St. Thomas the Apostle Parish

Homily for the Feast of St. Matthias

After Judas betrayed Jesus, the group of twelve Apostles was reduced to eleven. It was important to revive the full team and fill the vacancy because the number twelve was very significant: Israel was made from twelve tribes and the twelve selected by Jesus were the heart of the new Israel, the renewed people of God that would consist of Jews and non-Jews. Matthias was the one chosen to replace Judas and to restore the integrity of the original twelve.

However, it was a continuity mingled with a difference: the original Twelve were chosen by Jesus; now it was up to the apostles to choose a replacement for Judas. How would they go about it? They understood that it would need to be someone who witnessed the public ministry of Jesus from the time of His Baptism up to the Ascension. Having nominated two suitable people from among the larger body of disciples, they prayed, asking the LORD to show them which of the two He had chosen.

This is an interesting mixture of human judgment and submission to divine guidance. Those early disciples used their judgment and discernment, but they also realized that they needed to ask for insight from God.

In our own lives, we also need both. We have to use our judgment and experience to see what steps to take; and equally, we entrust ourselves to the LORD in prayer.+

Homily for Wednesday of the 5th Week of Easter

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus uses the metaphor of the vine and its branches to refer to Himself and to His people, and He refers to the practice of pruning away those branches that don’t bear fruit. This pruning can refer to many things because there are many things that we need to prune, not only from the vine but from ourselves the branches. We need to be pruned of those things that keep us from those two important commandments: to believe in and love God and to love one another as Jesus has commanded us. We need to be pruned of those things that keep our faith from coming to fruition in our lives and in our souls.

For each of us, those things that need to be pruned will be different but, make no mistake, all of us, by virtue of our human nature need to remove things, perceptions, prejudices, judgments, and attitudes that keep our faith from its fruition.

So, let us take some time in prayer to honestly ask ourselves what it is that prevents us from keeping those two most important commandments and let us resolve to prune those things from our lives+.

Homily for Tuesday of the 5th Week of Easter

Our first reading today gives us a wonderful description of the ministry of Paul and Barnabas. Visiting small churches that were struggling in a pagan world, they put a renewed heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in faith. In the gospel, Jesus does something quite similar; He turns to His disciples who are distraught at the prospect of His imminent death, and He tells them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”[1]

There are times when we, as disciples of Jesus, need to be challenged, but there are also times when we need to be encouraged. Both Jesus and Paul knew how to encourage the disciples when a renewed heart was needed.

The Risen LORD continues His work of encouraging His disciples today. Getting discouraged about our prospects can get us down and stop us from doing what is within our power. The LORD wants to put fresh enthusiasm into our hearts; what the gospel calls a peace the world cannot give. It is good to turn to Jesus and invite Him to put fresh enthusiasm into our hearts so that we can be joyful in living by our faith. He strengthens us through the Holy Spirit, who is often called “Comforter” or “Consoler,” and so we turn to the Holy Spirit and pray in the words of Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 13^th century: “Heal our wounds, our strength renew; On our dryness pour thy dew.”[2]

 

 

[1] John 14:27

[2] Sequence for the Solemnity of Pentecost, Stephen Langton, d. 1228

Homily for Monday of the 5th Week of Easter

Love is central to today’s gospel passage; it speaks of our love for Jesus, His love for us, and the Father’s love for us. God the Father shows His love by giving us His Son. Jesus shows His love for us by laying down His life for us, and by telling us all He has learned from the Father. We show our love for Jesus by keeping His word, by living according to His teaching, which is summed up as, “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Jesus promises to send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit is to keep bringing to our minds the outlook, the mindset, of Jesus. The Holy Spirit helps us to keep Jesus’ word, and especially to love one another as He has loved us. In that gospel passage, there is a whole vision of the Christian life: God’s relationship with us as Father, Son and Spirit, and our loving relationship with God and with each other.+

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter

My father used to have a poster of a cartoon on the wall of his basement workshop when I was a kid. It depicted a man nailing up a sign. A pipe wrench was falling from one of the man’s hands as he gripped his throbbing thumb which was drawn with stars bouncing off of it. The man, obviously, had been trying to pound in the nail with the wrench and he paid the consequences. And what was printed on the sign he was trying to nail to the wall? It said: “Always use the proper tool.” Indeed, I think we’ve all heard the admonition, “Always use the right tool for the right job.” Certainly, it helps in any task to be clear on the goal and the steps to be taken to reach that end. You can’t make a soufflé with a sledgehammer. But assemble the right ingredients, put them into the proper relationships, and you can anticipate wonderful results.

In 1 Peter, we hear an amazing invitation to come to Jesus as “a living stone.” One might say: Nothing is less animate than a rock. But think like Michelangelo and realize that a stone contains a world of possibilities. The stone carver has a bag full of tools to chisel a rock to fit precisely into the space in a wall where it can be most useful. Each stone builds on the strength of the whole until a building arises in which it plays a vital part. The humble “stone” is a single note in a Bach concerto. It is an incidental character in a Broadway cast. But put all the notes together, all the actors, all the sentences, and you have a masterpiece.

Chosen, royal, priestly, and holy. These are the traits of the “stones” that make up the Church - the people of God, the Body of Christ on earth.

Each one of us has been chosen to be a part of the Church in some way. Many of us were invited first by our parents. Later, other mentors in the faith shepherded us to the point of religious understanding and moral formation. Perhaps now we ourselves are inviting family, friends, and community by our own example of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

We are a priestly people. Obviously not all of us are ordained to the sacramental ministry, but all are sacramentally anointed for the service of God. Together we are windows and doorways to the sacred for others. We are load-bearing walls meant to share burdens and responsibilities. We are arches and cathedral ceilings that reach toward heaven. We are paving stones others can pass over as they make their way toward an understanding of the faith. We are bridges over troubled waters in the lives of those who suffer. Each one of us is as anointed for our specific role, no less as the priest is who stands at the table of the LORD.+

Homily for Saturday of the 4th Week of Easter

As Paul saw it, when he and Barnabas were thrown out of the synagogue and banished from the territory, what appeared to be a failure actually helped to spread the Gospel. Paul quotes Isaiah, saying, “I have made you a light to the Gentiles, that you may be an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth.”

Paul’s approach is a good one in any crisis or change, trusting that the whole process is under the loving providence of our God.

His approach is one that we should take as well, especially during these uncertain times in which we find ourselves with the threat of the pandemic and in the constraints it has placed on our lives.

Let us pray for a deep trust in the goodness of God and that He walks with us in this current crisis and will guide us and give us strength and wisdom, if we but open our minds and hearts to His grace+

Homily for Friday of the 4th Week of Easter

At the Last Supper, Jesus tells the Apostles that while He is leaving them, He is returning to the Father from whom He came. He promises them that He will return one day to take them (and us) with Him into His Father’s house; that is our destiny. Jesus came among us to show us the way to the Father; that is His whole mission.

The many rooms in His Father’s house are symbolic of universal hospitality. The kingdom of Heaven is not a place for a select few; it is a place of welcome and peace for the many. All people are called to follow Jesus because He is the Way to the Father for all who follow Him. He promised that, when raised up from the earth, He would draw all people to himself.

So, let us pray that we will follow Jesus as the way from this life to the life of Heaven and trust that, if we do this, we will live with Him in His Father’s house.+

Homily for Thursday of the 4th Week of Easter

Our Gospel passage today brings us back to the scene of the Last Supper in that upper room. Jesus has just finished washing His Apostles’ feet, a symbolic act to show the humble service that Jesus Himself did and expected those who would minister in His name to do.

Indeed, in accepting the name “Christian,” we not only accept the commitment to serve the poor, the suffering, the oppressed, prisoners, the sick, but we do so with a sense of humility, not doing it simply for our own gain, but to truly be the compassionate presence of Jesus in our world. To do this, we must put aside our own ambitions and pride and truly be open to all that we are called to do.+

Homily for Wednesday of the 4th Week of Easter

We know from the Acts of the Apostles that Paul and Barnabas were sent forth to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Of course, as Baptized people, we, too, are called to go forth to preach the Good News. And yet, here we find ourselves being told to stay home as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Although the current situation in our world does limit our activities, it doesn’t really limit us in our answering that call to go forth and to spread the Good News, In fact, because we have slowed down so much and we are not hampered by the busyness of the “old normal,” it may have opened up new ways and new opportunities to be present to others as ambassadors of God in sharing His love and mercy.

A phone call, a video chat, or sending a card or letter to someone with whom we may not have much contact when we are normally so busy, might be a good way to share the love and compassion of Christ. These people may be relatives or long-lost friends; they may be an elderly or sick neighbor who has no family or who may be alone most of the time. 

To all of these, this may be a wonderful time to reach out with compassion and love and mercy and to let them know that we care and that we do so in the name of Jesus Christ.+

Homily for Tuesday of the 4th Week of Easter

I once had a woman in her early sixties come up to me, clearly frustrated, and even a bit angry. The feelings were directed at her adult children who would no longer go to church and at her inability to convince them to practice their faith. She went on for several minutes about how she tells her sons and daughters that they must go to Church or they risk going to hell, and she told me about how she goes on and on about Church teachings, etc., etc. The longer she talked to me, the more frustrated she got and the louder she got. To be honest, after listening to her for a few minutes, I understood why her children didn’t want to go to church; I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to Church anymore!

What a contrast to the reception of the Apostles in the areas surrounding Jerusalem that we hear about in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today. Despite being in fear for their lives, especially after the death of Stephen, they are out and about spreading the Good News. And despite the threats against those who converted to Christianity, the Apostles were winning them over.

What was at work there, which wasn’t at work for the woman who approached me about her adult children, was a sense of joy, a sense of commitment. Despite all the dangers and all that they had been through, they conveyed commitment by risking their lives to spread the Good News of Jesus; they exuded joy in their faith in Him. This joy was so evident and powerful to the people to whom they preached, that many of them couldn’t help but to joyfully and whole-heartedly accept faith in Jesus Christ.

All of us, as we know, are called to preach the Good News of our salvation in Jesus. Do we do so with a sense of joy or a sense of fear? Do we do so with a sense of the freedom of God’s children or with a sense of obligation? Do we do so with a spirit of the letter of the law or with a spirit that embraces the commandments of Jesus to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves? Do we do so with a sense of judgment or with the kind of mercy compassion Jesus showed when he ate with the sinner?

Let us pray for a spirit of commitment and joy that will truly attract others to our faith.+