The Peace of Christ vs the Peace of the World (St. Peter and St. Paul - Cycle C)

To understand the Gospel reading for this Sunday more fully, we need to consider the geographical location where the passage takes places. Jesus goes with the disciples to Caesarea Philippi, a town situated in the modern day territory of the Golan Heights in Israel. The area had many pagan temples and was notorious for the rituals practiced there.

The most horrific of these rituals was performed at the mouth of a cave known as the Gates of Hell. Here parents performed child sacrifice, killing their own children, in order to obtain favors from their gods. The very idea of visiting this area would have been shocking to the disciples.

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Self-Sacrifice is at the Heart of the Eucharist (Corpus Christi - Cycle C)

Years ago, I was teaching a class where I was discussing going on pilgrimages to Marian apparition sites, when someone asked me why we need to go to such places, since everything we need spiritually is right here in our church at home. My response was that sometimes we need to go to a faraway holy place to be open to the grace to appreciate what we have at home. Little did I know that I was talking about myself.

When I journeyed to the Marian apparition site of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina for the first time, I received the grace to see the gifts of the Church in a whole new light. I realized that God supplies us with everything we need spiritually through the day-to-day life of our parish church. The sacraments, the prayers, the devotional life - all these are there for me.

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The Holy Trinity Is Our Only Fulfillment (Trinity Sunday - Cycle C)

Catholic theology starts with the premise that God is one. God has one, indivisible nature. At the same time, we also believe that God has three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are distinct from each other and yet share that one indivisible nature. We do not have three Gods, but only one. At the same time, the three persons of the Holy Trinity are not merely modes of expression in God, but are actual persons. So God is both indivisibly one and yet has three distinct persons.

One way to try to conceptualize the mystery of the Holy Trinity is to start with the premise that God is infinite love. Love, by its very nature, requires a love dynamic. In God, there is the Father, who is the One Who Loves. His love is received and reciprocated by the Son, who is the Beloved. The love that exists between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is an eternal exchange of infinite love, which is not bound by time, but takes place in the eternal timeless now of God’s infinite nature.

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Making Each Day Like Pentecost (Pentecost Sunday - Cycle C)

After Jesus was crucified, the disciples hid away behind locked doors for fear of suffering the same fate themselves. When Jesus rose from the dead and revealed himself to them, the disciples still remained in hiding. But on Pentecost they went forth to proclaim the Good News and they kept on proclaiming it, despite threats and persecution. In fact, eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred for their faith.

What made the difference was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Once they received the Holy Spirit, they had the courage and the strength to go forth. They were empowered for ministry. In the same way, we too derive our spiritual strength from the grace we receive through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is the animating principle of the Church.

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What the Ascension Enjoins Upon Us to Do (Ascension Sunday - Cycle C)

In Greek mythology, the belief was that gods could become incarnate for short periods of time. They could take on human or animal forms just for a day or two and then could shed their incarnate shapes as if nothing had happened. The Catholic understanding of the incarnation is quite different. As Catholics, we believe that the incarnation was not a temporary, passing action of Christ, but a permanent act, which transformed the whole history of creation.

God is love and he created the world out of love to share his love with his creation. Humanity was created good and lived in the blessed state of Paradise in the beginning. But through the sin of our first parents, humanity fell from grace, resulting in a wedge between God and his creation. But even when human race was in darkness, God did not abandon us. He became incarnate as Jesus Christ - that is, he came among us as one of us, taking on a human nature, becoming like us in every way but sin.

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