Sunday, July 26, 2026    17th Sun in Ord Time

 Matthew 13:44-46

Jesus said to his disciples:
"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,
which a person finds and hides again,
and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant
searching for fine pearls. 
When he finds a pearl of great price,
he goes and sells all that he has and buys it."

Hidden Treasures and Priceless Pearls  Mt 13  44-46  

This is the season.   After those crowds of sunbathers and swimmers down the shore have flocked all day to the beaches of New Jersey, in the evening twilight one can see a lone individual here and there pacing up and down swinging a metal detector back and forth across the tired sand.  He is searching for a buried treasure or, so to speak, a pearl of great price.    Occasionally he stops, he stoops, he digs through the sand to find the metal that set off a signal.    Jesus's parable vividly describes this person coming upon a treasure hidden in the ground.  

 

First some general words about Jesus’s teaching and then some reflections on the two simple parables in today’s gospel.

Jesus attempts to teach us the truth of the kingdom of God through a series of miracles and stories.   For some who witness his miracles, the miracles are a source of faith in God’s hand powerfully present in Jesus’s words and works.   Even if we have trouble believing the miracles, say, of healing , we should remember that Jesus undertakes them, yes, with love for those healed but to illustrate his  preaching and teaching.   They are not simply magic unconnected to Jesus message and his love for all people.

As for the stories that Jesus loves to tell in his preaching, they include the simple parables that we read today about the kingdom of God as well as more complicated stories that might have two or three scenes such as the parable of the prodigal son, his father and his brother.     These parables shed light on some characteristic of God’s care of us.   So in the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus is illustrating for the pharisaical among us that his Father in heaven not only forgives the repentant sinner but strives to welcome and embrace the sinner.    Both the full story parable of the prodigal and the two very simple comparison parables in today’s reading underline for those listening the characteristics of God where God might be experienced as elusive or hidden.

Today we hear that the kingdom of God is like a treasure buried in a field or a pearl of great price…   Jesus paints pictures of astonished  seekers who have suddenly found some great value within their reach.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,
which a person finds and hides again,
and out of joy goes and sells all they have and buys that field. 

Some individual happens to dig up a treasure in what can be thought of as a farm field.   Then he reburies it so that he can convince the owner of the field into selling the field cheaply.    Jesus often spices up his parables with actors of unsavory behavior not to approve of this behavior but to fully engage listeners with the emotions of surprise, of desire and of anxiety.    These are the emotions that Jesus brings out in his New Testament listeners.   His listeners are surprised that he, someone coming from a small country town and not Jerusalem, is announcing God’s Kingdom; he leads these listeners to desire to be part of this saving kingdom; these listeners are anxious to find a way into membership

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant
searching for fine pearls. 
When he finds a pearl of great price,
he goes and sells all that he has and buys it."

The merchant who finds the pearl of great price might need to keep to himself the value of the pearl in order to prevent others from bidding up the price but, unlike the hidden treasure, in this situation the seller knows or should know something about its value, too.   Here again the desire and the anxiety of a possible loss of the pearl drives the merchant into an intense strategy so that he can become its owner.

The intense desire to give up all that one has in order to have the means to purchase the field or the pearl highlights our longing for the values found in the kingdom of God, divine values that we may have been neglecting in our general seeking but values that surprise us: human dignity, human life supported by the sharing of God’s gifts, compassion for ourselves and others in times of suffering.  Dignity, shared gifts, compassion.   Such characteristics of life are priceless.   

These gifts, of course, are by their nature gifts to be shared with others.  Though, I did read one commentator that considers these parables as illustrating God’s union with the heart of the individual as more the key to understanding them.   And here Jesus does not discuss any sharing of these treasures with the community.

But surely we express our gratitude for human dignity when genuine relationships are shared with others, when our practical needs are shared with one another and when we support each other in times of trouble.   All these are the signs of some otherwise hidden treasure.   Most of us would miss these signs dearly if they were absent even for a day. 

Fortunately in this time of war, and government measures of arrest and deportation of immigrants, and gaping disregard for truth, there are treasures everywhere but we need to look in the right place.  

For example, I was invited two weeks ago to accompany two young immigrants from Colombia, a married couple, as they waited for their appointments on the sidewalk outside the Philadelphia ICE office.  Each has applied for Asylum because their lives were threatened in their former home.    Their work with young people in their native city interfered with the recruiting of gang members.   Thus their need to flee to the United States.  Fortunately after the ICE office hearings each one returned to the sidewalk free for another year.  May this coming year provide them a road to citizenship.   Each day now their restaurant employers welcome them but surely  someday their new community can put their talents to full use.   Why do we make them hide their gifts?

 

Or visit the St. Raphaela’s retreat house in Haverford and meet a young man who earlier completed the Ignatian retreat in everyday life while he dedicaated much of his time to landscaping the retreat house property.    Now happily married with a master’s degree in human development, he will be creating advocates for God’s creation by leading ecology retreats on the same grounds he landscapes.

 

Or be present two months ago at this year’s ceremony celebrating about forty graduates of St. Joseph’s University whose first year out of college will be a volunteer year in one of many different service programs, all involving service of community needs and most involving community living and spiritual enrichment.

 

And, of course, I note the twenty men in the United States who will be pronouncing their first vows as Jesuits this August.

 

You all have men and women like this in your memories.  Wave your metal detector over them who are among our treasures, our pearls of great price.   Hear a loud bleep.   God chooses them to tell us about the kingdom.

 

 

 

LOUIS PAUZANO   JULY 7, 2026

Readings:   Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

                   Romans 14: 7=9, 10-12

                   John 14: 1-6

 

We pray now for consolations for Lou’s wonderful family, RoseAnne, Lauren. Lou, Jr. and Christopher and the grandchildren.   The family took a look at the scripture readings for funerals suggested by the Church and they have chosen two illuminating readings for dad’s funeral liturgy and I have added the gospel.   In the light of these readings we all mourn with them and put our arms around them in sharing their sorrow.  

First the words of Ecclesiastes.   The ancient wisdom reading from Ecclesiastes proclaims that God makes every moment beautiful within God’s own time. 

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

 

Yesterday I opened my copy of the St. Joseph’s Prep yearbook of 67 years ago and there is a picture of Lou’s smiling open face.   And I notice that his parents are listed as patrons of that Yearbook.  So there was a time for Lou to be a son of his parents.  And we give thanks for that.    A time for him to further his education at St. Joseph’s University with both a bachelor’s and a Master’s degrees preparing him for service in the banking community of Philadelphia retiring finally as a Vice President.   There were times for him to constantly support both alma maters even with gifts sent in the last years of his life.  He never forgot his education.  And especially at the Prep he led the alumni association for some years.   His phone calls and signature reminders helped support scholarships at the Prep now lasting into the future.   And he always kept his ’59 classmates at the center of these relationships.

 

But more personally: a time to marry, a time to give of himself as husband to RoseAnne, a time of fatherhood and grandfatherhood.   A time to laugh and to dance.  All the while a time as banker and planner to support and encourage others, even to support the successful, shall we say family enterprise, important to so many families, First Impressions Daycare.   Later Lou had a time to seek life-saving medical care.   A time to depend on the love of Roseanne and that of the three stars in their lives, his children who helped him keep up with activities of all kinds.  So it was a time to engage with his Prep classmates especially at class reunions. 

 

And for many decades it was always a time to welcome family and friends to that sanctuary of welcome on Cleveland St.   I myself was a half-dozen times welcome there in recent years.   Lou, not so mobile, but always with time to engage and encourage and RoseAnne always feeding me as she did anyone who came into their sacred place.

 

But now, now, a time of sorrow for Lou’s family and all of us here.    But also now: all in God’s time we can put the pieces of Lou’s life together into a beautiful mosaic of commitment and love.

 

The Letter to Romans which we also read this morning affirms the faith that sustained Lou and Roseanne and their family for all these years.

 

“For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

Paul in Romans states this belief: living and dying we belong to Jesus Christ.   This might not be so easy to see in the lives of some people.   But for Lou it is self-evident.  Lou’s life is proof of a personal source of Creation who orients our hearts and souls to love and to service.   And in that Spirit Lou lives now with Jesus the Lord of the risen life.   Lou and his family in both life and death belong to the Lord.

Let me take one moment to remember Lou’s Prep class of 1959.    In the last four or five years at least twenty of Lou’s Prep classmates have taken up residence with the risen Lord and I see them welcoming Lou and preparing a place for all of us.   This welcoming event is for us an image of joy.

And in that spirt some brief words about the gospel: the words from the gospel of John remind me of how Lou lived his own life in the same way that Jesus lived his life.   Jesus taught us about the love of God whom he called Father.   And Lou, as well, in his lived experience taught us about the love of God.

In this gospel Jesus is saying goodbye to the men and women who had been following him; he tells them that in the kingdom of God there are many dwelling places and, when he goes there, he will prepare a place for them.   I think that Lou is now at work with Jesus doing just that.  That is, he is doing what he did so ably while among us.  He now is preparing places for us, heavenly places like those that cared here for his children and so many other children, heavenly places for the young to learn what they might have missed on earth, heavenly places to gather families just like the sacred place on Cleveland Street and places, too, for the different communities of heaven.   For Lou heaven is a joyful time for him with Jesus to prepare our future homes.  I see him there and I thank God for sending him among us here.

 

13^th Sun in Ord Time  SJU June 28, 2026

Gospel  Matthew 10:37-42

Jesus said to his apostles:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." "Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man’s reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”

 

13^th of the Year   SJU 11 AM  June 28, 2026

Suddenly it is the middle of summer, a favorite time for many of us because of the long hours of light and the lively colors of the season:  the flowers and the blue skies.   As I speak families are setting up their Sunday barbecues just a mile or two away in West Fairmount Park.   The John B. Kelly Pool there will open at Noon.   We will try to finish on time.  But putting God first as we are encouraged to do in today’s gospel, we bring ourselves into the Chapel here with its own beautiful windows and we give thanks for the leisure of the season.  Some of us might welcome silence right now.   So yes, I will be brief to allow for that.

Our three readings are intriguing.   I comment on the first reading about the prophet Elisha and also the gospel.    Jesus in the gospel reminds us that before anything else in our lives God comes first.   Indeed, before any person, God comes first, first even for parents who adore their beautiful children.   Parents must love God first.   It is God who presents children as gifts for parents to love and nourish.   Parents are called by God to this love of their children.   In general, of course, all of us, parents or not, are to lose and then rediscover life in the love and service of others.

The gospel goes on:  A sentence or two later Jesus talks about welcoming prophets.   Whoever receives a prophet because the person is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.   This phrase about reward for those who welcome prophets occurs, as I indicated, in today’s gospel.  But let us go to the first reading from the Second Book of Kings where “reward” is what happens after the Old Testament prophet Elisha is welcome by a woman and her husband.  This story about Elisha and his hostess comes to us from nearly three thousand years ago.  

 A woman suggests to her husband that they provide hospitality for the prophet Elisha.   And so they do.    Elisha discovers that the woman and her husband are childless, this in a culture where a woman unable to have children is considered a humiliating failure and even someone punished in this way by God.   Elisha therefore plans a reward for her.   The prophet summons the woman and says to her:  “This time next year, you will be fondling a baby son.”  Yes, the point Jesus made in the gospel is clear here:  Whoever receives a prophet because the person is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.

Jesus also claims that simple gestures extended even to the least important disciple are also worthy of reward.  The gesture need not be room and board for a famous prophet.   Even the person who sees a thirsty disciple (repeat a thirsty disciple) and rushes in with a drink of cold water for that disciple, no matter how unimportant he or she is, will surely not go without a reward.

First of all, Jesus tells us, the thirsty person must be recognized as a disciple.   On occasion, to give an evident example, I see two women from the local Protestant church standing on the sidewalk on 54^th St. across from the Hagan Arena.    They have a large sign proclaiming how Jesus comes to save us.  They are eager to engage those passing by in conversation and to hand out flyers with invitations to their church.   Yes, I could offer them a drink but Jesus is not discussing such an offer as a part of a simple transaction, that is, not every drink offered automatically means we earn something from God.   No, offering a drink must be part of an act of love and support for the disciple.    Yes, give those two women glasses of water and also exchange praise and thanks to God while doing this.   Such a gesture benefiting thirsty sidewalk preachers is praiseworthy in God’s sight.  

But let’s be clear a disciple is any human being offering love or service to any other human being.  The simple encouragement of such a person is like a glass of cold water feeding the person’s desire to assist others, important as a glass of cold water offered to a thirsty Pope.

Yes, a thirsty Pope.  And Pope Leo is surely thirsty.    Let me conclude with his timely request.    Day after day he is thirsting for peace.  Two days ago on Friday once again the Pope repeated his condemnation of war.  This time during an address to the Cardinals of the Catholic Church gathered in Rome.   I quote:  “War is never worthy of humanity, and it is never blessed by God, because, even if we are equipped with high-tech weapons, the Creator has endowed us with intelligence and free will to resolve conflicts as human beings and not as beasts. That the unity of the human family takes precedence over individual peoples and states is not merely a biological fact; it is an ethical principle. Peace is a duty of justice because we are one human family, a ‘magnifica humanitas’ that finds its head and redeemer in Christ.” 

I know that Jesus is enjoying the peace and blessings of heavenly joy in the life of the resurrection.    Theologians think of Jesus as first offering sympathy to those of us who are still suffering on this earth and also as sending us the Spirit to strengthen us.    But I sometimes imagine Jesus looking at Magnifica Humanitas in deep sorrow when he sees the children who are starving and the families who are losing loved ones in war.    Theologians tell me, however, that in heaven there is no sorrow or suffering.   So I have to imagine that Jesus already suffered all things for us while on earth.  

As the Pope indicates the Spirit is sent to inspire us to use our intelligence and free will to bring peace to this earth.   Our glasses of cold water, our simple gestures, are part of the package.

Even a glass of water, and even any gesture of encouragement, offered to anyone seeking to do God’s will not go without reward.

 

 

Corpus Christi   June 7, 2026    SJU 11:00 AM

 

     This feast of Corpus Christi always has a special place in my heart because it is the anniversary of my First Mass some 54 years ago.   The Feast, the Mass, and my ordination the day before all came together to make a coherent celebration.

 

     And over all these past years the Body of Christ in the Eucharist accompanied me in thousands of places.

 

E. g. I concelebrated at a  Corpus Christi Feast Day Mass in a small town in Mexico.  Firecrackers were going off actually inside the church.   This was, I am told, accidental but the noise and the burst of color added to the explosion of praise and song led by the mariachi band.

 

And as grace would have it, my one opportunity to visit the great Gothic Cathedral of Chartres in France occurred on the Feast of Corpus Christi.   I surprised myself arriving at the doors of this Cathedral dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God at exactly the hour when the Sunday Mass of Corpus Christi was beginning. 

 

     And those of us present 50 years ago at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress here in Philadelphia remember it for several reasons.    Our Jesuit Father Ed Brady, so active in justice issues here at SJU, was conscious of the broad meaning of the Eucharist.   He helped Cardinal Krol and the local church organize a shipment of grain and emergency food sent that summer to a drought stricken part of the world.  That Congress, too, was memorable because three saints, each short of stature but tall on holiness and hope appeared together on the same stage in Philadelphia: Dom Helder Camara from a poor area of Brazil, Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe who founded Jesuit Refugee Services and  Mother Teresa who founded services for the dying poor in several continents.  All three witnesses of terrible human suffering; all three proclaiming a message of hope and God’s love.

 

     And still just yesterday in our City a prayerful Corpus Christi procession with great devotion took part in South Philadelphia through the streets between two of the Latino parishes (Annunciation and St. Thomas Aquinas) and ending at the Shrine of St Rita of Cascia on South Broad St.   I was blessed to join a part of the walk in which the monstrance displaying the Body of Christ was carried led by a dozen young altar servers with flower petals, incense and the Cross.   Teenage girls scattered the flower petals along Tasker St. to beautify the Lord’s path.  We called upon Jesus and his Mother in song and prayer to protect our Latino families from deportation and ended with Mass at St. Rita’s.   Among the hundreds in the procession were many young people, many Latino families, parents with their children of all ages.   The event was organized by a prophetic local group called Faithful Philadelphia which has been proclaiming the need for just paths to citizenship for our neighbors.   

    

     To summarize these events that I describe: Catholics who have an experience of their community as the Body and Blood of Christ find support in their lives from both the word of God and the sacrament of Holy Communion.   The sacrament invites us into a culture of solidarity far different from a contrasting national Christian culture which sometimes acts as a cover for white supremacy.   To be fed by the Body of Christ is to take part in the willingness of the community to contribute to the common good.   We are one body in the one Lord living together and guided by Catholic Social Teaching.   Its most important principle: the dignity of every single human being created in God’s image.   Just this morning P:ope Leo while celebrating Mass for over a million people in Madrid expanded this message preaching that God identified with the poor, the downtrodden and those who are alone and forsaken.

 

     I mentioned in the opening remark that my own First Mass took place years ago on the Feast of Corpus Christi, a Sunday like today.   At any First Mass Families like my own go out of their way to provide extra music and flowers and very often a reception afterwards.  Such celebrations actually introduce a tension between their optimistic richness and the basic original Eucharistic event at Jesus’s Last Passover Supper when he foretells the tragedy to come.

 

Let me complete my homily by a short presentation about this tension.

 

               Scripture commentators in their discussion of the Last Supper as reported in the gospel of Mark, remind us that yes, Jesus’ shares his body and blood in the bread and wine at that table meal.    But this sharing is sandwiched within words of Jesus that on one side predict the betrayal of Judas who helps the Temple authorities arrest him.   And on the other Jesus tells of his imminent abandonment by the disciples.  Further the last words of Jesus at this Supper are these: “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I will drink it new in the kingdom of God.”   The commentators write that Jesus’ vow of fasting is a prophetic symbol of his coming death.  In fact one commentator goes so far as to say this: “At the Last Supper Jesus neither ate of the Passover lamb nor drank of the wine; probably he fasted completely.

 

     Jesus’ Last Supper was not a happy event.  There is a foreboding starkness.   I quote in summary: “Mark’s somewhat sober account stresses above all the sacrificial death of Jesus ‘for many’… We recall not only a meal, but the final meal of one who was to be executed as a criminal for our sake.”   

 

But thanks to the return of the risen Jesus to his disciples the report of the last supper in the gospel of Mark can generate hopeful feelings of a redemptive solidarity.   The risen Jesus sends the Spirit who helps us understand the importance of finding solidarity in the sharing of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.   The celebration of the Mass and the sharing of the Eucharist becomes the way in which the Catholic Church takes part in his complete saving action, his life, death and resurrection.   Indeed this celebration gives us the courage to be for and with others in their sorrows as well as their joys.

 

Finally, I imagine, in solidarity with the suffering of this world, Jesus is still fasting from the fruit of the vine.   He will so fast until that time when together with him we bring about the victory of the common good.    Then with us he will drink the fruit of the vine new in the kingdom of God.

 

We thank Jesus for inviting us to the celebration of Mass…. as always an encouraging preview of the Kingdom of God.   And we commit ourselves to joining in his mission so he may drink from the fruit of the vine once again.

 Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday  (Our Lady of Lourdes Parish  May 30, 2026)

Some of you know that St. Ignatius, the Founder of the Jesuits, wrote a detailed outline of a set of meditations that we call the Spiritual Exercises.    A good portion of the meditations are reflections on the stories of Jesus in the gospels and he asks us to consider these events as if we were active participants or observers.  

It is rare that Ignatius would create any additional events to the gospels.   But there are two that relate to the Blessed Virgin Mary.    One is totally imaginative in that Ignatius suggests that we pray over something that surely happened though the gospels do not report it.   That is, surely the risen Jesus appears to Mary, His Mother even before he appears to Mary Magdalen or to Peter or to the men on the Road to Emmaus.   In such a meditation we are encouraged to imagine what is said and done.   Surely hugs and surely tears of joy.    Some Jesuit told me once that he imagined some of the conversation between Mary and Jesus.    Once the two have had a chance to settle into this new reality of life after death, Mary questions Jesus.  “Why did your death have to be so brutal?    It was so hard on you and so hard for us to experience the brutality.”  And they talk about that, Jesus saying that he knew that even innocent children would be killed brutally.   “I wanted to be sure that every murdered person could know that God understood their pain.”

Ignatius also asks us to take time and pray with Mary on the day after the crucifixion…we call it Holy Saturday.    We know surely that John the apostle would have been with her.   But we should go to console her.    She is exhausted and overcome with sorrow.   But at the same time, when engaged with Mary in her mourning, we find her even in Jesus’ death to be as close to him spiritually as she had been physically.   They loved each other so much.    In this situation she is not isolated and alone in her grief but rather she is in solitude with him.   And this solitude she can share with those who mourn with her.  

 I suggest that those who are grieving the loss of a loved one go to this Mary who in solitude is with Jesus.   She will share her love and the love she has for Jesus with those who pray with her.    No one should feel that they must mourn alone.   

 

Pentecost Sunday   May 24, 2026   OSJ 7:30 & 9:30

I have little understanding of how our three-person divinity is forever unified as one.   We speak of father, son and spirit, or creator, redeemer and animator.  I once heard this description: the Church of Europe is the Church of the Father, the Church of Latin America is the Church of the Son and the Church of Africa is the Church of the Spirit.    There is a fallacy about such a regional description not including the Church of Asia but there is a kernel of truth.  At least we know that the Faith of Africa is filled with the Spirit. 

But today on Pentecost, now fifty days after Easter, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit given to the disciples and then to the whole Church down through the ages.

First: a reflection on an ordinary experience of the spirit; Second an imaginative look at the Spirit of God and Third a look at the Scriptures and the life of the Church.

Our ordinary notions of spirit can give us some clues about the work of God’s Spirit.   We often hear the phrase “school spirit” identifying an attitude that permeates student engagement, especially athletic engagement.  Players of school sports, let’s take basketball as an example, need spirit as much as they need skills.   A coach must build the team around some skilled players.  But the typical second string and even the last man or woman chosen has a role not only on the practice team but also on the bench.  Whether in practice or during games the bench must fill the court with encouraging verbal and body language.   And every huddle must be spirited.

How might such a Spirit act in the life of God?  I call on imagination to illustrate the benefits for us of the Spirit in God.   Imagine a God contemplating at length the problems with creation from nothing and then even hesitating to create because of the possibility of evil.    For such a God the outgoing transparency and enthusiasm of the Spirit in God would overcome any hesitation.   Such a Spirit provides an impetus into space and time, into matter and movement.  

Or suppose there was in our God a tendency to act like an introvert.  Indeed suppose God so relished quiet and the comfort of being alone that creation itself was considered a kind of threat to the divine.    If such a situation existed the third person spirit and animator in God would encourage the taking of some risks with the possibilities of conversation and group activity.   And much to our benefit!  The Spirit is a friend to the noise of creation, to its beauty, its music and art, its vitality and diversity.

It is, I imagine, too, the Spirit of God that drives the divine impulse to become Incarnate in Jesus Christ.   To our benefit, of course.  We humans then are known to be made in the likeness of the Son of God.   And we have a familiar and loving relationship with the divine one like us, with the human Jesus and all of his joys and sorrows. 

But always it is the Spirit, the Spirit sent in turn to us by Jesus that gives zest to this relationship.   It is the Spirit that overcomes our doubt.  It is the Spirit that provides endurance and stability.

Third:  Scriptures, Old and New:   We find in so much in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible mention of the influence of the Spirit of Yahweh.  It is this Spirit that looks at the chaos of the waters of creation and separates the land from the sea.   This is the Spirit of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of the Kings and Prophets, and of the Wisdom literature.  Although this Spirit in the Old Testament has no personal separate identity, it has feminine characteristics.

Later in places in the New Testament gospels the influence of the Spirit is often present to Jesus himself, bringing about his conception, protecting him in the desert, empowering him at his baptism and in his preaching and healing.   Finally in the Gospel of John, however, near the end of the New Testament period the Spirit of Truth appears with a personal identity when the evangelist  John names this Spirit the Paraclete.   This name signifies that the Spirit is the one who stands by our side and assists us in our needs.  Jesus promises this Spirit both to those individuals who want to know him and to the community of his followers.    

The NT is clear:  Jesus himself knew by his own experience the difficulties that the disciples would have after he was gone.   Jesus sends the Spirit to sustain the life of the Church, that is to sustain the lives of all of us, especially in our faith communities.   We know that Jesus dies penniless, and leaves nothing for the disciples.    But then, then he sends them the Spirit with every gift they need, every gift we need.   While Jesus is the personal foundation of the Church, the Paraclete takes on an accompanying encouraging role in the continuing life of the Church.   

Finally, then:   Over the ages the Spirit fills the Church, the People of God, with the seven gifts of the Spirit that support the goodness to which God calls us:  wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord.    Wherever we find traces or even the fullness of these seven gifts, there the Spirit of God is present.   Think now each of us about those in our lives who are images of the Spirit of God and stand by us: a parent, a grandparent, a coach, a mentor, an author, an artist , those who have inspired us.  In them we experience the powers of these seven gifts: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord.  

Spirit of the living God, fall now afresh on us.

 

2^nd Sunday of Easter  2026   Thomas

In our human ways of imagining I sometimes forget that Jesus’ resurrection is inevitable because the person of Jesus with a human nature is intimately one with God the Father and the Spirit.  At no time did the Father have any other plan for Jesus with his human nature, body and soul, except his return to being one with God in that unimaginable realm where God lives.             

 

And this risen Jesus also, as he promised, sent the Spirit to the men and women who had followed him.  As clear as it was that Jesus died, Jesus is alive.   That conviction came even to St. Paul who had persecuted the early Christians and who had never even met Jesus.  Paul, himself, tells of a personal experience with Jesus.  We have in Paul’s very own writings in First Corinthians his own first person testimonies that he has seen the risen Lord.    I quote: “Did I not see Jesus the Lord?”  And elsewhere after speaking of the risen Lord’s appearance to the disciples he writes: “in the end he appeared even to me.”  That experience convinced him that Jesus lived.  The power of his encounter with the risen Lord is evident in his stunning transformation from a persecutor of Christians to an apostle.  

 

All the other early Christian reports of experiences of the risen Jesus are written by third parties in the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).   These third parties are members of a community of believers in Jesus’ resurrection.  And oddly none of these third parties explicitly testifies to their own personal experience of the Risen Lord in the way that Paul testifies about his, however brief his testimony.    At least Matthew of the four gospel writers must have seen the risen Lord.  He writes about himself in that gospel but oddly not a single word about his personal experience of the risen Lord.  

 

Certainly all the third party accounts of the risen Lord are genuine expressions of the faith and hope of the witnesses of the resurrection and their communities.  But I so wish we had some other first person versions of a vision of the risen Lord similar to Paul’s. Take Peter, for example.     There is some doubt that the apostle Peter is the writer of the Second Epistle of Peter.   But if he is, he in this Epistle describes himself as a personal witness of the Transfiguration.    But he writes not a single personal word about his experience as a witness of Jesus’ resurrection.  How instructive in his Epistle would be Peter’s first person account, of what he himself saw, for example, when Jesus made that second appearance to the disciples and there responded to welcome Thomas.    

 

And how instructive would be Thomas’ own first person report about his encounter with the Risen Christ.    I would like to hear Thomas tell it.  He might have answered my questions!   Why, Thomas, did you raise the stakes so high?    “I won’t believe,” the third person account so reads, “unless I can put my hand into the wound in his side.”  Yes, I would like him to answer my questions.   What kind of sorrow moved you to make this extreme demand about the wound?    Why did you doubt your own friends’ testimony?  Were you angry because Jesus appeared to them and not to you?   But did you not expect that Jesus might appear again?   Is that why you returned to the group?  And then after Jesus encouraged you to touch him, were you afraid?    I wish that we had some personal supplements to the testimony in the four gospels.   How about, for example, Thomas giving us a Ted Talk?

 

As the whole story is recorded, however, by John, surely, the story clearly records the faith of Thomas and of John and of the whole early community.  They came to understand that God’s exaltation of Jesus in some way restored an integral physical presence after the suffering and humiliating death on the cross.  His wounds on his resurrected body become the sign of that consolation.  His wounds become badges of honor.  His wounds encourage all of us who suffer in our humanity. We imagine this and remember the words that Jesus had spoken during his life:  Blessed are those who mourn…blessed are those who suffer persecution…Blessed are the merciful…        

 

But let me address my disappointment that we have no first person accounts, not from Peter, not from Thomas, not from Matthew.  And, excuse me, not from John, either.  There is more doubt than certitude that the writer of John’s gospel is the same person who is described in that gospel as entering the empty tomb with Peter and as seeing and believing.   Is this John the evangelist?          

And not from Mary Magdalen.   In John’s gospel we have a third person account of her in the cemetery garden thinking Jesus was the gardener.  And an account of the two guys on the road to Emmaus.   They like Mary seem to be quoted exactly.   But they and she and the other women do not record their own experience of the risen Lord.

 

But let’s be clear:  the principal appearances of Jesus are with groups of his disciples where they recognize him.   They hear then about his personal love for them and his instructions for the future.

 

And I think that is the point.    We are not being called simply to follow Mary Magdalen or the women, or Thomas, or Peter or John or the men on the way to Emmaus.   We are called today by the risen Jesus to membership in the community of men and women disciples to whom he returned in resurrection.  Jesus commissions them together to preach the mystery of his enduring love shown in his risen self.  The community’s faith in Jesus transcends the faith of all others.

 

So yes, admire those individuals to whom Jesus appeared.   The gospels call us to believe them, yes, but calls us more so to faith in the  community.   The New Testament is the story of the first Christian community of believers called by Jesus Christ and he calls us now to be one with them.   Jesus saves us in a community.             

And, of course, Paul had to give first person testimony. He himself had to write “I have seen the Lord.”  He was not like the members of that first community whose testimony was credible in the third person.