Gospel Reflections for Challenging Times

  6 th Sunday of Easter Gospel – John 14:15-21 Family Connections Dad As I read over today’s Gospel, 3 words kept popping up in my mind: commandments, love, and Advocate.   Keep my commandments, follow my words, I love you, and I will send you an Advocate.   On face value, they don’t relate; looked at together they don’t make any sense.   But maybe they do… When I was in grade school, I was a pretty good student.   But the one subject I loved more than anything was Spelling!   From 5 th grade to 8 th , I got far enough into the qualifying round for the National Spelling Bee.   And every year, I lost and I lost to the same kid!   So when I got to 8 th grade, I knew this was my last chance.   I studied day and night, pored over the list of words and prepared myself better than I ever had before.   So when the qualifying round began, I was confident and ready!   And as other students slipped up and stepped down, I continued...

  Saturday – 5 th Week of Easter Gospel – John 15:18-21 The Long and Winding Road Palm Sunday Road, Jerusalem By my count, I have led or co-led about 10 Kairos retreats, a 3-4 day intense retreat where the day usually extended well into the night, sometimes to 2am.   And that doesn’t include the weeks of preparation and guidance for the student leaders.   Trust me, sleep was a very rare occurrence.   But the experience and the effect were always breath-taking and life-changing.   All that time and effort, all that work, was worth it!   But no doubt, it was exhausting work!   And it is a reminder to us all that being a Christian, living a Christian life, is work!   We will meet criticism, doubt, resistance, even outright anger in the process of living a life of service to others and love for our Brother Jesus.   It’s not easy to be Christian, to be Catholic, not in the world we live in.   Let’s face it, this secular world seems t...

  Friday – 5 th Week of Easter Gospel – John 15:12-17 Stuck! Mass at Gethsemane Remember when we were younger and the value of the word “friend” was measured more by quantity and not quality?   When popularity was determined by how many ‘friends’ you invited to your birthday party?   And then later on in life, we began to discover the meaning of true friendship.   We found and we became a true friend, someone to trust completely, someone to confide in and rely on, someone we could be ourselves with, warts and all! In today’s Gospel Jesus tells the disciples “I call you friends for so indeed you are”.   Friends!!   Not simply followers or disciples!   Not subjects or worshippers!   Not even mere companions!   Friends!   It’s a good opportunity for us today to reflect on what it means to be a friend, what it means to have a best friend.   Friendship, real friendship, is a relationship built on love and not convenience, based ...