Thursday within the Octave of Easter

Luke 24:35–48

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus appears alive again to his followers. Upon seeing him, “they were startled and terrified.” They are terrified because the one they abandoned and betrayed and left for dead is back—undoubtedly for revenge! Luke’s risen Jesus does two things in the presence of his shocked followers. The first thing is that he shows them his wounds. This move is a reiteration of the judgment of the cross: Don’t forget, he tells them, what the world did when the Author of life appeared. But he does something else; he says, “Shalom”—“Peace be with you.” In this, he opens up a new spiritual world and thereby becomes our Savior. From ancient creation myths to the Rambo and Dirty Harry movies, the principle is the same: Order, destroyed through violence, is restored through a righteous exercise of greater violence. And then there is Jesus. The terrible disorder of the cross (the killing of the Son of God) is addressed not through an explosion of divine vengeance but through a radiation of divine love. When Christ confronts those who contributed to his death, he speaks words not of retribution but of reconciliation and compassion. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Resurrection

 

Tuesday within the Octave of Easter

John 20:11–18

Friends, in today’s Gospel, we find Mary Magdalene weeping by the tomb of the risen Lord. She then sees Jesus and doesn’t recognize him immediately. In a wonderful detail, she thinks he’s the gardener. In the book of Genesis, God, the gardener of Eden, walked with his creatures in easy friendship. Sin, the sundering of the loop of grace, put an end to those intimate associations. Throughout the history of salvation, God had been trying to reestablish friendship. Through the death of Jesus, through that tomb placed right in the garden, he accomplished his goal. So now, in Christ, he appears again as a gardener. “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni.’” Then Jesus says: “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers.” The not clinging has to do with the call to proclaim. The idea is not to hang on to Jesus but to announce what he has accomplished. The content of the proclamation is, once again, that we have become the intimates of God: “My Father and your Father . . . my God and your God.” Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on God's will

 

Doing God's Will

From: The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

Try to give your agenda to God. Keep saying, “Your will be done, not mine.” Give every part of your heart and your time to God and let God tell you what to do, where to go, when and how to respond. God does not want you to destroy yourself. Exhaustion, burn out, and depression are not signs that you were doing God's will. God is gentle and loving. God desires to give you a deep sense of safety and God's love. Once you have allowed yourself to experience that love fully, you will be better able to discern who you are being sent to in God's name.

Reflection Question: What would it look like today to surrender your agenda to God and trust that God's will leads not to exhaustion, but to love and peace?

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”   - Matthew 11: 28 - 30

Thoughts on Easter Sunday

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

 

Those four words have been the heartbeat of the Church for two millennia, proclaimed in cathedrals and whispered in prisons, sung at dawn by monks and shouted in joy by new converts stepping out of the baptismal waters. They are the words that change everything — not only about what we believe, but about who we are and how we are to live. The resurrection of Jesus is not a coda to a tragic story. It helps us to understand the whole story, in a way that rewrites ours.

 

I find myself returning, every Easter, to the scene the Church gives us in John's Gospel this morning. Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb while it is still dark — and finds the stone rolled away. She then runs. Peter and the Beloved Disciple then run.

 

There is something gloriously undignified about the image of two grown men sprinting through the early morning streets of Jerusalem because something has happened that — despite Jesus’ multiple prophecies that he would rise on the third day — dramatically defied their expectation.

 

The Beloved Disciple reaches the tomb first, peers in, and sees the burial cloths lying there. Then Peter enters, and John tells us something quietly extraordinary — he saw and believed. He did not yet fully understand, but he believed. The empty tomb and the burial cloths were enough for love to outrun grief, and faith to outpace explanation.

 

That same invitation is extended to us this morning. We, too, are asked to enter — to step past what we think we know, past our doubts and our losses and our unanswered questions — and to believe. The tomb is empty. Jesus is not there. He is risen, and the world has not been the same since.

 

The Church exists because those first witnesses could not stay silent, and because every generation since has found, in their own encounter with the Risen Lord, the same irresistible impulse to share what they have seen.

 

You and I are part of that long, unbroken chain of witness. Together, through the work of The Pontifical Mission Societies, we are part of how the news of Easter morning reaches men and women who have not yet heard it — in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, in the river communities of the Amazon, in the ancient cities of the Middle East, in Africa, Asia and every corner of the earth.

 

Christ has not just risen, but is very much alive, and journeys with us in time. The world is not the same. Neither are we.

 

I pray that, this Easter, God will fill you with a joy that does not fade, and that the Risen Lord will make himself known to you in the Holy Eucharist, in his Church, in the faces of those you love, and in every unexpected moment of grace that awaits you in the fifty days of the Easter Season that lie ahead.

 

Happy Easter!

Monsignor Roger J. Landry