Feast of the Transfiguration

Matthew 17:1-9

You’ve probably heard sermons on the Transfiguration many times.  The Transfiguration is described in Matthew, Mark and Luke in slightly different ways, and referred to by the author of the first epistle of Peter, who claims to have been an eyewitness.  But the essential story is the same.  

What do you do with this story that we’ve just heard?  There are three themes that people seem to concentrate on.  One is that Jesus does this so as to assure his inner circle, Peter, James and John, that he is the Messiah that the Jews have been expecting, so that when his crucifixion takes place, they will be the ones who convince the rest of the disciples to keep the faith.  That of course didn’t work out so well, because as we all know, Peter claimed he did not know Jesus, and the rest of the apostles deserted him as well.  John tells us that “the beloved disciple” stayed at the foot of the cross, but most scholars think John is using the beloved disciple figure as a stand in for the ideal Christian.  

A second motif is to point out that here is old Peter again, missing the point, speaking before thinking.  Kind of like you and I, right?  In the gospels Peter comes across as the disciple who always misunderstands, especially in Mark.  In fact, for a long time because of this people thought of the gospel of Mark as sort of a transcription of what Peter remembered.  Matthew and Luke and John all try to paint Peter, who by then is a hero to the church, a leader who got things off to a good start, a martyr who died hanging upside down on a cross -- as someone who finally learned his lesson -- but Mark, taking down the words of Peter, paints him as continuing to be foolish and hardheaded.  So, you and I are like Peter, we misunderstand, we get things wrong, we are not very good disciples.  But like Peter, God works with the clay that we are, and will continue to build up his church using us, the imperfect ones, the flawed rocks that make up his church.

A third motif is that Peter and the others want to stay up on top of the mountain, preserving this moment when God shows himself.  That’s well and good, but should they be up there when the message they are meant to proclaim is down here, at the foot of the mountain, where the people who are like sheep without a shepherd live?  Shouldn’t the shepherds be down there smelling like their sheep, not up on the mountaintop contemplating divine things.  But Jesus actually says nothing about this.  All he says when things are all over, is that they are to tell no one.  And of course, “do not be afraid”, which might be easier said than done after you’ve heard the voice of God the Father. 

And of course, I could mention that Jesus is the culmination, not only of the law, represented by Moses, but the prophets as well, represented by Elijah.   

Well, maybe there is another way to look at this event in the story of Jesus.  The Transfiguration after all, is a moment of clarity.  Peter and the others behold Jesus as he really is -- a man out of whom divinity shines, the Son who reflects the light of the Father.  Peter has a moment when he not only sees the divinity of Jesus, but he also sees in one moment what that divinity is all about -- Jesus became Man so that we may become God.  Not literally, of course, but Jesus did make it possible for human beings to take on divinity, to reflect the glory of God in their beings, to enjoy the great heavenly banquet for all eternity.  Jesus shows them how we all are meant to be.  And Peter gets it right for a change.  “Let us build three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”   Let us preserve this moment when we can look at what humans are to become, what God has meant for us to be.  And Jesus does not say, “No, you don’t understand, that’s not why I did this.”  He says instead, “Rise and do not be afraid”.  Because what God has in store for us should make us afraid, a little bit.  Because we clearly don’t deserve it, what God has destined is indeed that he draws us into the ocean of his grace, that we become children of Jesus’ Father, that for us, death will be the mere turning of a page in our destiny of eternal life.  That’s the vision of Peter, that’s what we need to carry down from the mountain -- that God loves us so much he wants to give us his own life, immortal life, life without limitations.  

Peter is wrong about one thing, though.  He wants to build tents for Moses and Elijah, but he doesn’t need to build a tent for Jesus -- Jesus' body is the tent, the tabernacle, that shines forth with the presence of God.  

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 

Matthew 10:37- 42

What is your image of God? I think we all have an image of God, but of course with any sort of reflection we know that isn’t how God looks. Many Christians imagine Jesus when they think of God, but what we really imagine is some picture we’ve seen of Jesus. And you would have to go far and wide to find a picture that was not of a white man with blue eyes and a beard. And we can probably say that is not at all how Jesus looked. When I was a kid my image of God was pretty conventional -- in the Cathedral of Saint Helena, my parish church, you could see God reaching out to bring Adam to life, and he was elderly, long flowing robes, grey beard, being held up by a pack of angels -- and God did not look like a loving father, more like a king.

That’s one of the problems we have nowadays. People don’t resonate with the images of God that we put out there. We call him Creator, and that’s fine, though it’s hard to relate to that. We call him Father, and sadly, a lot of people in the world, especially the western world, really have very little positive experience with a father. A common complaint is that fathers are too busy making their way in the world to be truly present to their children. I’m guilty. And of course for others “father” connotes an abuser, or maybe someone who comes by every other weekend to take you out for ice cream and a movie. And then there are those who have never known their father. We call him a just judge, and in the same breath the fountain of mercy. And we have prayers and songs about how Jesus, and sometimes Mary, spends a lot of time interceding for us so as to stay the righteous anger of God.

Today’s gospel is divided into two parts. The first is a bit scary. Can I really say I love Jesus more than anyone else? I’m not even sure what that means. And taking up my cross and following? I automatically began to draw comparisons: I know people who have taken up their cross in spades, and others who haven’t touched their cross, and I hope I’m somewhere in between. And I’ve had a very privileged life, all through no fault of my own. And even though I’m old, I don’t want to lose my life, if I’m honest with myself. As the old country song goes, “Lord I want to go to heaven, but I don’t want to go tonight.”

Jesus is God, I believe. And that’s Jesus talking to you and me. And I fall short. Maybe you do as well.

But then we hear some other lines -- who receives you receives me, and receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, likewise for a righteous man, likewise for even giving a glass of water to someone because he is a disciple -- I get the same reward as those. So what does “receive'' mean in this context? It’s like the first reading -- the woman who made it easier for Elisha the prophet to go about his mission. Now that's the kind of God I can go along with, right? My charitable contributions are buying me points. When I give up some time and energy to be of service -- well, I’ll be rewarded.

And Jesus is God, and he is talking to you and me. And maybe I won't fall short. Because even though I’m not a great saint, even though I haven’t given up everything, I do some things to make the efforts of God’s messengers a little easier. And thus I receive Jesus, and receive the Father who sent him into the world. What could be better than that?

Which is your God? Which is your Jesus?

Sometimes we get a better idea of God when we look at Jesus’ actions as opposed to his words. Words are always tricky. When you say something very clearly -- to you -- others can misinterpret. But it’s harder to misinterpret actions. During Jesus’ active ministry he went about the towns and villages of Galilee -- farm country, seaside towns, places far from the temple and official religion. And he would meet people where they were and give them what he could give them. He didn’t ask much except from the apostles and the rich young man. Some of those he healed wanted to join his movement and yet he sent them home to bring the good news to their families. When he met people who needed something, he gave them what they needed -- always in the direction of making them whole, bringing them back into the mainstream of human life. And then he turned toward Jerusalem and during his last weeks on earth he alienated most of his followers, and died alone, except for his mother and the beloved disciple.

And that’s what we should do as well. Encourage those who seem to have a mission from God; help those in our path that need something we can give them; be sensitive to the cry of the poor, and poor comes in many flavors. If someone needs a drink of water, I can take care of that. And if we go about doing what Jesus did, meeting the needs of our fellow human beings, supporting those who are trying to bring the world to Christ, we will gradually find ourselves walking towards Jerusalem, where our faith will be tried, where we will recognize that we have been taking up the cross, and we have been loving him more than any others, and that his resurrection will be ours as well.

So deep in our hearts we have to answer the question, who is God for me? For some, it will be the God to whom I give everything; and to others it will be the God who rewards even a drink of water offered because we see Jesus in the other person. And it is the same God.

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 10:26 - 33

Today is the anniversary of my parent's wedding. I don’t know all the details, of course, but sometime in the fall of 1940 my mom, who was a nurse in training, met my dad, who was a patient recovering from removal of his appendix.  Sparks must have flown, because by June of 1941 they were married, and by December of 1942 they had me.  In between their marriage and me, the United States formally entered world war 2.  I’m told it was not my fault.  Nevertheless, my dad and many of his friends enlisted in the military, and before you know it, Dad was in Tennessee learning to fly fighter planes.  When I was just about 18 months old, my Mom and I traveled from Montana to Tennessee to be together again.  Dad had almost qualified as a fighter pilot when the war ended.  Fighter pilots who actually fight had a mortality rate of about 50%.  So I guess my two sisters were lucky.

Dad enlisted partly because the alternative would be to get drafted, and enlisted men had some choice in the direction of their military careers.  But what motivated most of the young men entering the military was a deep love of their country and a hatred for those who would harm it.  And I suspect that’s true of most successful armies -- at some level those soldiers are willing to put their lives on the line for their country.  That, apparently, is a big difference between the Ukrainian soldiers and the Russian ones.  

How can you put your life on the line?  Only by realizing that you are part of something greater than yourself.  Your mind and heart tell you that your cause will live on, your country will continue, in that sense you are immortal.

Today Jesus talks about the same thing, only far more real.  The reason we Christains can boldly proclaim the Gospel is because the Father loves us.  Jesus reminds us that God cares about even the birds of the air, and undoubtedly all creatures, from Blue Whales to bacteria -- they exist entirely because He loves them into existence.  And we are so much more than that. Jesus did not become a Blue Whale or a bacteria, he became a human being, making us part of something infinitely great -- we are part of God’s family and a Parent can never forget his or her child, and would do anything he could to keep them from harm and make them happy.  Our Father will never forget his children, and has the power and desire to keep them from harm and make them happy.  

This last week we celebrated the feast of Saint Thomas More  and Saint John Fisher.  We know something about the details of More’s death.  Before he was executed, we have his defense at his trial and two letters written to his daughter, a final letter smuggled out of the Tower of London, and the epitaph he wrote for himself.  We can see that this was a man who deeply loved his family, and insisted that he bore nothing but good will toward the King; he just couldn’t acknowledge the King as the head of Christ’s church on earth.  He was given several opportunities to compromise even in some small way.  He was finally sentenced to life in prison, and then told that despite that, he still had to acknowledge the King as head of the Church.  His failure to do so led to his sentence to death.  

As he was about to be decapitated, he forgave his executioner, asked that his beard be spared, since it had done no harm, and finally declared, “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”  

Consider the complete trust More had in God.  Not just trust that he would live on, that he would be in paradise.  We all believe that or we wouldn’t be here.  But we can all sympathize with that line from a country song, “Lord I want to go to heaven, but I don’t want to go tonight.”  We’d all like one more day, at least, because life after death will be nothing like this life, and we prefer the familiar..  But More not only believed he would live on after death, but he trusted that God would look after his family and his country, for he was a patriot.  And putting everything you care about in God’s hands is never easy.  

But More took Jesus’ words to heart -- “do not be afraid of those who can kill the body, but not the soul.”  

Maybe being a Christian would be easier if we had to worry about martyrdom.  John Fisher and the other English martyrs all made the conscious choice to continue their efforts knowing that death was highly likely.  Nowadays, to stand up for Christ doesn’t mean we’ll be martyred.  But often it means we will be ridiculed -- maybe our jobs will be in jeopardy.  Maybe we will be canceled.  But we can still take comfort in the fact that we are part of something too big to kill, too good to destroy -- the family of Jesus Christ whose Father never forgets his children.  

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 9:35 - 10:23

I think when we hear Jesus ask us to pray for laborers for the harvest, many of us believe we are praying for vocations to the priesthood and religious life.  But notice that the apostles who were sent out by Jesus were not yet by any measure, clergy.  They had not participated in the Last Supper, yet, and received the order to “Do this in memory of me.”  They had not had the risen Jesus breathe on them and give them the power to forgive sins.  They had not yet been ordered to baptize all nations , which would only come about at the time of Jesus’ ascension.  They weren’t priests or bishops.  They were laymen, and fairly uneducated as well.  You didn’t need to know how to read and write in those days.  There were scribes for that.  So Jesus sends out twelve uneducated laymen to proclaim the kingdom of heaven.  And they do, and look at us now, one fifth of the world’s population are at least nominally Christian.

One of the good things that seems to be happening in our time is the fact that lay poeo[ple are stepping up to the plate in terms of evangelization.  There are several prominent writers and apologists, andI’m sure you’ve heard of Scott Hahn, Edward Sri,Jimmy Akin, Karl Keating.  And lay evangelists aren’t limited to men; Theresa Tomeo, Sherry Weddell, and Lila Rose are just three names of women who are Catholic evangelists.  

But despite these signs of hope, we can’t escape the fact that parts of the world where Catholicism was once very strong now see a sad attrition of faithful Catholics -- Western Massachusetts, for example.  And I think today’s gospel should be a call to all of us to become laborers for the harvest.  

Jesus even tells us what to do.  We are to proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  We do this by our deeds, we cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons.  He gave his disciples the power to do so, and Isuspect he gives us the power as well, if we want to use it.  There have been saints, even in fairly recent times, who have done deeds like these.  And when those deeds are witnessed, people come into the church, and people with lukewarm faith become more fervent.  

So where do we start?  We have to start from the beginning.  You can’t hope to cure the sick unless you go to the sick.  All of us know someone who is sick -- maybe chronically ill, maybe recovering from surgery.  But how do we bring the presence of Christ to them?  Christ lives in you and I and that’s what we have to remember.  We are all tabernacles and just as we come into the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, even though we know we can approach God from anywhere, I Can bring Christ to people by visiting them, by simply being present to them.  

Raising the dead is a bigger challenge.  Being dead means that you are no longer able to change without a seeming miracle.  People who are severe alcoholics or drug or gambling addicts, for example.  If we know people like this, sometimes all we can do is pray for them, but it doesn’t hurt to work on the bonds we have with them, to strengthen their reason to change.  

Cleansing lepers is also something we can do.  Lepers are people at the margins, people who are by reason of race or sexual orientation or challenged mentally or physically, or people who are bullied.  They are people who are rejected by society.  To cleanse these lepers means to invite them back into our circle, even if it means that we step outside of it to do so.  

Finally, driving out demons is something the Lord calls his disciples to do.  I don’t deny that there really are demons.  But most people affected by demons are not really possessed, but rather, they are oppressed.  I know a lady who is absolutely convinced that she can’t be forgiven her sins; She’s been to confession several times, has worked with a counselor on more than one occasion, and she can’t even name the sin she thinks she is guilty of.  She’s miserable.  It’s hard to tell if she is oppressed by a demonic force or if she has some mental illness.  But to have malignant obsessive thoughts ruining your life certainly seems demonic.  And Jesus gives his church  the power to drive out demons.  Maybe it is up to us disciples to try to get people like this at least evaluated.  

When I was growing up I knew a priest who taught at our local Catholic college.  Many evenings he would quietly disappear to sit in a bar and talk with the patrons.  We didn’t know this until his funeral, when the stories came out about the lives he changed by being present, by being non-judgemental, and simply by quietly being there to listen.  What he was doing, anyone could do, you don’t need Holy Orders.  

Corpus Christi, 2023

John 6:51 - 58

Last Thursday I met a lady who is 102 years old. Her doctor sent her to rehabilitation because she thought it would help her continue to be independent for a few more years. She was getting to the point where she couldn’t walk very well. She lives alone but has a couple of friends who drop in once in a while. She had six children and is looking forward to a reunion with the three who are already in the next life. She told me she can’t wait to get to heaven and can’t see the point of prolonging her life. At the same time she’s happy and cheerful and interested in current events. Her mind is sharp and her body works pretty well. In our conversation she told me that she misses Sunday mass, because she can’t get there anymore. So she watches it on television. She says the rosary every day. When I asked her where she gets the strength to keep on going, she smiled and pointed up to heaven. I asked her whether she was on the list to receive the Eucharist, because some wonderful volunteers from our parish go to the nursing home every week to bring the Eucharist to Catholics there. She lit up and told me she had been wanting to receive it since before Covid -- she stopped going to church about that time. I asked her what the Eucharist meant to her and she replied that it was like going to heaven. And when I thought about it, she had a point.

If we think about our first parents, Adam and Eve, before original sin we hear about them having a certain intimacy with God. God told Adam to name the animals and to tend the garden. He created Eve from Adam’s body because he recognized Adam’s loneliness. He gave Adam and Eve all they needed to know to enjoy paradise, and probably a time would have come when human beings would live out their lives in joyful, painless toil, caring for the garden, and then enter heaven-- without dying. Children would be born without pain or discomfort and continue God’s command to “fill the earth and subdue it”. Some of the early church fathers recognized this and because they saw Mary as untouched to original sin, called the end of her earthly life a Dormition, or falling asleep, rather than death.

Jesus was sent to begin the process of restoring the human race to what God had originally intended. As he told Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. And elsewhere, “the words I speak to you I do not speak on my own; the Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” So when we see how Jesus goes about dealing with those around him, we can glimpse something about this plan.

First, Jesus chooses the Apostles. We don’t know why he picked them, especially Judas. But maybe he picked these very ordinary men to show us that everyone is invited. And he picks you and I. When we are baptized we are invited into this great mystery, to become children of the Father, like Jesus himself. Like Judas, we can turn down the invitation. You can’t love unless you are free to love or not love.

Second, Jesus teaches the apostles. We see in the scriptures that this was not easy. They misunderstand him over and over again, and they almost desert him for good in the end. Jesus teaches you and I through the scriptures and the Church. We don’t understand everything either, and frequently get mixed up in our thinking, because the world is always trying to separate us from God by confusing us, for one thing. In this month of the Sacred Heart, we are being told by our society to celebrate all those brave souls who are unhappy with the sexual identity God gave them. And being human, we feel for them, those with same sex attraction, those who feel they’ve been born in the wrong body. And we don’t understand. And our missionaries, once proudly bringing Christ to people who hadn’t heard the good news, are now out there tending to material needs -- a good thing -- and leaving the indigenous people to follow their own ways instead of entering into the Christian family. And we feel ambiguous -- Christianity will always alter a culture, and for some, that’s a terrible thing. Being taught by Jesus is a life-long effort.

Disciples in Jesus’ time not only learned from the Master, but waited on his needs and tried to imitate his behavior and mannerisms. They were, in a sense, servants. Jesus elevates his disciples to friends --” you are no longer servants, but friends, because I have told you everything the Father has spoken to me”. And The Father seeks our friendship as well -- he desires to make us like himself, as he did Jesus.

Holy Communion is the deepest form of friendship God gives us in this life. We literally become one with Jesus, who lives on in the sacrament. Holy communion is also the taste of the heavenly banquet to which we’ve been invited. And in Holy Communion, like the Blessed Mother, we have the privilege of bearing Christ, literally, in our bodies, if only for a short while. Holy Communion also unites us with all those saints down through the ages, with our parents and grandparents, and with each other, because there is only one Jesus Christ.

The second Vatican Council called the Eucharist the source and summit of Christian life. When the bread and wine are transformed by the Holy Spirit into the Body and Blood of Jesus, everything begins again; and when we receive his flesh and blood into our own, we approach and indeed, taste heaven.

Trinity Sunday, 2023

John 3:16 - 18

There have been many attempts at explaining the Trinity.  I’ve even tried to do so a few times myself.  I’m convinced it can’t be done.  If you say the Trinity is one God acting in three different ways, as Creator, redeemer, and Sanctifier, for example, you are committing the heresy of modalism.  If you say that the Trinity is comparable to a shamrock with three leaves that remains one plant, that’s the heresy of partialism - the idea that the three persons together make up the one God.  If you believe that the three persons are independent of each other, then you are a trietheist.  So is the best thing not to think about the Trinity at all?

Well, obviously the Church does not think so.  We have a whole Sunday devoted to this mystery.  So I’ve given up hope of objectively understanding the mystery.  But I think the Gospel tells us something about how we fit into it.  

God (the Father) loves the world.  The world is everything that is, everything that he thinks about, because God holds it in existence.  Everything owes its existence to God’s sustaining power, which is tied up in love.  But here is the surprise.  God causes everything to exist, but does this with overwhelming love, and desires to fold everything into himself.  As Jesus said, and he only says what the Father tells him, “If I am lifted up, I will draw all things to myself”.  Or as Saint Paul says, “the whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time”.  Why? Because all of creation awaits redemption --which means to be taken up by God into himself.  And that is why God gave us the Son, his Son.  By becoming part of creation, the Son now makes it possible that creation, including we human beings, be redeemed, be taken up into the heart of the trinity.  

But God in his love for us leaves us with the final say.  Whoever believes in him will not be condemned.  And that is the critical part for you and I.  What does it mean to believe in Him?  It’s more than just to admit to a fact.  How do we understand this?  Well, this gospel comes from a larger section in which Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus his mission.  Right before what you hear, Jesus refers to something in the Old Testament, when the Israelites became angry with God over the food he had given them.  God then allowed serpents to infest the camp and many died from their bites. One scholar said that the serpents were always there, God just removed his protection. When they came to Moses in repentance, he was told to make a bronze image of a serpent and place it on a pole.  If you got bitten, you had to look at the image in order to be cured.  What did all this mean? For God to work his miracle of healing, he demanded an action which showed that the repentant person had faith. 

That’s what Jesus is talking about.  Believing in him means doing something because of that belief, however small. What do we really do because we believe in him?  If I don’t steal, is it because that’s God’s commandment or because I don’t want the consequences of getting caught?  To believe in Jesus means that we have to resemble Jesus in the way we live.  In his time and down through the years, if you were the disciple of a teacher, you were expected to be recognizable, which meant that you took on the mannerisms of the teacher, even to wearing the same kind of clothing, in addition to learning and practicing what the teacher taught.  

So the Father loves the Son -- Saint Thomas says it’s because the Son is God and as such is completely loveable.  And the Son loves the Father and offers himself and the  world of which he has become a part out of love.  And this connection between the World and the Son is created by the Holy Spirit, who caused Jesus to be formed in Mary’s womb and who acts to transform bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity ol Jesus at every Mass.  

And we who believe in him become part of this Trinitarian mystery.  

Imagine a family which consists of the parents and their biological son, and several adopted children.  The Son, the oldest, takes all that he has and buys an elaborate gift for his parents out of his love for them.  Before he gives the gift, he invites his adopted brothers and sisters to sign the card and thus be part of the givers of the gift.  Some do, some don’t.  That’s something like the invitation we have today, to believe in the Son.  

So on this Trinity Sunday let’s think about the wonderful invitation God gives us -- to join in the gift the Son gives to the Father, by believing in him, by imitating him, by looking like him.  And let us ask the Holy Spirit to do to us what he did to Mary and form us into other Christs.  

Fifth Sunday of Easter, cycle A

 John 14:1-12

If you read the news, it’s hard to get through a day without something new to worry about. It’s not just climate change or a nuclear war or a humanity threatening plague anymore. Now we worry about artificial intelligence taking over the world. If there will even be a world. There’s some new activity going on in the sun that might destroy our complex civilization that relies on satellites and electronic communication. And worse yet, it appears that the earth is rotating faster than it used to, which might set off planet busting earthquakes. But it’s silly to worry about these things. Of course disaster is something that will touch most of us sooner or later -- The people in Ukraine, the people in Sudan, were living normal lives not too long ago. And disaster can be closer and even more personal. The diagnosis of a terminal disease; a major accident that leaves you with six months of rehabilitation. And even when we worry about these things, it doesn't seem to help. Jesus today gives us and his apostles an answer to worry.

First he tells us that he is going to prepare a place for us, and once that is ready, he’ll come back for us. We can take comfort in that promise. How many martyrs went to their deaths comforted by that promise? I meet a lot of people not too far from death when I visit hospitals and nursing home. It’s truly remarkable the difference faith in Jesus makes. It isn’t that people without faith are frightened, because most aren’t. But they are resigned; they have nothing to look forward to. In contrast, it raises my spirits when I meet someone who is positively looking forward to the next life. Jesus’ words, “Let your hearts not be troubled…” are truly comforting.

Second, Jesus tells us something we need to know -- he is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus tells us no one comes to the father except through him. Those of us with friends and relatives who are not Christian or who have broken away from Christianity rightfully worry about them. But we shouldn’t worry too much, just enough to remember them in prayer. The best thing we can do is to live a Christian life -- participate in the sacraments, have a prayer life, treat other people the way we would like to be treated -- and one thing a lot of us don’t do, is try to develop a mind formed by the church. We Catholics keep coming back to Mass because there is something about our faith that draws us, that calls out to us. But how much better would things be for us and for our friends and neighbors if we made an effort to understand what the Church teaches and why she teaches it, and how it relates to the teachings of Christ. This is the way, this is the truth, this leads us to everlasting life. And as we become more and more in tune with the teachings of the church, we become better witnesses to those who have not yet been blessed with the graces we have been given. Jesus is the way, the Church is his bride and his body, entrusted with re presenting him down through the ages in word and in the Holy Eucharist.

Third, Jesus reveals the Father to us. In the Old Testament, after the fall of our first parents, you keep coming across the idea that no one can see God and live. When God has any interaction with human beings, it’s mysterious, like visions and dreams; or it’s overwhelming, like the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire that lead the Israelites through the desert. In the Garden of Eden God and Adam spoke together like friends. Jesus in today’s gospel tells Philip that if you have seen him, you’ve seen the Father; and if you have heard him, those are the words of the Father. And if you still don’t get it, look at what Jesus has done -- walked on water, driven out demons, healed the sick, raised the dead, a long list -- but things that only God can do. Granted, others have worked miracles. But none claimed to be the source of the miracles, as Jesus did.

So with these assurances, Jesus tells us not to let our hearts be troubled. And perhaps we should ask on this fifth Sunday after celebrating his victory over sin and death, whether we are troubled? Because being troubled may be a sign that our faith needs some shoring up. And we can say that surrender prayer, Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything.