Trinity Sunday 2017

John 3:16-18

Today the Christian world celebrates a doctrine, not a particular saint or event in Christ's life. The doctrine of the Trinity sets Christianity apart from all other religions. But it's very hard to talk about, because our minds are limited. I cannot help but think of the three persons as – yes – three persons. In my case an old man with a white beard, a middle eastern Jew with blond hair and blue eyes, kind of like Robert Redford with a beard, and a bird. I know that those images have nothing to do with the reality, but they come. And then the obvious question is how are these three one? The Trinity is a maddening doctrine, because I literally can't understand it, and neither can you, and neither could Thoams Aquinas or Pope Francis. So why have it? What good is it that we know by faith that there are three persons in one God, that each peson is not the other, and yet each person is God, and that God is one? Historically the Church defined the doctrne of the Trinity because of heresies that popped up about the relationship of Jesus to God. The doctrine is the answer to many false ideas that circulated in the early church, that the Fathers of the Church recognized were wrong. So it must be important. But understanding how the Trinity can be is not the point. The point of the doctrine is to remind us of many things.

First, God is not a thing, or as one theologian said, God is nothing. God is not a being like you and I are beings. We cannot say here God is and there God is not. And because of this the arguments of atheists fall flat. You cannot debate whether God exists or doesn't exist; that debate implies that God is a being. God told Moses, “I am who am” – I am existence itself, I am that which everything that exists owes it's existence to – or as Saint Paul said, “in him we live and move and have our being”.

The second thing about the Trinity is that it tells us that God is fundamentally about relationship. The God of Islam is aloof, and while there are many words in the Koran that describe him, one that is not used is love. Were the God of Islam capable of love, according to their theolgians, then in some way he would share something with humanity, and not be totally other. For Muslims, the goal of life is to completely submit to Allah's will, and a certain mindlessness is needed. That's why its easy to be a suicide bomber; after all, everything that happens is his will, even you blowing yourself up. But Chrstianity, and indeed Judaism, insist that God is open, God is love, and love reaches out, love seeks to grow, to spread itself, to create new lovers, and lovers have to be capable of free will, and to make such beings is to risk being rejected. But the whole story in our scriptures is that when we go astray, God always moves to bring us back – of our own free will, not by compelling us. Because we are made to love, we are already entering into this relationship.

A third thing about the Trinity is that it tells us something about how we are to live. God is creator, and if we look with loving eyes at the world around us, at the people we know, we can see traces of God in everything, because he leaves his signature in everything. Only recently in human history have we come to understand that the fundamental nature of a proton or a neutron is three quarks bound together for all time. But we see God's signature in beauty – and beauty is touches us because we see something of ourselves there – that's oneness; beauty appeals because it is real – that's truth;; and beauty is almost by definition, a good thing; that's goodness. Beauty is the essence of God, and we are given minds and senses to appreciate this.

God is also Redeemer. We think about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, and rising from the dead so that we can also rise. That's ok, we can think that. But redemption is much larger than that. Redemption is a pattern, God the Redeemer shows us how to live, shows us how we are to act in this world. Jesus said many things but not much that was particularly new. The thing that sets Jesus apart from other founders of religions is how he lived. And so it makes sense for us to know Jesus through the scriptures that were written by those who knew him when he walked the earth.

And finally, God is Sanctifier. That's a fancy latinized word, and like many things we talk about, we probably don't stop to realize that we don't quite understand what it means. But at the bottom, it means that God is faithful. Not only does God love the world, and us, into being, not only does he give us a pattern to follow, but he gets into his own creation to direct it toward it's ultimate purpose – to become one with him. Saint Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit prays in us for what we don't even know we need.

If I truly love someone, I want the best for them. I want them to have joy on this earth. I want them to live forever in heaven. If I truly love someone, I will do everytthing in my power to make that happen. And yet my love is weak and partial, and my power to bring about what I want for the ones I love is very limited.

Not so God. The protestant theologian John Calvin held that because God is all powerful and all knowing, he selects souls to be saved from the beginning of time, and the rest of humankind will be damned. His logic is that all deserve damnation because of sin, and God excepts some from this fate for reasons known only to him. But the Trinity, the logical consequence of the God who is love itself, says just the opposite. God does everything he can do to enfold us all in his heart and enjoy his presence forever; and only we can choose not to allow this to happen. God loves us so much that he will never take away our freedom.

So don't think about how the Trinity can be, one plus one plus one can be one. You can't figure that out. Think instead about what the Trinity tells us about the nature of God and how God acts in our own lives, and how we are to live. And then it becomes clear that how this teaching is the heart of Christianity.

Pentecost 2017

John 20:19-23

So it's Pentecost again, and we turn our attention to the Holy Spirit. We are not sure who he is or what he does. We get the Father, and even more his Son Jesus, but the Holy Spirit always seems like an afterthought. If any of you read the book “The Shack” you remember that the Holy Spirit was portrayed as a being just on the edge of perception, something like Tinker Bell in the Peter Pan story. So today we could try to talk about who the Holy Spirit is, but people have been burned at stake for getting that wrong; or we could talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is interesting, but what do we do with that? So let's begin with the gospel passage, when Jesus breathes on his apostles and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. Now our Church teaches us that we receive the Holy Spirit at baptism, and when we get confirmed, we enter into a sort of spiritual adulthood. So all of us have the Holy Spirit. What does that mean on a day to day practical level?

Saint Paul once said words to this effect: “Do not be drunk with wine, because that only leads to trouble. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.” He is contrasting the effects of too much alcohol with being filled with the Holy Spirit. People drink alcohol usually to alter the way they see things. Cares slip away, one's conversation becomes more profound, people seem more interesting …” And Paul is saying the Holy Spirit is way better than the effects of alcohol, and there is no hangover.

So what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

A couple of years ago I visited a man every week to sit with him and bring him Holy Communion. He had advanced Alzheimer's disease, and after his caregiver cleaned him up, he would be placed in a recliner and the TV switched on. He would stare at the TV with bathroom breaks and breaks for food. He would be moved around at times to prevent bedsores. He couldn't carry on a conversation. When I tried to talk with him, he just stared straight ahead. I knew I was wasting my time, and so I took his hand and said a silent prayer and prepared to leave. But he gripped my hand and I asked if he wanted communion. I made the sign of the cross, and he sort of did as well. And I said the Lord's prayer, and his lips moved, and I gave him a small piece of the host and he took it and swallowed it. And this went on with every visit. The Holy Spirit reminded me that in God's world, everything matters, and no act of loving concern is wasted.

And there is a lady I visit. She also has advanced Alzheimer's disease. I sit down next to her and she is clutching a doll. I ask her how she feels, and try to get a glimpse of recognition; her nurse tells me that now and then she does say a few words. But I must scare her, because in our encounters, sooner or later she looks at me with a horrified expression on her face and sometimes she cries. In those moments I feel the immense separation between us, the distance. But the Holy Spirit reminds me that at some level this women and I are one – because God is one, and everything comes from God, and there is a unity not only between God's people, but even between people and things.

And for a long time I visited another patient. He was a Vietnam veteran, who had developed severe PTSD, and when he returned from the war he took to alcohol, lost his family, lived on the street for a while, eventually developed a severe neurological disease probably from the alcohol, maybe from something he got exposed to in Vietnam. When I met him he could still get from the bed to the toilet and operate a motorized wheelchair. But a year later he couldn't do anything for himself – but his mind was intact and he could speak and listen. And I thought, what a wasted life. What a purposeless life. But in that terrible situation, he made peace with his wife, was reconciled with his daughter, began receiving the sacraments again, and eventually died peacefully. And the Holy Spirit reminded me that everything has a purpose, that this universe has a plan.

Our Western Civilization tells us that nothing matters, that this life is all there is, that religion is a superstition, that human life, from conception to advanced old age, is cheap and disposable. The Holy Spirit reminds us that that's not true, everything matters, even things we think are total wastes. Because, as the old saying goes, God doesn't make junk. So when you do the laundry or mow the lawn or clean the toilet, those things matter, and they are worth doing well.

Our civilization says that some people are friends and some are enemies, that one political party is on the side of good and the other on the side of evil. We are increasingly told that there is no room for compromise; that people who believe differently than me and my friends are “reprehensible”. But the Holy Spirit says that we are one, because we reflect God, and God is one.

Our world says that this life is all there is, that everything is relative, that one civilization is as good as another, because good and evil are subjective terms. We are just random collections of atoms floating on a ball of mud in a purposeless universe. But the Holy Spirit says that God has a plan, a plan that extends from the fate of the Universe to whether a sparrow falls from it's nest. And that you and I are indispensable parts of this plan.

So he is constantly whispering to us, “everything matters; everything is connected; everything has a purpose.” And when we let that soak in, when we keep listening to his voice – guess what? We experience love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Because we realize, as the poem says,
Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes...

Seventh Sunday of Easter, cycle A

John 17:1-11

My wife and I were recently at a social occasion where we sat with some other people at supper. A young lady sat across from me. I noticed a mole on her neck and didn't like the looks of it. Finally I couldn't stand it any more and told her that she should have it checked out. She told me that I wasn't the first one to tell her that, but the mole had been there when she was born and hadn't changed in all that time. Now I realize that having a perfect stranger go up to you and tell you you should have something checked out does not generally happen in polite circles, but my point is that seeing a mole sets a whole lot of things in motion in my brain – because during my career I learned all about melanoma, benign moles, and how to tell the difference, and there were many times when the difference required more than just looking – a biopsy perhaps. My brain associates a long list of things with the word mole – because I'm a physician and cancer was my specialty. If you have a profession or a trade, you know that there are two types of learning – one has to do with how you do things, and the other has to do with learning the special vocabulary of that profession. When I hear my daughter who is a lawyer talk about torts, I have only the vaguest idea of what that means. But you mention mole to me, and I could talk about how they happen, how to tell if the mole is risky or not, how to manage moles change – I could go on and on.. And my daughter could do the same thing talking about torts. We'd probably bore each other silly, too.

The next three Sundays take up the mysteries at the center of our Christian lives – the gift of the Holy Spirit, the nature of God, and the mystery of the Eucharist. And today we hear Jesus tell us why we need to become specialists in what these things mean, insofar as possible.

Jesus is praying his so-called high priestly prayer at the last supper. He is praying aloud. And he talks about giving eternal life to all those the Father has given him. And then he clarifies – “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

When most of us hear the words “eternal life” we get a picture in our heads of white robes and harps, or maybe eating at a banquet that never runs out of good things and we never put on weight. But Jesus, who specializes in eternal life, tells us that that's not it. Eternal life is knowing God, whom we know through knowing Jesus Christ. Jesus is using the word “knowing” differently than we generally use it in English. When Adam and Eve knew each other, the result was their son Cain. When someone knows pain, it doesn't mean he has an intellectual understanding of pain. It means he is in a situation where he experiences pain. When we think about knowing in this sense it's more like the word Jesus used. Not only do we intellectually grasp the object of what we know, but we also have a relationship with the object.

So Jesus tells us what eternal life is – it's having a relationship with God through Jesus. And that relationship like any knowing, requires two things – just like becoming a member of a profession or a practioner of a skilled trade or a musician or you name it. There is learning how you do it and learning the vocabulary of the profession – what the special words mean.

What we are supposed to do to know God and His Son is pretty clear from scripture and tradition – to deepen our relationship with God we need to pray, to serve others, and to discipline ourselves – prayer, almsgiving, and fasting, to use old terms. Our Moslem friends are about to enter Ramadan, a month when they fast, even from water, from dawn till dusk. They do this with the intention of becoming more conscious of God and their utter dependence on him. If they can't fast for some reason, they are obliged to provide food for the poor. We Christians need to revive the practice of fasting in some way in order to be more conscious of God in our lives.

The other part of knowing is indeed deepening our spiritual vocabulary. Our Catholic church has a rich tradition of exploring the mysteries of our faith. We have brilliant thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Eloquent preachers like Bishop Fulton Sheen, and relatively uneducated souls like Sister Faustina, all of whom were given special graces to shine their own light on the scriptures and traditions of the Church. Time spent in learning more about what we believe and why we believe it ultimately helps us know more about Jesus Christ and more importantly, deepens our relationship with Him.

In today's gospel selection Jesus tells us that he came to give us eternal life, and eternal life is to be in a relationship with God. If we were to read the rest of Jesus' prayer we would see that what Jesus wants for us is not wings and a harp, or even a a great banquet in heaven. What he wants is that we are drawn into the heart of the Trinity so that we participate in that same Love that he and the Father share, the Love which is the Holy Spirit. In that relationship there is no end, and while we can't even conceive of what it is all about, we do know that in that relationship is all that really matters, because it's what God wants for us, it's what we were made for. Jesus has already done the heavy lifting – he's made it possible, he's given us everything we need to get there. But a relationship cannot be one-way and that's why Jesus tells us that eternal life is knowing God and the one He sent into the world.

So as we travel through Pentecost, Trinity Sunday and the Feast of Corpus Christi, let us make a resolution that we will try to deepen and clarify what we know about these mysteries, and in doing so, enter more deeply into that relationship to which we are called.

And one last thing, I'm retired from medicine, so don't show me any of your moles.

Sixth Sunday of Easter, cycle A

John 14:15-21

I was looking at my wife the other day and I thought, she is beautiful! Now granted 51 years has done a number on both of us. It's very possible other people don't think she is beautiful. But I do. When we first started dating, I thought she was beautiful then. That's how God gets a man and a woman together – we see something beatiful in the other person. But after living with her, raising children with her, going through hard times and easy times, the beauty I see now is way more than the physical beauty that drew me to her in the first place. And I suspect most of the guys who have been married to the love of their life for any length of time would agree.

The reason that she is more beautiful to me now than she was when we first met is because I've learned much more about her, and I've come to know the genuinely good, holy, loving person she is. But that knowledge didn't come easily, didn't happen overnight. It required a great deal of effort, it required an act of the will, not just feelings. I know I can say these things to you because right now she is up in Holyoke doing her music ministry at Our Lady of Guadalupe church. If she were here she would probably have thrown something at me by now.

Jesus is telling us something profound today. He tells us that we will see the Spirit of Truth, the spirit that he leaves as our advocate, but the world will not see him. And we will see him because he is in us. Jesus goes on to tell us that the world will no longer see him, but we will see him, because He lives and we will live. Jesus is actually using the Greek word for seeing; we can't really translate this as “sense his presence” or something like that.

But have you seen the Holy Spirit? Have you seen Jesus? Is this just another one of those mind-blowing sayings of Jesus that seems impossible to make sense of ? All this talk about him being in us and us being in him and him being in the Father. But that's probably the key here. If we want to see the Spirit of Truth who is our advocate, if we want to see Jesus who lives, maybe we are looking in the wrong place. Because Jesus is talking to his disciples, to the Church. And that is you and I. If we want to see the Spirit of Truth, the one that the world does not see, we need to look at each other. And the same is true of we want to see Jesus – we can see him in each other. The Advocate whispers to us, prays in our place, prompts us to obey Jesus' commandments. Jesus lives in us, and tells us very simply that if we love him and keep his commandments, he will love us and so will the Father. And his commandment is to Love one another as He loved us and gave himself up for us.

So this may be one of the most important passages in the New Testament. It tells us that there is a relationship between seeing Jesus and loving him; and that relationship is mediated by how we love each other. And if I get up in the morning with the intention of seeing Jesus in you, with the intention of keeping his commandments when I encounter you, I will be developing a track record; I will be intentionally loving Jesus in you, and with time, I won't need to look elsewhere to see His face. I'll see it when I look at you.

If I take Jesus at his word, then you, my fellow Christians, you are where Jesus lives, where the Holy Spirit lives, where indeed even the Father can be found, since Jesus is in Him and He is in Jesus. When I look at you I see God Himself whether I know it or not. God has been at work in you since your baptism; Jesus has fed you with every Holy Communion; the Holy Spirit has been speaking to you, helping you make decisions, prompting you to keep the commandments of Jesus, and even praying in you as Saint Paul says, prayers that you don't even know you should be praying.

We do not have a God who is far off and totally other. Our God lives in us.

And think of the implications. And they aren't new, they aren't original; Jesus told us this so long ago when he said, “What you do for the least of my brethren you do for me.” He meant this literally.

I think Mother Theresa and so many other saints knew this. That may be the reason that so many of our saints gave up their lives in serving people. If you truly see Jesus in the other person, if you know that God inhabits that person, if you are convinced that God loves that person with an overwhelming, divine love, then the holiest thing you can do is to serve that person. And if you truly see Jesus in the other person, then you are willing to listen to that person, to learn from him or her; because the Holy Spirit is there.

So you see, learning to see Jesus, learning to see the Spirit of Truth, is like learning to appreciate the real beauty of another person, in my case, my wife; it takes work, it takes study, it takes dedication. But we can begin that here and now. As we look at each other, we need to remind ourselves that to the extent this person keeps the commandments of Jesus, Jesus loves that person, and lives in that person. And this is not a mere figure of speech, if we are to believe Jesus. We Catholics believe that Jesus is present, body and blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist. We know this intellectually, and some of us have come to know it through our experience. Dare we say that you and I are also eucharists, we are also where Jesus dwells, along with the Father and the Spirit. If we remind ourselves of this every day, and live this truth in how we deal with each other, what we know intellectually will become our own experience, and as Jesus promised, we will see Him and the Holy Spirit when we look upon each other.

Fifth Sunday of Easter, cycle A

John 14:1-32

For anyone who has studied the Bible, I think the Gospel of John is always a challenge. The Jesus who speaks in this gospel doesn't sound anything like the one who speaks in the other three. And when he does speak, sometimes he's very hard to understand. And sometimes when we think we understand him, it doesn't sound as though what he is saying is consistent with our experience. So how do we deal with a passage like the one which we've just read? Because Jesus says three things which people have argued over for centuries. First he says, “In my father's house there are many dwelling places; if there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” Most of the time we think Jesus is talking about heaven; and some people point to this passage as evidence that there will be lots of variety in heaven – Catholics here, Methodists there – we'll all have different clouds to sit on.

But the only other time Jesus refers to his Father's house in the gospel of John is when he drives the money changers out of the temple. And when asked to explain his actions, he says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” and the author goes on to say that he was speaking about his body. So Jesus may not be talking about heaven here; he may be talking about the fact that in the olden days God dwelt in the Jerusalem temple, but in the New dispensation, he will dwell in Jesus and in the temple made up of Jesus' followers who are members of his body. Jesus is going to prepare a place for you and I in this new temple, this new reality, which already exists, which we are already part of – and it's clear that the work is still going on; Jesus is still preparing a place for you and I. Not a place to dwell in, but part of the building itself. And this work began with his resurrection from the dead.

The second hard saying is when Jesus tells Thomas “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me”. Doesn't that seem a little arrogant? What about all those good people who belong to other religions, or even have no religion at all? And if what Jesus is saying is literally true, then you and I will have a lot to explain when he asks us why we didn't try harder to convert our friends and neighbors, who are now excluded forever from heaven. Or perhaps we will be like the theologian Karl Rahner, who put forth the theory of the anonymous Christian – the idea that people striving to lead good lives but who did not know of Christ were in some way united to his body anyway.

But maybe Jesus is telling Thomas something different, something in keeping with the next part of the gospel where he tells Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” And remember that he did tell Thomas “You know the way”. Because the way to the Father is not what you know, but how you live. Jesus is saying that if you want to find the way to the Father, then do what Jesus does, live as he lived. You take a stance in the world of acceptance, of turning the other cheek, of answering the needs of the people you meet along the way. You put God first, your neighbor second, and yourself third, just as Jesus did. The words on your lips must be the words of Jesus, “Not my will but yours be done”. When we look at Jesus, we see what kind of God we have – because if we see him, we see the Father.

Finally, the last hard saying is “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” I don't know about you, but there have been a lot of times I wished I could work a miracle – I've prayed over and over that God would intervene – in my life, in someone else's life – and I haven't seen it happen, at least in a clear and unequivocal way. But again, Jesus is probably not talking about miracles. He is predicting that his followers will surpass any works that he did. And we can see evidence of that. Jesus fed a huge crowd; his followers are always feeding the hungry, thousands of times over that huge crowd. Jesus loved to teach; all over the world, his followers set up schools and universities to teach in his name. Jesus loved to heal, and in most parts of the world, even in Muslim countries, you can find hospitals set up and run by the followers of Jesus. Jesus is doing all these things through his followers, because he is with the Father, and we see what the Father is like when we see Jesus.

So that gets us back to the beginning of this passage, when Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled...” The apostles know that something is going to happen. Jesus has been predicting his death, sometimes in veiled terms and sometimes directly; and here they are and he is saying goodbye to them. Why does he have to leave? Why does he have to die? And what about you and I who have never had the joy of accompanying him as he walked the roads of Galilee two thousand years ago? But Jesus is saying that it's time we took over; it's time we became the temple of God on earth. It's time we look to Jesus' life to inform our own lives. And it's time we see that we do more to do the works that he did, by our own gifts of time, talent, and treasure.

There is a story about a young man who graduated from agricultural school. His teacher asked him, “Are you going home to take over the family farm?” The young man answered, “Not yet, my grandfather hasn't let my father take over yet.” This gospel passage from John tells us that indeed Jesus is letting us take over. We are the temple in which the Father dwells. Are we up to the task?

Fourth Sunday of Easter, cycle A

John 10:1-10

When I was in Catholic grade school back in the dark ages, I heard a sermon based upon this passage of John's gospel. The idea was that we Catholics had good shepherds in our pastors, because they stood in the place of Jesus the ultimate good shepherd. And those thieves and robbers who climbed over the walls to get at the sheep? Look no further than the protestant minister down the street, who were always trying to steal sheep from the Catholic church. An awful message, I agree, but it was probably the mirror image of what protestant ministers were saying about Catholic priests.

There is no question that priests and ministers and rabbis and imams all have a vested interest in keeping their sheep in their own sheepfolds, and even gaining sheep, sometimes at the expense of other flocks. After all, if you don't keep your flock, you are out of a job, but more importantly, you've failed at your vocation. And I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. It is an inducement for those who lead flocks to continually try to improve, to reach out, to teach better – to do everything possible to form a loyal and fervent community – as long as it doesn't lead people to hate, as long as it doesn't turn people into mindless followers.

But when you look at today's gospel and think a little bit about how shepherds were in those days, a few surprises may pop up. First, some background. Shepherds at the end of the day would try to find a shelter for their sheep. Sometimes it was a cave, sometimes it was an enclosure made up of stones or logs, or whatever was handy. Each shepherd might be responsible for twenty sheep or so. Several shepherds would often herd their sheep into one enclosure, and then take turns guarding the entrance. The one guarding the entrance was the sheepgate; to get to the sheep, you had to go through him.

In the morning the shepherds would call their sheep – by name – and each flock would follow its shepherd out to pasture where the shepherd would look over each sheep one by one, tending to tangles in its wool, pulling off brambles, maybe patching up cuts, while the rest of the sheep would graze. If you were a sheep, this was the best part of your day. Going back to the sheepfold was hell – you had to crowd in with strange sheep, you were separated from your shepherd, there was nothing to eat, and it was dark and scary.

And I think sometimes we think of our church as a sheepfold. It's kind of a refuge from the world, it's full of people who believe pretty much what we believe; our services are familiar, the prayers and sermons and readings are often comforting, and we feel close to our shepherd. And then we leave and soon forget that we have a shepherd who is calling us by name, who wants to lead us to abundant life, to green pastures. As important as church is, the abundant life Jesus calls us to is not to be found in here. It is when we engage with the world, it is when we bring Jesus' presence into the world, it's when through our efforts we make a difference in the world, that we find that abundant life. Jesus himself modeled this for us; those who experienced his miracles and his teaching were out in the marketplace or on a fishing boat or on the shores of a lake.

Jesus is the shepherd, but he's also the sheepgate. We concentrate on the fact that the shepherd being the gate is willing to fight for the sheep in the fold, even die for them and that's certainly a reason Jesus calls himself the sheepgate. But again, the object is to get the sheep out of the sheepfold in an orderly way, so that they can go where they can find abundant life. To be gotten out by being stolen, being carried over the walls by a wild beast, is almost certainly not going to get that sheep to a green pasture; instead, he is likely to end up as dinner. Those who are in charge of sheep – priests, yes, but parents, teachers, people who run businesses or are otherwise responsible for directing other people – have a role in bringing sheep to the green pasture, but this role can only be fulfilled if the shepherds follow the good shepherd, if they go through the one who is the sheepgate.

Finally individual sheep need to be taught to hear their shepherd's voice. This is a lifelong goal for each of us – and we all can tell stories about people who were once ardently following the shepherd but no longer have anything to do with Him. Somewhere along the line, they stopped listening to his voice because some other voice became louder and more insistent. Good shepherds need to be aware of those voices so that they can oppose their message before it does it's damage. And we sheep need to stay close to our shepherd so we can hear him better. And mayb e that's the point of our weekly worship service. We come here to hear his voice again, to understand what he says. Matthew Kelly, whom some of you have heard about, I'm sure, says that we should all have a mass diary. The object of the diary is that when we come to Mass, we should listen for the one thing God wants us to carry away that day. Not several, not a list, but one thing. It may be a passage from scripture that we hear, maybe something the preacher said, maybe part of the Mass that strikes us in a new way – or maybe just a random thought that the Holy Spirit blows into our soul. But the idea is to write it down and think about it.

So on this good shepherd Sunday, let us remember that where we really need to listen for His voice is out there, in the world, in our homes, in our workplaces, because he leads us out of the sheepfold, not into it. And let us remember our own role as shepherds; how can we help those we lead find abundant life?

Third Sunday of Easter, cycle A

Luke 24:13-35

When you and I look at the crucifix, we see it as the symbol of our Catholic faith. Our protestant brothers and sisters don't like the body hanging from the cross, preferring to show an empty cross, preferring to emphasize the resurrection. But a cross means Christianity. It wasn't always like that. Our earliest Christian ancestors would probably say that the symbol of their faith was a shared meal.

I think most people enjoy an opportunity to eat with friends. Whether you are on the preparing end or the receiving end, there is something special about getting together over food with someone you haven't had contact with for a while. Eating together is also a good way to get to know someone. Around the supper table we feel less threatened, we are more likely to move to a more intimate level of conversation than we do in casual meetings. And when we eat with other people we usually hold back on controversial subjects knowing that there is nothing like a heated argument to spoil a good meal.

The shared meal is common to all cultures, from primitive tribes to sophisticated civilizations. And in Jesus' time it wasn't any different. In fact, as you read the gospels you can't help but notice how often Jesus was sharing a meal with someone, or in one case, at least, inviting himself to supper. We even have little glimpses of the kinds of conversation that took place at these gatherings – his exchange with Martha in which he told her that Mary had chosen the better part; his exchange with Simon the Pharisee about the woman who washed his feet with her hair – and of course, his discourse at the Last Supper. In fact, and someone else figured this out, not me, if you read the gospels you will find more space taken up by Jesus eating a meal with someone than by miracles or healings or teaching. Check it out if you want to.

So it is no surprise that Jesus uses the occasion of a meal to reveal himself to Cleopas and an unnamed disciple. And you can almost feel the progression. They meet a stranger on the road; they gradually reveal to him the reason for their poor spirits. He in turn speaks to them of the prophets and how this all relates to what has happened in Jerusalem. But it isn't until they sit down around a table that the level of intimacy is at the point where they recognize who it is that has been walking with them; it is when they share the bread. Up till then, the stranger could have been anyone; but when he sits down at a meal, they just know it has to be Jesus. And it says their eyes were opened and he vanished from their sight.

One of the things that happens when you have a particularly enjoyable meal with someone is that you look forward to the next time you get together. When our children were small, we always looked forward to visiting their grandparents in Maryland. We could expect a feast, often featuring blue crab from the Chesapeake bay. Even today when we get together with our children and grandchildren over a meal, there is a bonding that takes place; and even though we are all related, we grow closer in that relationship. Shared meals have a way of uniting people. If you've ever been to one of the meals Saint Mary's puts on in the course of the year, you walk away feeling a bit closer to your fellow parishioners; you feel part of something bigger.

And isn't this what the Mass is all about? We miss the point sometimes. But it's interesting to me that Jesus left this as his memorial. And in the earliest days of Christianity, the shared meal was almost a sacrament. The people would gather in someone's home and bring along something for the common table. Saint Paul tells us how it wasn't supposed to be done – with the rich eating at their own table of the food they had brought, and the poor at another. The shared meal was supposed to be just that – an opportunity where everyone fed each other. And only after the meal did the Mass take place, when the leader took bread and pronounced the words of institution, and passed around the cup containing the precious blood.

So we are all on that road to Emmaus – you and I are the nameless companion of Cleopas. And when we come to Mass, we greet each other, we listen to the scriptures and an explanation of them, and then we proceed to the meal where we do what Christians have been doing from the beginning.

Luke, our gospel writer, uses some interesting language in his account of this event. The very last sentence we read says “Then the two recounted … how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” But the Greek says “how he was being made known to them in the breaking of the bread”. A subtle difference but it has meaning to us. Because it is in this breaking of the bread that we know Jesus. And the more we participate, the more we look deeply into the Mass that we are attending, the more we can come to know Jesus.

And one more thing. Notice what the disciples did when Jesus vanished. They went out to announce the good news. They proclaimed that they had witnessed Jesus alive. Jesus reveals himself in the breaking of the bread not just for us, but for the whole world.

So now perhaps you can see why Jesus was so insistent that we remember him in a shared meal – because he wants to be with us, and he wants us to be one with each other, and sharing a meal is a universal way human beings deepen relationships, make peace and form bonds. And now perhaps you can see why the Church is so insistent that the bread truly becomes the body of Jesus and the wine becomes his blood and that our priest stands in for Jesus when he breaks the bread. For two thousand years Christians all over the world have participated in the one sacred meal that those two disciples ate at Emmaus and Jesus is constantly being made known to them and us in the breaking of the bread. So today try to see the Mass as the early Christians saw it – a time to nourish the body, the soul, our relationships with each other, and our relationship with God our Father.