Mercy Lives!

I don't know about anyone reading this post but I feel better.  I feel better knowing the tomb is empty and the tabernacle is now occupied.  I never really visited the church much on Holy Saturday before but I went up this year for the Divine Mercy chaplet at 3PM and it felt so strange to be there with an empty tabernacle.  After the Easter Vigil Mass I felt much better as I genuflected in front of our Lord in the tabernacle.  Then I went back on yesterday, Easter Sunday, for the chaplet and Jesus was still there in the tabernacle and everything felt so right in the world.  Mercy lives!!!!

A Day Without Jesus

Interesting thing happened yesterday, I got to deny Jesus publicly.  I was asked to lector our Good Friday service and got to do the part of the voice.  The voice gets to say that he does not know Jesus.  Than I also got to say Pilates lines and have him sent to be crucified.  I have to say I am not sure what Peter went through from Friday till Easter morning when he got to see Jesus again after denying knowing him.  I do know how I feel, I miss Him.  Yeah, I miss Him.  I told my wife* earlier today that it dawned on me this is a day without Jesus.

May We Be One

Holy Thursday.  The beginning of the end starts today or maybe its the beginning of the beginning.  I have been very anxious this Holy Week.  Not sure if after all this time I am finally getting it or what.  Just have this feeling like something big is going to happen this week.  Now I know what happened two thousand years ago it just seems like this week is different in celebrating it.  I just don't have the words to explain how I am feeling.  Maybe it will be something that next week or month when I look back it will be easier to see or understand.

Today is the day we celebrate the Lords Supper or Last Supper.  For us Catholics it doesn't get much better than this.  Jesus on this day over two thousand years ago gave us his own flesh to eat, his own blood to drink.  I know many of our Christian brothers and sisters do not see it this way.  I honestly don't get how they can read chapter 6 of John and not see it.  "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." John 6:51  or in John 6:53-56

What is Your Role

So Lent has been leading us to this week, Holy Week.  I don’t know about you but I have heard this Gospel before.  I have read aloud the parts of the crowd.  So what is different this time?  I suggest maybe this time read the Gospel and put you in it.  Take a role.  Maybe this year your Peter, professing that you will never let our Lord down and within a few hours stating “I do not know the man.”  Maybe you are one of the high priests who send out for Jesus to be arrested.  You might even be one of good faith and never thought it would come to this.  There you are standing with those accusing Jesus of false crimes.  How can this be happening? Time to keep your mouth shut or you might be next.  This year maybe you’re

Prophet?

  I was asked to write a lenten reflection today, so Here is what I wrote fro my favorite Alaska resident, Meghan

“Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” How many times have we heard this statement and how could they not see or how could they not hear or how could they not understand?  There are some hard hearts that will never see, hear, or understand.  This is hard for some of us to get past as they are our friends, neighbors and those we love.  Does that mean we stop loving them or more importantly loving them with the Gospel, of course not?  Sometimes it is just easier for us to just walk away or not get into it with the hard hearted but is that what we are called to?  Of course not because some will hear or see us proclaim the Gospel and say "Never before has anyone spoken like this man” and "This is truly the Prophet."  That’s right we are the prophets from the moment we were baptized

Try to Avoid Suffering?

“Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”
― Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

Mercy

You can never run farther than Gods Mercy. He is always there to give us what we have not come to deserve, Mercy.

"Because we believe God is infinitely merciful, we do not need to hide our sins. We don’t have to be innocent because we know God is merciful. This is the only way we can understand,for example, how the saints could also think of themselves as great sinners. They could only do that because they had experienced Divine Mercy. "

— Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria