Getting on with the Summer Picnic

18^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Ex 16, 2-4, 12-15 / Eph 4, 17,20-24 / John 6, 24-35

Last Sunday we began a picnic – a picnic in Galilee with Jesus as our host.  On this picnic we will be hearing the good news from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.  In fact we will be hearing from that same chapter through to the last Sunday in August.  That’s five consecutive Sundays with the same chapter!  The sixth chapter begins with the story of the multiplication of loaves – which we heard last Sunday.  And then John moves us into a profound and prolonged reflection on the Eucharist and on Jesus as the Bread of Life – the Bread of our lives.  We are beginning that reflection today.

The whole thrust of this chapter – and really the thrust of the whole gospel of John – is to help us become aware of God’s presence – God’s closeness – in our lives.  Jesus will use signs to help us become aware.  For any Jew – for Jesus – as well as for John, the author of the gospel – a sign is any word or gesture – any concrete thing that helps us become aware of God’s transforming presence in my life.  For Jesus – we always become of aware of God as the God who is changing us – the God who is renewing, reshaping, recreating us.

When Jesus says in today’s gospel:  I am the bread of life. – he is using sign-language to bring us to awareness of God’s presence to us.  He is making himself the sign – the concrete reality that points to God’s presence.  What does the sign say?  What is Jesus saying to us?

I am the bread of life.  The image he is using is food, and we eat food.  Eating is tasting and taking in; it’s digesting and assimilating.  When we eat something, then what had been outside of us, other than us becomes part of us.  We become what we eat, the saying goes.  Just so, Jesus is telling us this:  you take me in – you consume me – and you will know God’s transforming presence in your life.  You take me in – you feed on me – by tasting and taking into yourself my way – my values – my teaching – my style of life.  Live, as I live!  Love, as I love!  When my values – my vision of life actually become your own, then I become truly the bread of life for you – then I become living bread for you.

At this Eucharist Jesus continues to say to us:  when you have tasted, digested and assimilated me as your bread of life – your living bread, then you will experience God.  But how does that really happen – experiencing God?  You will experience God as changing your love – changing your affections.  We will find ourselves becoming less self-concerned and more self-forgetful – less self-promoting and more large-hearted, more open-handed.  And we will experience growing within us a magnanimity – a grand and generous spirit – that will make us friend and soul-mate to Jesus.  Gratefully, we will recognize Jesus in who we are becoming.  We will recognize the living Lord in ourselves.

And then – then we will be empowered – empowered to let go of being the center of our own lives.  We will be free with the freedom God wants and works for us.

On July 31^st, we celebrated the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.  I’d like to conclude these thoughts on Jesus as our bread of life by sharing with you some reflections from Karl Rahner, a famous German Jesuit theologian.  Once he was asked why any sensible modern man like himself would think to remain or become a Jesuit?  His reply was quite simply that he found among his Jesuit brothers the living spirit of Jesus.  But listen to how he describes how that living spirit is concretely lived.  Listen to his words.

“I think of Jesuit brothers whom I myself have known.  I think of one who in a village in India that is unknown to Indian intellectuals helps poor people to dig their wells.  I think of one who for long hours in the confessional listens to the pain and torment of unimportant people who are far more complex than they appear on the surface.  I think of one who is beaten by police along with his students without the satisfaction of even being a revolutionary.  I think of my Jesuit brother who in his prison ministry must proclaim over and over again the message of the Gospel with never a token of gratitude, who is more appreciated for the handout of cigarettes than for the words of the Good News he brings.  I think of the one who with difficulty and without any clear evidence of success plods away at the task of awakening in just a few people a small spark of faith, of hope and of charity.”

I think Rahner is describing for us the concrete shape our freedom will take on when we let Jesus empower us with his love and his life – when we let Jesus become our living Lord, our Bread of Life.  Then with Jesus we will say to our world:  Take and eat, my life for you.  Take and drink in, my love for you.

 Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

On Picnics & Signs

17^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

2Kgs 4, 42-44 / Eph 4, 1-6 / John6, 1-15 

How about going on a picnic?  With today’s gospel reading from John, the Church is inviting us to begin a kind of summer picnic.  The picnic will be in Galilee and our host will be Jesus.  Till the fourth Sunday of August [August 26] – for five consecutive Sundays – we will be hearing the good news from one, single chapter of John’s gospel – the sixth chapter.  The chapter begins with the multiplication of loaves – what we have just heard.  John then uses the story to introduce a profound and extended reflection on the Eucharist and on Jesus as the Bread of Life.

We’re going to be hearing lots of food imagery on the picnic.  Food, in fact, is the most common of all biblical images.  God’s goodness is described as a feast, God’s displeasure as a famine and our penitence as a fasting.  Israel is described in the Bible not as some picturesque spot but as a land flowing with milk and honey.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem which translated means “house of bread” [beit-le-hem].  And Jesus calls on us as disciples to be salt – giving flavor to the food of life.  So the Scriptures and the food network share much.

Since we’re going to be on this picnic for some time, I think it would be good for us to adjust some of our expectations.  For example, it would be wrong to expect Chippendale chairs and fine china on a picnic.  On picnics we sit on the ground and make due with paper plates.  In just the same way it would be good for us to get to know the thought and language John will use in chapter six.  Then we will be able to hear with better understanding and will come to have the right expectations.  We won’t be expecting Chippendale chairs when Jesus is inviting us to sit on the grass.

A critically important idea throughout John’s gospel, and especially in the sixth chapter, is the word sign.  John tells us the crowds are following Jesus because of the signs he is performing.  The multiplication of loaves is described by John as a sign.  So we need to understand what a sign is if we’re going to understand what Jesus is doing in the multiplication of loaves.

What’s a sign?  For the Jews, as for John, a sign is any sensible reality – something concrete – which makes present to me a transforming experience of God’s presence.  Through the sign God’s real presence becomes accessible, available to me – in the change, in the transformation I experience myself undergoing.  I come to experience/know God as the God-who-is-changing/transforming-me.  And I come to experience/know myself as where God is actively at work.

Through concrete things like bread and wine, like spoken words and body gestures – God becomes present to me as actually reshaping me, renewing me, recreating me.  And that is what miracle means in the Bible.  Miracle literally means “to bring to wonder and awe.”  A miracle happens when we experience wonder and awe at God’s powerful, transforming presence in life – in my life and in the lives of others.

It’s very important to emphasize that miracle is not magic.  I say very important in order to understand the gospel of John but also very important in order to understand what we do here at Eucharist every Sunday.  Magic affects the surface of things.  Miracle transforms what is innermost.  Magic entertains – is cheap entertainment – and costs us nothing.  We watch and are amused.  Miracle engages us – is costly engagement – and costs us dearly.  We take part and are changed.  Unless it costs, it isn’t a miracle.  In sign and miracle I encounter the intimate yet insistently challenging presence of the Living God.

So on the picnic in Galilee over the next weeks look for the signs and ask yourself some questions.  For example, in today’s reading the multiplication of loaves is worked by Jesus as a sign – but how?  How is it a sign?  We are not dealing with magic but with a miracle.  So how is God encountered in the sign – in the miracle of the multiplication of loaves?  Where is God’s challenging presence in my life?  What interior transformation is being brought about within me?  Remember the beginning of our transformation is becoming aware of our need for it.

Many questions – but the answers can come only from us and from our lives – not from any homily or catechism.  The answers come from our own deep-down living.

During these next weeks let Jesus earn his reputation as a “miracle-worker”.  Let this become our expectation:  how is Jesus bringing us to wonder and awe in our own lives?

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Wonderfully Made!

BIRTH OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST

Isaiah 49: 1-6 / Acts 13: 22-26 / Luke 1: 57-66, 80
 

We celebrate the birth of John the Baptist.  In our liturgical calendar there are only three births celebrated:  the birth of Jesus at Christmas, the birth of Mary in September and today’s feast, the birth of John the Baptist.  So it’s a special day when we recall the beauty of birth – the beauty and wonder of new life.  Added to this celebration is the fact that, as a growing parish, over the past year we have celebrated over sixty baptisms.

So we are being given new life – in our babies and in our baptisms.  And I think we can let today’s celebration help us – help us to learn to see ourselves perhaps differently but certainly more deeply – learn to see ourselves with the same bright, expectant eyes we use to see our newly born and newly baptized.

Let us learn to hear the words from Isaiah, our first reading, speaking to us and speaking about us directly:  The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.  …You are my servant, the Lord said to me, through you I show my glory.  …and [so] I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord.

These words are true and speak truly to us and about us.  God has chosen to reveal the wonder of his love and goodness in and through each one of us.  Each of us reflects in a unique, unrepeatable way God’s own radiant presence and love.

Today we celebrate John the Baptist.  But there was another John whose words capture the deeper meaning of our feast.  They are the words of Cardinal John Newman, an Englishman of the nineteenth century, who realized how wonderfully we are made and how wonderfully we are guided by God in life.  Listen to his words.  Again, they are words spoken directly to us and about us:

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  He has not created me for naught.  I shall do good – I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments.

I think what Newman says is deeply true.  In the working out of God’s plan we are simply irreplaceable in one another’s lives.  We are, each of us, links in a chain, bringing people together – bringing people closer to one another.  What a thing of beauty it is to have this as our vocation in life:  bringing people closer to each other.  I think we deprive ourselves when we don’t take the time to reflect on how we actually do live out in our daily lives the beauty of our vocation.  Reflect on our marriages and families.  Reflect on our friendships.  Reflect on all the ways we reach out to others and bring them closer.  Reflect on how irreplaceable we are for others in their coming to know God’s goodness.

In today’s gospel from Luke Elizabeth insists that the child to be circumcised be called John.  In Hebrew that name is Johanan, and it means God is gracious.  In his own life John remained true to his name.  He showed God’s gracious love by bringing people together to be baptized and then bringing them to Jesus.  John was the messenger; Jesus the message.  John was the voice; Jesus the word.

John tells us who we are.  We are, all of us, like John.  Each of us – being fashioned fresh from God’s love – bring people together.  We love and we link people together.  And in our own wonderful, beautiful, irreplaceable way we bring people to Christ.

During the upcoming week, as we begin to enjoy the season of summer, let us also take the time to enjoy how God has been gracious to others through us.  Let us appreciate and give thanks for how wonderfully we have been made.

And let us continue to hear true words spoken to us: And the Lord said to me: ‘you are my servant; through you I show my glory.’  [Isaiah 49: 3]

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Images of Our Hope

11^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Ez 17, 22-24 / 2Cor 5, 6-10 / Mk 4,26-34

In the reading from Mark Jesus speaks to us of images of the kingdom of God.  The “Kingdom of God” was Jesus’ central teaching.  It’s what happens when we allow ourselves to do God’s will – what things begin to look like when we allow ourselves to do God’s love.  The images Jesus uses to describe the arrival of the kingdom have to do with growth – growth happening of itself.  We just look on and see the growth happening – just as we see a stalk of grain growing.  First, the blade appears, then the ear, and then the full grain in the ear – all is ready for the harvest.

These are all images of hope.  The kingdom of God is a life lived in hope – where God truly is at work bringing about change and growth – and we are witnesses to what God is accomplishing.  But we must be honest here with ourselves.  Do our own images of hope faithfully reflect Jesus’ images of hope?  In his images God is bringing about what God wants, and we are the onlookers.  Let’s honestly reflect here.

I wonder what images come to mind when we hear the words of Psalm 50:  “To the upright I will show the saving power of God.”  What do we imagine God saving us from?  Much more importantly, what do we want God to save us from?  What do those images look like?

I am sure each one of us here has had those moments when in a bad, bad situation we pray to God to save us from it – to get us out of it.  That’s only normal for us.  We’re in a bad – a threatening place and we want out – to overcome the threat.  We want to be on top of the threat – to have it somehow behind us.  We want God to make us safe, secure.

Let’s go deeper.  What really threatens us?  What makes us feel unsafe, insecure?  I want to answer for myself – and you can see for yourself.  I want to say what makes me feel unsafe and threatened is anything that might undermine my sense of my own well-being – my health, my social and economic position in the community, and my self-regard before others, including God and church.  I want God to protect me – my body, my goods, my reputation.

But when I am honest with myself and my own life, I must say I have never experienced God working that way.  That’s what I want God to do, but honest reflection leads me to say I don’t think God does work that way.  I have had a false image of hope.  This false image has much too much of me at work – my images of success and well-being – of what is good and bad for me and others.  In this false hope I have ceased to be the onlooker at what God is doing and have become the orchestrator of what I think God should be doing.

Further reflection and prayer tells me God did not protect Jesus’ body, nor his goods, nor his reputation.  Jesus did not run from the cross nor come down from it.  I do not see God working that way in the lives of those who tried to follow Jesus closely – Peter and Paul, all the other apostles and disciples.  Nor does God seem to protect in that way the lives of those seeking to follow Jesus today.  Think of the many martyrs who have died just in our lifetime, close by – the nuns and missionary workers in El Salvador, the archbishop of San Salvador, the Jesuit martyrs at the University of Central America, Sister Dorothy Stang in Brazil – and many, many more all over the world.

Jesus’ life and his ongoing life in his followers – these provide true images of hope.  And what signs of growth do we see actually happening in their lives?  How do their lives yield up blade and ear and full grain – signs of God being at work?  Following Jesus’ parable, let us become simple, honest onlookers.  And what do we see?  We see people being freed or saved from the fears they have for themselves – for their bodies, their goods, their reputation and self-esteem.  We do see people being saved from self-preoccupation and even from the fear of death.  We do see people being freed up for a full life and a fully caring life with and for others.

God does not work the magic we want.  God does work the wonders, the miracles we see in the life of Jesus and his followers.  They are works of transformation – of conversion, that radical change which God alone works in our lives.  And God is working now to grow the mustard seed of our lives into large branches where others may delight to thrive and flourish.  But we must look – look for God’s action in our lives!

Let us hope in God!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Bread Shared & Life Poured Out

THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
 
Ex 24, 3-8 / Heb 9, 11-15 / Mk14, 12-16, 22-26

We celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.  That is the formal name of our feast today.  In fact, we are celebrating what we as church continually celebrate.  Today we are celebrating the Eucharist.  Because the Eucharist is so central and familiar to us as Catholics, I want to reflect on this sacrament which so clearly identifies us as disciples of Jesus.

I think it very important for us to remember and appreciate the context in which Jesus gave us the Eucharist.  It is our founding memory as a community of disciples.  Jesus takes bread – blesses, breaks and gives it to his friends saying: “Take this and eat it.  It is my body which is given for you.”  Also he takes a cup of wine – blesses and gives it to them saying:  “This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many.”  Then Jesus adds:  “Do this – as my memorial.”

The context is crucial to understanding what is being said here.  The community of disciples that Jesus had worked so hard to nurture is about to disintegrate.  Judas has already sold him out.  Peter, in whom he had put such special trust, will desert and deny him.  And Peter will soon be followed by all the other disciples.  In the face of denial, desertion and his own death Jesus chooses to share himself – to share his life.  And he chooses to give himself – to share himself with the very ones who will do the denying and deserting.  That first eucharistic assembly was a community of the unwilling, the unworthy and unbrave.

In Jesus’ understanding it was absolutely right that he entrust himself to sinners, to the weak and unreliable because he was acting in hope – hope in God – hope in what God can do working through our very human lives.  In Jesus’ understanding there’s more – much more to us – than what we do of ourselves alone.  There’s life in us.  There’s God’s own life in us.  There’s the Spirit of Life in us – the same Spirit of Life as in Jesus.

Contemporary images make blood a sign of gore.  Just watch TV to see how much blood is used to grab our attention.  But in Jesus’ Jewish imagination blood meant “life”, “haim” in Hebrew.  I’m sure you’ve heard the Jewish toast: “L’haim” “To life”.  In our first reading, when Moses sprinkles blood over the people at the reading of the covenant, he is sprinkling them with the sign of God’s life to which they are committing themselves.  So intimate was the association of blood with life that kosher rules for food preparation required the blood of animals be drained from them before cooking.  The fear was that taking in an animal’s blood would make one act like an animal.

When Jesus identifies the wine with his own blood, he is identifying it with his own life.  Drink in – take in my life – my way – my values – my attitude to life – my love.  Live as I live.  Love as I love.

We are the direct descendants of that first eucharistic community.  Today we make up the community of the unwilling, the unworthy and unbrave.  And again Jesus acts and speaks among us in great hope – hope in the Spirit of God already in us – hope in the life of God already acting within us.  Jesus’ life – Jesus’ Spirit moving, motivating and shaping us.

“Do this”, Jesus says to us.  “Do this – as my memorial.”  Do my way!  Do my life!  Do my love!  Do not withhold yourself from one another.  That is my way!  Pour your life into the lives of others – into the lives of sinners – into the lives of those who are weak and unreliable.  Let your love’s hospitality be like mine – shockingly expansive and shamelessly inclusive.

We celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.  But we must become what we celebrate.  We must become the holy body and blood of Christ by embracing the human completely and compassionately – all our brothers and sisters – with their joys and hopes – and with their sins and sorrows.

In the Letter to the Hebrews we read: “[Jesus] is mediator of a new covenant…”  He is that mediator through us – now becoming his body and blood for the life of the world.  Let us then recall the words of consecration we hear said at every Eucharist.  They are our words of consecration.  They tell us who we are.  “…blood of the new, eternal covenant… poured out… for the forgiveness of sins.”  Let us become what we recall and celebrate.  Let our lives be poured out to others in a love that forgives.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

The Way We Are

HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

Dt4, 32-34, 39-40 / Rom 8, 14-17 / Mt 28, 16-20
 
It’s Holy Trinity Sunday.  In celebrating this feast we joyfully recognize a reality that is fundamental to all that is.  As Catholic Christians we believe all creation somehow bears the imprint of God.  Somehow the way things are reveals the way God is.  The Trinity is a core revelation for us.  It reveals the basic way God is – God’s basic way of living.

Throughout the centuries Christians have used all sorts of words and images to try to get a handle on what the revelation of the Trinity is trying to tell us.  Our scriptures and creeds use the language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  St. Patrick used the image of the shamrock.  A Russian icon pictures three men seated at a table.  What these words and images are trying to convey about God and God’s way of life is this: God lives through complete sharing.  In God there is complete interdependence as the chosen way to live.  And so early Christian writers speak of the Father pouring himself into the Son and the Son returning and repeating that love.  They speak of the Spirit as the back and forth movement of their desire to pour themselves into one another’s lives. 

Basically the Trinity is telling us that in God there is lover and beloved – and no holding back between them.  In God there is loving and being loved – and no holding back.  Never, never in God’s way of life is there clinging to what is mine nor grabbing for what is yours.

The Trinity tells us the way God is.  But we bear the imprint of God.  And so the Trinity tells us the way we fundamentally are.  In Christian understanding – just as a rose cannot withhold its scent – just so, we are made for sharing and interdependence.  We are made to belong to one another.  We express this truth about ourselves sacramentally by being baptized “in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”  We are baptized into their life of sharing and holding nothing back – into their life of choosing to become interdependent on one another.  We are baptized into their divine refusal to live clinging to what is mine and clutching at what is yours. 

And you know, we have visions of the Trinity.  Visions aren’t just for the great saints and mystics.  We really do have visions of the Trinity!  We see – actually see the Trinity really present in the way we are.  We see the Trinity whenever we see people not withholding themselves from one another – but pouring themselves into the lives of others.  There we are seeing, actually seeing the Trinity.  We see the Trinity in married love, in families, in friendships.  We see the Trinity in any committed love – wherever we cling to one another and not just to ourselves.  Think here of the families and committed relationships in this parish.  Think of people standing with the poor, the immigrant, the stranger and outsider.  Wherever people are there for one another – there to help and be helped – there to heal and be healed – there to encourage and be encouraged – there we see the Trinity truly, actively present in the way we are. 

We have all had the experience of wanting respectful, considerate love.  We all want to give ourselves and receive others – tenderly, without force or control, just freely being with one another.  Isn’t that what we honestly, deeply want?  Isn’t that the way we are?  The mystery of the Trinity tells us to cherish, even more, to reverence those desires.  They are the very presence of the Holy Spirit within us.  These desires call us ever deeper and deeper into the way of God’s life.  So, if you yearn for love, recognize and reverence that yearning as holy.  It is a holy, sacred yearning.  Don’t run from it.  Don’t trivialize or sentimentalize it.  It is the mystery of God becoming present in you.

So the next time we find ourselves giving in to love – the next time we allow ourselves to become dependent on another person – let us rejoice with a holy joy!  We are behaving the way we are made – in the image of God.  God is having his way with us.  The Trinity is living in us and through us.  We are Holy! Holy! Holy!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Pentecost Sunday

Acts2, 1-11 / 1Cor 12, 3b-7, 12-13 / John 20, 19-23

At Pentecost we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit, and we celebrate the coming of the Church.  They happen together.

In our Catholic tradition there are many voices that would urge us to really celebrate this feast.  St. Augustine tells us: “Keep this day with joy, celebrate it …for in you is being fulfilled what was foreshadowed in those days when the Holy Spirit came.”  Augustine is saying what happened at Pentecost is being repeated in us.  We are a repeat performance of Pentecost!

A later voice out of our tradition is the theologian, Karl Rahner.  He tells us that Jesus’ resurrection – Jesus’ new life – achieves its greatest clarity and completion in what we celebrate today: the coming of the Church.  As Church we are Easter made clear!  We are Easter made complete!

These are grandiose things to be told about ourselves.  But let’s go back to what Scripture has to teach us about ourselves.  If you’ll remember back to Easter, on that first Easter morning two men dressed in white appeared to the disciples at the tomb asking them:  “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?  He’s not here, but has been raised.”  Jesus, the Risen One, is among the living – not the dead.  The Risen One is in the present – not the past.

And again, at the Ascension, the same two men appear to the disciples asking them:  “Why are you standing there looking up at the sky?  This Jesus … will return.”  Jesus, the Ascended One, is not up above in some heavenly space.  Don’t look up; he’s not there.

One thing the Scripture is telling us about ourselves is that we tend to look for Jesus where he is not to be found.  And Pentecost is there to tell us where to look for Jesus – among the living, not the dead – in the present, not the past – not above us but in our midst.  Pentecost points to the arrival of the Holy Spirit among Jesus’ disciples.  It marks Jesus’ Spirit beginning to inhabit the minds, hearts and bodies of the disciples.  Jesus returns through his disciples.  He did not leave us orphans.  We are his return.

I think the scene in John’s gospel conveys the coming of the Spirit most poignantly.  Jesus comes to his disciples saying: “Peace be with you!”  Jesus brings peace to the disciples who had denied and deserted him.  Jesus, their victim, returns as their blessing.  And then, John tells us, “Jesus breathed on them and said to the disciples: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them…’”  The Holy Spirit arrives in the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus’ real return – his real presence among us – happens when we accept his peace and bring his forgiveness to others.  Saints are sinners who know themselves to be forgiven and called to live with others out of that forgiveness.

We take shape as Church – as the church of the saints – as we allow ourselves to be inhabited by the Spirit of Jesus.  We take shape as Church – as where Jesus’ own living presence is most clearly seen – as we learn to bless, like Jesus, those who have denied and deserted us in any way – as we learn not to speak words of accusation but rather words that bring down barriers and cross over borders we have created.

We take shape as Church – when we simply refuse to mimic the ways of the hopeless among us – when we do not confuse anger for strength of character nor the accumulation of wealth for life’s purpose.  We do not stand ready to applaud the mindless pursuit of power nor do we play chaplain to any system or empire – to any political ideal or party intent on violence and domination.

Forgiveness is the fully human and Spirit-filled shape of the Church.  That is the Church we are called to be.  That is the Church the world needs to see.  And that is the Church we need to celebrate this Pentecost.

May the Spirit of Christ be with us all!

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ