Readings: Acts of the Apostles 2, 42-47; Psalm 118; 1 Peter 1, 3-9; John 20, 19-31

Intro to the Readings – 2^nd Sunday of Easter

 Our first reading today is from Acts of the Apostles.  Remember this is part 2 of Luke’s story of Jesus and the Early Church, part one being his Gospel.  In Acts, Luke picks up the story right after the Resurrection.  He repeats the short piece about the Ascension, but the main body of Acts deals with the spread of the Good News to the Gentile World.  Our reading today is early in the story and is a kind of interlude about the early Christian church in Jerusalem. 

 
The few verses in today’s reading give us what I will call an idyllic view of that community.  And interestingly Luke, writing to a Greek audience uses a word in today’s reading, which only appears here in the Bible, but is commonly used in Greek literature to describe a kind of Utopian society.  I mention this because we could easily feel discouraged when we listen to what that early community was like and then reflect on our own community here today in 2011.  But for Luke’s original readers, this community is the one described by Plato, Ovid and other Greeks as the ideal community where all possessions are shared. 

 There is one other item worth noting in the reading and that is the four actions of this early community, the teaching of the apostles, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers.  These are a great summary too of what Jesus did in his life.

 The second reading today is from the First Letter of Peter.  It was written to the churches in what is today Turkey and Syria.  The communities are having a tough time due to their faith, although they are not being persecuted yet.  Peter’s letter offers them great encouragement.  He probably wrote it around the year 64 from Rome. 

Second Sunday of Easter 2011 – Homily

Today, after we pray the our Father and a few other short prayers I will turn to you and say “ the peace of the Lord be with you all” but what is that ‘peace’?  I think we have a clue from the gospel just read.  To get a better understanding we need to look closely at what is happening in John’s gospel. 

Our reading today comes from the second half of Chapter 20.  Chapter 20 begins with the words “it was very early in the morning on the first day of the week, and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb.”  By the way, chapter 19 ends with Jesus being laid in the tomb.  So we know we are on Easter Sunday morning.  What John’s Gospel proceeds to do is show that faith in the resurrection comes slowly.  Jesus’ disciples were not expecting it.  So when Mary finds the tomb empty her immediate conclusion is someone has taken the body.  Peter and another disciple, the ‘beloved’ disciple show up after Mary told them what she had discovered, and we are told they saw the garments, and that the ‘beloved disciple’ saw and believed, nothing about Peter believing yet. 

 And then we have today’s reading.  It is the same day, but evening.  They are all in a locked room, afraid of the Jews.  So I have to wonder, how big an impact had this early ‘faith’ of the beloved disciple had on the group.  By the way, Mary did see a gardener whom she recognizes when he calls her by name, but I suspect her story was put down to the rantings of a grieving woman??  So Jesus appears in the room, and twice says “peace be with you”.  What is this peace?  He immediately breathes on them, and remember an earlier breathing – in the book of Genesis, when God breathes on the clay and forms man, we now have God again breathing and forming new men!  People filled with the Holy Spirit.  In human terms I feel that this “peace be with you” had the same effect as when a child wakes up in the night crying and a parent wraps them in their arms and says “its OK, I’m here with you”.  The child feels safe. 

 
The resurrection, belief in the resurrection, makes us different people.  Yes it is the leap of faith, not a solid provable fact, but that faith gives us a hope, and a security that nothing can really harm us.  It is what gave the apostles the courage to go out and face that group of hostile Jews.  It is what brings us here this morning. 

 Remember in the first reading today from Acts, that little early idylic community which Luke described, we are not that different.  We come together to break bread, to pray, to learn the teaching of Jesus, and we do share our possessions.  This morning we will be giving anther $2,000 to the CCAC and also some money to the Plano Homes, and those are just two small examples of sharing our possessions.

 So today at our mass, when I say “the peace of the Lord be with you all” reflect for a moment before we offer each other the sign of that peace, do you feel like the child, wrapped and safe?

Picture 1:     Penny receiving a check from Bobby for Plano Community Homes

Picture 2:    Offertory with brother & sister, Bobby & Marlene

Picture 3:    Leo with Jackie

Picture 4:   Wendy's parents

Picture 5:   Gilberto preparing for the 5 Boro Bike tour with 2 of Rosemary's Nephew's kids, Emma & William 

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