Healing and Mission

Third Sunday of Easter:  John 21:1-19

 

What keeps us from living out, fully and completely, the mission the Lord has given us?

Through baptism, the power that sin and death have over us has been shattered. We have become sharers in the very life of God, and made members of the Body of Christ, the Church.  Our baptism also gives us a mission: to witness to all that God has done for us in Christ and through the Church. Each one of us lives out that mission in a different way – in marriage, as ordained, or in consecrated life, to name a few examples.  We have a sense of what our mission is. Christ empowers us for our mission by the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist; by the support of fellow Christians; by Scripture; by prayer; by a host of other means.

And yet…   Continue reading “Healing and Mission”

Gethsemane

Holy Thursday

It was a meal that gave Jesus’ disciples a lot more than they expected.

They had prepared a Passover meal, eager to celebrate this great feast of God’s liberation of their people with their Master. Jesus, unexpectedly, redefined the meal. He would be their Passover lamb. His own sacrifice would be the means by which humanity would be reconciled with God. The disciples, on their part, were to reenact this new Passover in memory of what Jesus was about to do.  “What did this mean?”, the disciples must have wondered.

But there was more.   Continue reading “Gethsemane”