The actual Pentecost event occurred on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost. The Jewish Feast is also known as the Festival of Weeks which was the completion of the seven weeks following Passover. This was a time of Thanksgiving during which the harvest took place and the first fruits were brought to the Temple. The day […]
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Today’s scriptures reflect on the experience of the disciples following the Ascension; Saint Luke reports the Ascension of Jesus twice, once at the end of his Gospel (Luke 24:50-53) and again at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:6-12), which we hear today. In the dioceses of Pennsylvania we celebrated the Ascension […]
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This Gospel is part of what is known as the Last Supper Discourse. They had a difficulty understanding this when they heard it before the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. We hear it, not only after these events, but also after both the Ascension and Pentecost. We also have two thousand years of Christianity […]
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An important dimension of the life of the Church which has become visible in the last fifty years is the order of deacons. By now many Catholics are familiar with the kind of deacons who are married men serving as critical co-workers of priests in parish ministry and in other forms of specialized pastoral ministry […]
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This Sunday of the Easter Season is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The Gospel is one in which Jesus teaches us about the Good Shepherd. This Sermon of Jesus took place while Jesus was in the area of Jerusalem teaching and performing great deeds. He was preparing to celebrate the Jewish Feast of the Dedication […]
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Today’s scripture readings open with the scene of Saint Peter preaching to a large group of people in Jerusalem on the feast of Pentecost. Pentecost was one of the three pilgrimage feasts that required Jewish men (often joined by their entire family) to make a trek to the Holy City, and so it was typical […]
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Gospel JN 20:19-31 The Gospel begins with Easter Sunday and ends with the Sunday after Easter. On Easter Sunday the disciples were still mourning the death of Jesus, and even though they had heard reports that the tomb was empty and that Jesus is Risen, this reality was too much for them to accept and […]
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On this greatest day of the year Christians everywhere rejoice over the resurrection of Christ from the dead and our sharing in his Paschal victory. While we never separate the resurrection from the incarnation, life, and death of Christ, it stands as the central moment of history and is the source of all Christian hope. […]
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Gospel MT 26:14-27:66 We hear the Passion account from St. Matthew as we begin this Holy Week. His account of the Passion emphasizes how Jesus was obedient to the will of the Father, even to point of accepting death on the cross. Jesus speaks of this several times from the Last Supper, to Gethsemane where […]
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The prophet Ezekiel greets us this Sunday with the words: “Thus says the Lord God—O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them” (Eze 37:12). Ezekiel is among the earlier voices in the Bible to speak of resurrection. In Judaism, belief in a resurrection of sorts only came about over […]
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