Readings: Acts of the Apostles 10, 34-43; Psalm 118, This is the The Day the Lord has made, let us & Rejoice and be Glad; Corinthians 5, 6-8; John 20, 1-9. 

Acts observations—(Author, Date, Place, Subject)

 Author: This is Luke, the physician, the companion of Paul, the Gentile writing for Gentile Christians, and the same Luke who wrote the Gospel of Luke.

 Date: Around 65 years after Christ.  Probably just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (70 C.E., a big date in Jewish history), or Luke would have probably mentioned it. 

Place: probably Ephesus, today a ruin on the west coast of Turkey south of Constantinople.  Once this town was a major Christian center.

 Subject: the material works like in concentric, expanding circles, beginning in Jerusalem and ending in Rome after touching Judea, Syria, Ephesus, & Europe.  It treats activities in the early Christian community, some of which may describe the way they wished things were. 

 Sources: Good News Bible, New Interpreter’s Study Bible, St. Louis U. Jesuits’ Liturgical web

Easter Life All Around Us

 I had an Easter Event happen to me recently.  The event took place on a bus.  Bus number 64.   An ordinary bus and not an ordinary bus.  It is a Parisian bus that runs from the Eiffel Tower on the west and what is called the left bank, through the historic center of Paris, for example the Louvre & Notre Dame, over the river Seine to the right bank, to a beautiful park near the former location of the Bastille on the east side. 

 I am on this bus at about 6:00 P.M., rush hour.    I have caught the bus going in the direction of the Eiffel Tower, where Rosemary, Mary Ellen & I have a small hotel.  I caught the bus just after it crossed the Seine.  The bus is pretty full and I am able to get into my favorite nook, a place I can stand next to the window on the left side, half way down the bus, across from the exit. 

 Three events occur on this bus that make it an Easter event for me. 

 First, we are moving in heavy traffic on a four lane street, one way street which will divide into two right & two left.  The bus is going right & is in the middle lane.  On the left side of the bus is a black Mercedes.  He is in the middle lane going left, but wants to go right like we are.  The bus is in the way.  The driver knows he is there & what he wants to do.

 What do you think he did?  To heighten the drama, the Mercedes has a German license plate.   Remember, France was defeated and occupied by Germans in WW II. 

 I am watching all this. 

 What the bus driver did was stop and let the German Mercedes go in front of him.  I was rather stunned.

 Next, secondly, a white woman in her 40’s gets on and works her way down the aisle which is full mostly of men & young people.  Ahead of me and on the opposite side of the bus are 4 seats facing the aisle, each with a man seated. 

 After a couple of moments the youngest, a guy about 19-22 gets up and offers the lady his seat.  He is self conscious.  He is Arab or North African.  The lady declines and he returns to his seat. 

 Again I am moved by the simple goodness of a person.

 So what do I do? This is the third thing.   I want to go over and hug this kid.  I’m thinking I should say something.  I start memorizing 2-3 sentences in French.  The bus is filling so that the aisle is packed between us.  I am beginning to have doubt.  These French speakers will think I am a stupid American trying to use French. 

 Suddenly I notice I have missed my stop.  I have to reach through the crowd.  I press the button.  I know I have a three block wait, so I plunge into the crowd, get to the kid, and tell him he did something good.  I am happy with him.  Everyone looks up and the kid smiles, sheepishly. 

 I jump off the bus.  I feel exultant. 

 There are Easter events & Easter people all around us, folks.  It is like our Great Easter Egg Hunt.  What is your Easter event?

 Picture 1:    Easter Mass Beginning      

 Picture 2:    One Family Offertory, Christine, her daughter, Megan, grandmother Diane, & Chris's sister D'Arcy

 Picture 3:    Kids' Korner

 Picture 4:    Believe it or not, the Quads

 Picture 5:    The Great Easter Egg Hunt 

Readings: Entry Reading, Matthew 21, 1-11; Isaiah 50, 4-7; Psalm 22, My God, My God, why have You abandoned me?; Philippians 2, 6-11; Passion, Matthew 26. 

Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday 2011    

Intro to the Readings

 Today we will be celebrating both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday – two extremes – the one an occasion of great joy and celebration with the palms, when Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem being hailed as King, the other is our reading of the Passion of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel.  Each of the evangelists gives us an account of Jesus’ last days.  It might help to put it into perspective by considering, particularly for those of you who were alive and can remember the assassination of President John Kennedy, the time lapse between the event and the writing of the gospel narratives.  Our views of president Kennedy have been affected by time.  So too the account of Jesus’ death is influenced by the events taking place when these accounts were written.

 In brief, Matthew and Mark are very similar and present a Jesus who has been abandoned by all!  The disciples do not come off too well, they fall asleep on him three times, Peter denies him three times, and Jesus’ last words from the cross are “My God, why have you abandoned me. 

For Luke, Jesus is not abandoned, the disciples appear in a much more sympathetic light.   The people are not against Jesus, three times Pilate declares Jesus innocent, and in Luke, Jesus heals the soldier whose ear is cut off.  He prays for the women of Jerusalem, he forgives those who persecute him, promising the good thief heaven and finally prays, ”Into your hands I commend my spirit”. 

 John has a Jesus who is able to declare “I lay down my life and I take it up again, no one takes it from me”.  On the cross his royalty is proclaimed in three languages, Pilate declares him King of the Jews, his Mother and beloved disciple are with him at the foot of the cross, and his final words are “it is finished”. 

 How are we to understand these different presentations?  Not as contradictions but as different sides of a diamond, because we will need Jesus differently in our different circumstances, at different times in our lives.  Sometimes we will feel abandoned, sometimes in need of comfort and other times assured of God’s infinite power.

 Homily

I want to use this time for the homily, very briefly.  A question I would have you consider as we listen to the gospel reading today – who are you in those readings? 

Are you one of the crowd on Palm Sunday cheering wildly as Jesus rides into Jerusalem?  Are you one of the disciples who abandoned Jesus when things got tough, or Peter who denied him three times, or Judas who betrayed him?  Are you Pilate, who declares his own innocence by washing his hands of the whole thing? 

 
This may seem a bit of an extreme question, but remember, the way the gospel story is presented by each of the evangelists is colored by the circumstances in which their account has been written.

Picture 1:   The Passion with Claire Occhipinti helping

Picture 2:   The Kiddos, Georgie, Natalie, J.E., and Kendall

Picture 3:   Offertory, Tom & Teresa Quinn

Picture 4:   Communion helpers, Rob & Beth Robinson and Mike Carrell

Picture 5:   Communion helpers, Joanne, Tom & Lynda Fleming 

Readings: Ezekiel 37, 1-14 (1-11 not in lectionary); Psalm 130, With the Lord there is Mercy and Fullness of Redemption; Romans 8, 8-11; John 11, 1-45, The raising of Lazarus
 

Ezekiel 37, observations:  (Author, When, Message)

           Author: Ezekiel, for real.  He is unique because he was not only one of the Big 3 Prophets (along with Isaiah & Jeremiah), but he was also a priest working in the temple. 

          When: before & during the Babylonian Captivity, therefore around 585 before Christ.  His audience was these people. 

          Message: Like the classic prophet, he condemns, warns, and consoles.  We pick up on the consolation end.  I want to read the first verses which lead up to our selection, because it is the fun dry bones story, about which we have the Spiritual.  It is a shame the richer story is not included.  This is metaphor.  The dry bones can stand for the people in captivity; they can stand for me.  Get out of that tomb!

 Sources: New Interpreter’s Study Bible, Good News Bible, St. Louis U. with Reginald Fuller, Daniel Westberg, Larry Gillick, Jesuits.

Get out of that tomb!

 One of the blessings of travel for me is the deepening of gratitude in me for how fortunate I am right here.  Another blessing comes with meeting special people along the way.

 I met one of these special people in Normandy on our trip to France.  When we arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, we immediately took the train to a little village called Bayeux in Normandy. 

 The next day we took a moving tour of the June 6, D Day landings on Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, three of the cemeteries, plus a handful of other memorials. 

 The following day we visited a place I was to discover was one of the four Middle Age pilgrimage sites.  First off, I did not know of four.  Know the other three?   Jerusalem, Rome, & Santiago de Campostella in the NW province of Galicia in Spain. 

 The  place we visited was called Mont San Michel and has been a Benedictine monastery for centuries, since around 900.  It is built on a large rock off of the coast of France, reached only by a causeway because high tide surrounds the rock with water. 

 Visiting the monastery, which was actually used as a prison for about a century after the French Revolution in 1789, was moving.  Equally moving for me was the woman who took us out there, the second point.

 One of those special persons.  She was simply driving a hotel van from Bayeux to Mont San Michel.  She could have said nothing.  Instead, she was full of personality and information about everything.  I came to really admirer her, especially when she shared her story.

 She said she had gone through a painful lay off and could not find work.  So she went to plan B, as she called it, driving the van for the little Churchill Hotel in Bayeux. 

 She did not just drive.  She described everything along the way and shared more about the history of Mont San Michel than I had even read.  She became a friend to such an extent that we went out with her the next afternoon, after she did her morning drive, to a little town she told us we would love, Honfleur.  We did.

 Why talk about her?  Because she exemplifies what is being talked about here, getting out of the tomb where we are half dead and coming to fuller life. She said getting laid off just about killed her, especially when she could not find any replacement.  She was in the tomb, she was not alive.

 The message is ‘get out of that tomb.’  Where am I stuck?  We know the places, the addictions & the obsessions, the laziness and the over indulgence.  The goal is simply to be a person more fully alive.

 Where is your tomb?

 Picture 1:   The Community    

 Picture 2:   Leo & his daddy, Ray  

 Picture 3:   Maggie & her daddy, Tom

 Picture 4:   Mont San Michel, Normandy, France

 Picture 5:   Wedding of Jill Carleton & Stephen Egal