Holy Ghost PNCC

Jesus gathered His friends, on the night before He died, and, sharing bread and wine with them, said, “This is My body…This is My blood.” The Gospel writers, recording this event, remembered also an earlier event, when Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to people to eat. It was on a hillside near to the Sea of Galilee, on a day when crowds of people followed Him. It was a lonely place and getting late, when the disciples decided to put some order affairs by sending the people away.

In the Church now, which is the living body of Christ, we live according to these events. As Jesus welcomed the crowds who came to listen to Him, so He welcomes all people of goodwill today. As He taught the crowds on the hillside, so He teaches us today through the scriptures read at Mass. As he fed the hungry people in that lonely place, so now He feeds the world, in its loneliness, with the gift of His own Body and Blood.

We are called to be a Eucharistic people. That is, people who bless the Lord for His goodness, and we share the blessings of life with others. We are called to be like the Lord Himself. On that hillside, next to the Sea of Galilee, Jesus welcomed people. He was good news for people and He fed people. This is what it means to be part of Jesus Christ, His living Body.

Today’s feast is one that calls on us to be full of gratitude for our faith and to celebrate with one another God’s closeness to us. As we continue with our Eucharist, the great prayer of thanksgiving, we will be reminded that once again we are caught up in the mystery of the Trinity. Soon you will see the priest outstretch his hands over the gifts of bread and wine – the gifts that represent you and me and all our prayers – and the prayer is that the Holy Spirit will come upon those gifts so that Christ may be present among us as our food and drink, uniting us in His life and His love. And what does Christ do? He gathers us and our prayers, and presents us to His Father. All that the Father has is Christ’s: He and the Father are one; and His prayer is that we may all be one too.

We are thinking about a mystery and in this life we will never grasp its full meaning, but it is not entirely beyond us. Christ became human so that He could speak to us in our own language about God, and He told us about His Father and the Spirit. And remember, the Spirit leads us to the complete truth.

Our prayerful congratulations to Joseph Stephen Karvois, son of Stephen Karvois and Joelle Harnatkavage on the occasion of his First Holy Communion.

In today’s Gospel we hear why it is that we are still celebrating Pentecost over 2000 year later. Jesus, in His farewell discourse to His disciples, assures them that they will never be abandoned. He promises that the Father will send them His Advocate, one who will teach them how to remain true to Christ’s word, to remain in His love. At baptism we too receive the Holy Spirit. Are we aware of the Holy Spirit in our life?

There are so many distractions in our world that it is easy to lose sight of the important things in life. The recent recession has brought distress and pain for many, caused at least partly because there were people who were focused only on their own gain without concern for others.

When we fail to love, we cease to live in truth. When we lose sight of the truth, we cease to love. Jesus knew that for us to live in love and truth we would need an Advocate, someone to guide us ion knowing which path to take, when and how. Most of us do not live dramatic lives on the world stage. We live ordinary lives, going about our business in our noisy and often chaotic world. It can be hard to discern what the Holy Spirit is asking of us, but we can be sure that bring the work of the Holy Spirit will be evident in the actions we take that bring life and joy to ourselves and others. This is Pentecost: when the Spirit burns in the hearts of believers and leads them to act for the good of the whole world.

What makes Christ’s prayer in the Gospel unique, apart from the amazing fact that He is praying for us, is that He is directly addressing His heavenly Father. Jesus is praying not only for His immediate disciples but for all of those who come to believe through their witness. That means us. We have an eternal destiny. All our desires and longings can be only be properly satisfied by God. God gives us that gift of happiness by sharing the divine life with us in eternity.

Christ has physically moved on, but He has not abandoned us. By the gift of the Spirit and by His presence in the sacraments, Christ is still with us. We are given this life to enjoy and be fruitful, and to persevere in times of trial. The great challenge Christians are called to face is to live life wisely and to the full, while remembering that we will only ever be fully alive in heaven. We are asked to build up God’s kingdom on earth, while looking forward to God’s eternal kingdom.

At the Last Supper, the night before He died, Jesus made His own last will and testament to His disciples. The great bequest that Jesus makes, His parting gift, is the gift of peace. It is the power of the Holy Spirit, which after His death and resurrection, Jesus will send from the Father to all who love Him and who keep His word.

The need for that Holy Spirit became evident very quickly in the life of the early Church. Some Jewish converts wanted the sign of their tradition, circumstances, to be demanded of the Gentile converts. All sides of the argument were presented and argued for. Judgment was made, wise judgment, but not at the expense of any side. All points were given due consideration and value. It was not about winners and losers, but about finding the right way forward.

“Peace be with you” is the Easter greeting of the risen Lord. That greeting is not merely a wish. It is a gift imparted to us. It is a responsibility. It is our vocation.

Happy Mother’s Day!

M – O – T – H – E – R

“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold;
“E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be,

Put them all together, they spell
“MOTHER,”
A word that means the world to me.

–Howard Johnson (c. 1915)

The origin of the conventional May devotion is still relatively unknown. It is certain that this form of Marian devotion began in Italy. There, in May 1784, at the church of Camillians in Ferrara for the first time May devotions were held publicly throughout the entire month. Until then it seems that May devotions were more likely a private exercise of piety, even when also partly in a public framework. Around 1739, for instance, witnesses speak of a particular form of Marian devotion in May in Grezzano near Verona. In 1747 the Archbishop of Genoa recommended the May devotion as a devotion for the home. In Rome by 1813, May devotions were held in as many as twenty churches.

From Italy, May devotions soon spread to France. One of the most prominent promoters was Rev. Pierre Doré (1733-1816) from Longwy in Lothringen. Doré learned of this form of devotion in Italy. May devotions spread in connection with the strong restoration movement after the revolution. They were understood as “the ecclesial contrast to the frivolous spring celebrations of the revolutionaries.” Indeed, from 1830 on, May devotions were celebrated everywhere. …

In Belgium the May devotions -– at least as a private devotion –- were also known since already in 1803 and in 1819 corresponding devotional books were published. … Also in Luxembourg sometime around 1840 May devotions were known. In Luxembourg May received an additional imprint through the annual Mary octave in honor of Mary as “Consolation of the Afflicted. In Switzerland in 1808, this devotion was celebrated for the first time in the College at Brigg (Sitten) … and also publicly since 1849 at the Monastery in Einsiedeln. In the Canton of Glarus the Monastery Näfels was the transmitting center of the May devotion from 1852 on. Around 1860, the Sunday “May sermons” became customary and soon became a specific characteristic of this Mary month.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus prepares His disciples for a different way of life, one where He is no longer physically present with them. He reminds them of His love for them, and teaches that they need to respond to that love and to express it, so that others may know that they are disciples of Jesus. As we hear throughout the Acts of the Apostles, the early disciples constantly had to face misunderstanding and even hostility. They faced crises – and they had to make major decisions about their identity as the Church.

Like the first disciples, we too are followers of Christ, and Christ calls us, as He called them, to be witnesses of His love for all. We are called to decide, like St. Paul and St. Peter early on in the Church’s life, what sort of community we should be: should we be restricted and closed, in order to protect ourselves and our faith; or should we be open, compassionate and welcoming? The early Church chose to reach out to others. Many people today are afraid of those who are different from them – and this fear limits them. The early disciples must have been afraid at times too, but their faith was so strong that they faced their challenges with confidence. Through prayer, through reflection and through meaningful conversation with others, we too can face our own challenges with confidence and trust in God.

The Plymouth Seniorate Council meeting was held Saturday, April 24 at 1PM at the Parish of the Holy Cross PNCC in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

St. Paul had been a senior Pharisee and the local Jews might have first thought of him as a visiting celebrity. Imagine their horror to find him preaching about Jesus and preaching to the pagans too. St. Paul makes clear that he has come not to his fellow Jews but to all who will accept Jesus. St. Paul paid for his radical ways over and over again as he was repeatedly ejected from places where he preached, was imprisoned multiple times and was finally executed.

Our second reading, from the book of the Apocalypse, describes John’s vision of the great crowd of the saved from all nations. Again this reinforces the idea of Jesus as the Savior not just of the Jews but of the whole world.

In the Gospel passage Jesus uses the metaphor of sheep and their shepherd. He promises that His sheep will be cared for; and that these sheep will not just be cared for in this life, but will have eternal life and can never be lost. We are lucky enough to be part of that great flock of sheep. Through the actions of the apostles and their successors, God’s word has been made available across the world. And over the centuries it has spread to people of all nations. We are promised the greatest gift of all: not just a level of love and mercy in this world which is beyond our deserving, but the promise of eternal life. All we are asked to do is to listen to the word of Jesus our shepherd.