The first reading for Pentecost Sunday is the account from Acts 2 so familiar to every Christian. Luke’s account is a very public event compared to the very private Johannine account. The Lucan account occurs 50 days after the Resurrection. The Johannine account occurs on the evening of the same day as the Resurrection. Continue reading
In the first reading for today, St. Paul met some men who, as William Barclay notes, were incomplete Christians. They had received the baptism of John but they did not even know of the Holy Spirit in the Christian sense of the term. Paul then said, “John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus…When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 19:4-5) Continue reading
This coming Sunday is Pentecost with the gospel reading taken from the Gospel of John. The Greek name (pentēkostē) refers to the Jewish Feast of Weeks. The name itself means “50th” and is taken because the festival occurs 50 days after Passover (Acts 20:16; 1 Cor 16:8). Because the early Christians received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on this day, the term is now more commonly used to refer to that event recounted in Acts 2:1–13 and celebrated on Pentecost Sunday. Continue reading
The story is told that Leonardo da Vinci worked away on a large canvas in his studio. For a while he worked at it – choosing the subject, planning the perspective, sketching the outline, applying the colors, with his own inimitable genius. Then suddenly he stopped working on it. Summoning one of his talented students, the master invited him to complete the work. The horrified student protested that he was both unworthy and unable to complete the great painting which his master had begun. But da Vinci replied: “Will not what I have done inspire you to do your best?” Continue reading
Fr. Antony Kadavil, in a 2019 post from Vatican News, wrote: “The Ascension is most closely related, in meaning, to Christmas. In Jesus, the human and the Divine become united in the Person and life of one man. That’s Christmas. At the Ascension, this human being – the person and the resurrected body of Jesus – became for all eternity a part of who God is. It was not the Spirit of Jesus or the Divine Nature of Jesus that ascended to the Father. It was the Risen living Body of Jesus: a Body that the disciples had touched, a Body in which He Himself had eaten and drunk with them both before and after His Resurrection, a real, physical, but gloriously restored Body, bearing the marks of nails and a spear. This is what, and Who, ascended. This is what, now and forever, is a living, participating part of God. That is what the Ascension, along with the Incarnation, is here to tell us – that it is a good thing to be a human being; indeed it is a wonderful and an important and a holy thing to be a human being. It is such an important thing that God did it. Even more, the fullness of God now includes what it means to be a human being.” Continue reading
19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” One should be struck by the repetition of the word “all” in this passage:
This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of the Ascension. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Many English translations offer “but some doubted.” Unfortunately the word “some” does not appear in the Greek text. The only two valid translations are “they worshiped, but they doubted (hesitated)” or “they worshiped and they doubted (hesitated).” It is hard to avoid the simple statement of the text: those who worship are also those who doubt. Continue reading
The account of St. Paul’s address on the Areopagus in Athens is a masterclass in the evangelization of the culture – a skill surely important for our day and age. His arrival in Athens is, in its way, the introduction of Christianity to Europe. It was an event, while of no particular note or importance to historians, thoughts leaders, or philosophers of the day, was one that shaped the history of Western Europe and eventually the world. Continue reading
There are a lot of things we leave behind as we pass through this life. Sometimes we are intentional, sometimes not. We mature, grow up, leave home and leave behind a whole host of things that marked our passage through childhood, the teenage years, and as a young adult. Those are the intentional things. The list of unintentional things is no doubt as long. Did you know you were leaving behind a trail of your DNA? Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of the Ascension. Jesus was from Galilee and since the beginning of his public ministry had moved from the northernmost reaches of Israel to its center in Jerusalem – the locus of the confrontation and rejection by the leaders of Israel. But now the “Galilean” has triumphed against all odds and in a manner none had foreseen. The preparation of the “twelve” was not lost in their abandoning Jesus at the Passion. They are now restored to their positions of trust and responsibility and given final instructions for fulfilling the mission to which they had already been called (cf. 10:1-15) – but the scope is now far wider than Israel and included all the nations: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19) Continue reading
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