Pope Francis says the Eucharist “is meant to nourish those who are tired and hungry along the journey.” Our diocesan journey of reviving our encounter with our Lord in the Eucharist has official begun. During the days and weeks ahead, let us all reflect on the gift Christ gives us in the Eucharist. Secular society may cause us to question or doubt our faith. Nonetheless, we must hold fast to the great gift we receive in the Eucharist – that God chooses to live in us while at the very same time we live and move and have our being in him (Acts 17:28). May we all come to greatly appreciate the mystery of the Eucharist and live it daily through acts of charity, compassion and goodness.

The gift our Lord gave us in the Eucharist is at its heart one of presence. When Jesus directed His closest friends to take the bread He had picked up, blessed, broken, and given, He told them this is His body. By this He meant more than just the flesh, organ, bone, and sinew of His human self. In Aramaic, body speaks to the wholeness of a person as experienced: someone heard, accompanied, laughed and cried with, misunderstood but then followed, and ultimately loved. 

When we receive the Body of Christ, we dare to receive the presence of our brother Jesus into ourselves. St. Augustine of Hippo challenges us to recognize that we are, truly and actually, the Savior Christ’s body in this world and time of ours. When we pray for the saving power of the Risen Christ to impact this present situation, it only happens through us, the Body of Christ in the world. 

How does it sit with you to consider that the Lord is present with you in this current moment? Many who seek the practice of prayerful presence before the Blessed Sacrament speak of such a realization. They are with the Lord in a most personal moment.

At 7:30 PM on the Feast of Corpus Christi on Sunday, June 19, the Graduate and Professionals (GAP) ministry will host Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the church for the entire parish community. This opportunity provides a time for you to immerse yourself into His presence. You will be empowered, and challenged, to become this presence in your life world. To be Christ’s body - that is, Christ’s eyes, ears, hands and feet. To be present to those who feel themselves invisible because others treat them as such. To be present to those who hunger for some contact of human connection. To be present for those for whom a simple gesture of hope would quench a great thirst.

We are a Eucharistic people. Let us be what we experience as given to us from the altar of the Eucharist. Let us dare to become what we truly are, The Body of Christ in this place and time.

We welcome with prayers of thanksgiving our neophytes received during the Easter Vigil into our Universal Church!

Christian Acevedo

Hoshi Colina

Yujin Kwon

Bethany Byrl Leeker

Renee Louderback

Kira Pond

Philip Andrew Price

Kristina Priotto

Nina Rinaldi

Blake Schwartz

Our Lenten journey climaxes in this celebration of Holy Week. The last Sunday of Lent, we travel with Jesus as he triumphantly enters Jerusalem. Then, as we enter the Sacred Triduum, we stay with him as he celebrates a final meal with his friends, walks to his death and rises in glory. We go with Christ, not as passive observers of a passion play even or as persons remembering historical events; rather we accompany Christ as active participants sharing in his death and resurrection through celebrating the sacraments.

We affirm again that all life and all death is given meaning the paschal mystery of Christ. We stand in with great solidarity with those for whom the passion is their reality: victims of war or violence of any kind. In spite of the truth that sin still exists we will affirm God’s salvation and triumph over evil with our candidates in the renewal of baptismal promises and through the sharing of communion. This week we are called to experience with Christ a journey of unselfish love, to die to all that is sinful and to rise to new and renewed life. With cries of Hosanna, we go with Jesus surrounded by the great mystery of God’s redeeming love, toward Easter joy and hope.

“See I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?”

These words from the prophet Isaiah characterize the hope that is proclaimed in all the readings this Sunday. Paul perceived God’s new life so strongly that he sees everything else but life in Christ as rubbish. The woman caught in adultery, condemned by the law, experienced something new: compassion, understanding, mercy and a chance to begin again.

Even the Pharisees experience a whole new way of facing God’s justice by looking at their own need for forgiveness before condemning others.

We are the beneficiaries of the new life God has promised. It has been given to us in Christ through our baptism. Are we compelling signs of God’s mercy and compassion? Are we sacraments of God’s transforming love in our world? Do others see in us the hope and promise of God’s reign already alive and present?

May our renewal of Baptismal promises and immersion in the Paschal mystery with our Candidates this Triduum renew in us Paul’s enthusiasm for the life of Christ, which is ours for the transformation of the world.

This Sunday we hear the familiar story of the prodigal son. Can we see ourselves in both sons in the story?  At times in our lives, do we run from God’s generous love while at other times stand in righteous resentment of God’s generous forgiveness toward others? 

The truth is that, despite our pride, wanderings, righteous judgementalism and rejection of God and other; God never rejects us. God always longs to provide a rich and bountiful banquet and to draw us in Christ to be reconciled and indeed to be ambassadors of reconciliation.

The readings this weekend hold in tension a strong and insistent call to conversion and repentance with a proclamation of God’s merciful patience towards all of us who are sinners.  Our conversion is not motivated by fear, but by love. We know that the Lord is kind and merciful and we know that the Holy One has rescued us; our response to God’s love is to turn away from sin and to turn towards God.

There is urgency here, not because God will stop loving us, but because we are so easily distracted and forgetful. Paul reminds us, as he reminded the Corinthians, that we have the example of our ancestors who experienced the power of God’s love toward them but forgot and turned away. We are like them and so we need to hear this urgent call and respond to the intensity of God’s love NOW.

We move from last week’s temptation and desert experience to transfiguration and glory this week.  Here, early in our Lenten journey we are given a glimpse of the light Jesus’ resurrection.   

But first we must ask:

                What mountain must we climb with Christ to share this vision?

                What death must we die in order to share Christ’s glory?

Abraham’s great faith was rewarded with the covenant of God’s faithful love.  Paul’s letter offers the promise that our faithfulness to Christ means sharing in his glory.  Pain, suffering and death are all part of our human journey.  Faith offers us the promise that all can be transfigured and glorified in Christ.  Let us be faithful in walking with him through death to new life.

There are times in our lives when, like Jesus, we can find ourselves alone and hungry in the wasteland. It is tempting when all is dry rock and rubble to put our faith in those things which seem to offer some comfort:  pleasure, power, control, prestige. But today’s scripture readings, and the whole season of Lent, invites us to put our faith in the only one who can save us and give us life: God.

It is our loving God who brought the Hebrews out of slavery to new life in the promised land. It is our loving God who raised Jesus from the dead and destroyed fear and death forever.

We are invited in this season to greater simplicity by rejecting the temptation of finding life in – or making gods of – pleasure, power, or control. We are called to wait through the desert experience of our lives, clinging always to our faith in the Lord, who is “my refuge, my fortress, my God in whom I trust.”