Today’s Gospel invites us to “rest in Jesus” -- to turn our burdens over to Jesus and allow the power of the Spirit, dwelling within us, to empower us to push on… ever forward…knowing that we do so not alone but with the presence of the very one who created us and loved us into being.

Jesus does not dismiss the burdens of life. On the contrary, Jesus recognizes just how heavy they are and, in the midst of the struggles of our lives, he assures us to be with us and help us.

We are not asked to set our burdens down at the door of the church as we enter. But rather, we are invited to bring them to the altar and place them side by side with the bread and wine which we offer to be blessed and broken, transformed and shared.

This Jesus, the Christ, knows first hand of our human burdens and understands our suffering. We need not fear that our God does not understand, or does not care. The message of all of Jesus’ preaching and teaching was the exact opposite: our God knows us and loves us deeply and passionately and walks with us in the midst of our sufferings; our God weeps with us when we weep and suffers with us when we suffer. And as the Body of Christ, we are invited to reach out to others whose burdens and pain overwhelm them… to be the compassion of Christ to them…to help carry their burdens and to walk with them in the midst of their suffering. As Pope Francis said, to “be a sign of mercy”.

Welcoming the stranger, the immigrant, the one who is “other”, is an authentic living out of our discipleship…it incarnates the Gospel in the midst of our community.

Ironically in our reaching out to others, often our burdens are lightened, our wounds begin to heal and we become more and more the living Body of Christ. We become the face of the mercy of God.

Do I have burdens or old wounds that I am holding on to and not giving over to Jesus, that getting rid of might allow me to be more available to my sisters and brothers in need? Whose burden or pain am I being called to help carry, and how might I do that? How might I become the face of mercy to those who are suffering?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks for total loyalty from his disciples! But, total allegiance to what end? As we celebrate the birth of our nation we naturally think of things like the “pledge of allegiance,” the oath we make to our nation to defend her and to stand by her. And, we recall the many brave women and men, down thorough almost two and a half centuries, who have risked and given their lives so that we may enjoy the freedoms that we do.

Jesus was clear that he expected his followers to “be all in” -- to choose him over their mothers and fathers, over their sisters and brothers and even over their daughters and sons. This must have sounded absurd! Given the culture they lived in, they must have asked, who could do this?

To choose Jesus over your family was to make a choice that would mean that you would lose your identity, as your identity was rooted in your family, and you would lose the ones who would care for you in old age, or in the event of illness. Choosing Jesus over your family would mean your future would immediately become much more precarious!

What was Jesus asking of his followers? It seems, give the larger context of the Gospel, that Jesus was asking his disciples to put him at the center of their lives and from this center to move outward to others. These words of Jesus taken in the context of the fullness of his message ‘to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves’ gives us insight into what he is suggesting.

If indeed we are able to place Christ at the center of our lives, we will be less self-absorbed, less harsh towards others and more kind and accepting, more generous and loving.

By consciously and reflectively living Christ centered lives we become more and more rooted in our relationship with Christ and ultimately, our relationships with our sisters and brothers then blossom and become fuller and deeper; they can become more authentic human encounters with “the other,” loving them and accepting them as we find them, just as God does.

By placing Christ at the center of my life I prioritize my life in such a way that the priorities of the Gospel become the priorities of my life. In this way, the Gospel values of justice, peace and the integrity of creation are no longer simply “nice ideals to work for” but rather “fundamental imperatives” around which I build my life, create family, and live out my relationship with God and others.

So, this week, let us ask ourselves…am I putting anything or anyone ahead of Christ and my relationship with God that I need to reconsider so as to live a more Christ centered life? How does my relationship with God impact my relationship with my family and with others? How might strengthening and deepening my relationship with God positively impact my relationship with my family and others?

​Blessings,
Fr Tim

In this weekend’s Gospel, Jesus warns against fear and tells us to fear no one. Fear, and in particular, “fear of the other” has been the cause of the destruction of entire peoples and cultures, the cause of one war after another and still we have not learned just how disastrous for humanity fearmongering and the hatred of those who are different can be.

Poets, philosophers, and mystics alike all have warned that fear ultimately leads to the deadening of the soul and disconnection from the human family. Several years ago, Pope Francis warned that wherever there is fear, there will always be someone who will manipulate it to their own good. "Because fear, besides being good business for merchants of weapons and death, weakens and destabilizes us, destroying our psychological and spiritual defenses, anesthetizing us to the suffering of others and, in the end, making us cruel."

We find ourselves in the midst of a fear-ridden country with some people shouting of the coming calamity (because of the calls for racial justice and equality, because of increased immigration) and other societal changes that are happening do to our changing demographics, and yet Jesus who found himself in a not too dissimilar geopolitical situation (think the Roman occupation of his native country) called his followers not to fear but to have faith; to not to give into fear!

We too are called to not allow ourselves to be ruled by fear and allow it to turn us into cruel people who think of ourselves first and only, and leave the less fortunate to fend for themselves and to exclude them from our democratic debate and seek to exclude them from our communities, our schools, our churches and our public spaces. Pope Francis has said that mercy is the “best antidote” to fear! And in the same speech, he called for us to partner that mercy with courage.

We need courage to do the right thing in the face of fear which causes communities to want to build walls to keep people out instead of bridges, and fear makes peoples choose open conflict rather than embrace and welcome the differences of others.

In a very real way we are called to “walk towards our fears” and not run from them. Walking towards our fears takes courage, but we must not forget that we do not walk that journey alone -- we walk with Christ!

Our discipleship calls us to be courageous in these difficult and divisive times, and as Pope Francis has recently said, we are to “be a sign of mercy!” So let us be living signs of mercy to all those who are targeted or mistreated or threatened because of the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their gender or because of where they were born or who they love or what their social status is or what their nationality is. These realities cause fear in some people who are unable and unwilling to accept people who do not look like them, people who are “other than themselves.” They cannot accept that each and every human being is made in the image and likeness of God and is deeply and passionately loved by God just as they are!

And as disciples of Jesus Christ we are called to stand up and fight against those persons and movements that espouse social, political or religious ideologies and principles that deny or demean the God given human dignity of every woman, man and child on this planet.

Not until we have done this will we have truly lived the great commandment of Jesus, to love our neighbor as ourselves. We must ask ourselves, what personal biases am I being called to walk towards or to sit with and name? Let me pray to draw courage in facing my own biases, with the Holy Spirit guiding me. May each one of us “be a sign of mercy” for those in need.

May the mercy of God be upon you all. Amen.

Blessings,
Fr Tim

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers and to all the men who mentor, raise, care for, teach and love us. Thank you for all you do!

Each of us has been named and called by God! Each of us has been chosen by God, to play a role in God’s plan for the world. We may shrink back at the thought of having “a role in God’s plan for the world!,” but I strongly believe that God does indeed have a dream for each of our lives, and these dreams — these plans and visions for our lives — are interwoven like a great tapestry that wraps the earth.

The first reading from Exodus laid out the story of how God chose the people of Israel as his special possession. He saved them from slavery in Egypt and entered into a special covenant with them, making them His people and Him their god. He had plans for them and for their future.

And many centuries later Jesus gathered a people unto himself — his disciples — and he too had plans for them and the role they would play in God’s plan for the future of the world.

We see that Jesus, believing in the faith that his disciples possessed, sent them out to share that gift of faith that had been given to them, with others. He sent them out to proclaim the gospel; the good news that the Kingdom of God was at hand. And they would demonstrate this by performing mighty works that would astonish the people and manifest what they preached.

And you and I, we too, as disciples of Jesus Christ, are called to do the same. To preach the Good News, and to be a healing presence in the midst of a wounded world. We are called to be the peacemakers in the midst of conflict and war. Our discipleship calls us to actively work for racial equity and an end to all forms of systemic racism and bigotry in all of our institutions, large and small.

Our discipleship calls us to work to alleviate the suffering of the poor and marginalized, to work to reform our broken immigration and refugee policies and respond in a compassionate and meaningful way to the humanitarian crisis at our southern border.

Let us not be afraid of “the other”, but rather let us imitate Jesus and seek them out, embrace them as our sisters and brothers, as the beloved children of God they indeed are. Let us open our hearts and our minds to God’s dreams and plans for our lives and how we might be of best use to God’s dream and plans for the world!

Happy Juneteenth Day to you all! And let us celebrate and value the lives of all of our Black sisters and brothers, not just this weekend…but ALWAYS!

Blessings,
​Fr Tim

The Body and Blood of Christ are not only something we “get” when we go to Mass…it is what we become! We believe in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist and while we will never fully understand how this is, we gather each Sunday, around the “table of the Lord” to be nourished…and to be changed…changed, ever more fully, into the Body of Christ.

Through our receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, Christ lives in us and we in Christ and thus we become the Body of Christ. This “indwelling” of Christ in us, both as individuals and as community, has enormous implications for our lives both individually and communally.

We become “the Body of Christ” present in the world and are called to be the visible compassion and love of Christ reaching out to the immigrant, the refugee, to those discriminated against and treated unjustly because of the color of their skin, their gender or where they came from. We are called “to be for” all those who suffer and who are in need. As Christ was “for the world” so too we are to be “for the world”.

Our daily actions, our work, our relationships, all of them must reflect the Divine indwelling. Our lives should be a living witness to the words, actions, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And by no means do I miss the point that this is a tall order. It is called “the great commission.” It is the very core of what true discipleship of Jesus Christ is: to live and to love as Jesus lived and loved!

We are called to live our lives in such a way that we become visible, tangible signs of God’s amazing and passionate love for all people -- to stand up to the systemic racism that pervades our society, that has been woven through the fabric of our country over the last 400 years.

I believe that to refuse to sit in the discomfort of confronting the reality of racism in our country and our own white privilege is to deny the primary message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- God’s deep and passionate love for ALL people…just as they are…just as he created them: as the beloved of God!

When we embrace that all who are “other” from us are the “BELOVED” of God then there is no place in our hearts or in our lives for racism, bigotry or “otherness”.

And so, let us ask ourselves a few questions: How does my life reflect my being part of the Body of Christ? When I leave Mass after having received Eucharist, what do I take with me out into the world? What is the Eucharist calling me to “pick up” or “lay down” in my life that I might, more fully, live as an engaged and active member of the Body of Christ working to bring an end to racism and bigotry and all forms of marginalization of an exclusion of people, and thus help to build up the Reign of God in the here and now?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

Most every year as we celebrate the feast of The Most Holy Trinity my mind returns to an 8th grade classroom and a tall red-haired nun, in a modified black habit with a short veil, named Sister Mary Janelle. I recall her patiently helping my classmates and myself as we wrestled with the concept of the Trinity, three Persons who were at the same time separate, yet one.

As she went through theological gymnastics trying to help us understand, ultimately she conceded that it was a mystery…a mystery with a capital “M”. At the time my classmates and I felt it was a bit of a “cop-out” on her part…but now almost 50 years later I have come to see her wisdom, and have come to be comfortable with, and truly enjoy the concept of the “Mystery” which is The Triune God.

We live in a society that demands to know all things, to have concrete explanations for everything, and to have it right now! All we have to do is “Google it”! But the reality is, ultimately God is beyond the fullness of our understanding. Today I realize that I am part of a religious tradition that has passed on a faith…a faith filled with mystery and awe in our God. There is a consensus of our ancestors that holds sacred “revealed truths” that are essentials of our faith that will always lie just beyond our capacity to fully understand them.

At the core of the reality of the Holy Trinity is the concept of relationship, of interconnectedness. It teaches us about the relationship of the three Persons of the Trinity not just in their interconnectedness but also in The Trinity’s relationship to us and our relationship to one another, in and through this Triune God.

The Holy Spirit has been sent into our hearts to lead us headlong into The Mystery…to live out in concrete terms what we say we believe even though we do not fully understand.

Our lack of understanding has no impact on The Mystery itself. The Mystery desires us and loves us just as we are, conflicted and wrestling with our faith. One of the most important realities is that we remain engaged…wrestling with our faith -- engaged with God and engaged with each other, “all others”!

When all is said and done what is most important is that we remain engaged in the struggle for understanding and we open our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit, the bringer of wisdom.

And what wisdom and understanding is the Holy Spirit trying to bring us today in the midst of the light that is being shined on the darkness, of the SIN of the systemic racism and bigotry that is woven into the very fabric of our nation? What wisdom and insight is the Holy Spirit trying to impart to us as to how to respond to the humanitarian crisis of immigrants and asylum seekers at our southern boarder, and of all of the refugees walking the world seeking a place to call home? What wisdom is the Holy Spirit seeking to impart to us on how we might grow closer to the Triune God through putting Jesus’ commandment to love one another into action?

May the blessings of our Triune God be upon you all,

Fr. Tim

As we celebrate the feast of the Ascension I cannot help but reflect on the many ideas and concepts that swirl around this feast…some with unintended consequences!

The word “ascension” itself congers up images of Jesus rising up into the clouds to join the Father and the Holy Spirit somewhere “up there”…far, far away. The problem with this is it can lead us to believe that heaven is “up there” and we are “down here” and that God is far off and distant from us, and from our lives.

This is in stark contrast to the heart and soul of the meaning and significance of the incarnation. The truth of our God having become “incarnate” (in the flesh) in Jesus, which means that God is with us…and not off, watching us from afar.

We need to recall Jesus’ promise…“behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20) These simple words are most profound… there is no need for us to stand gawking skyward with our jaws hanging open. While the physical presence of Jesus Christ as a singular human and divine presence no longer walks the earth in the same flesh as before, be assured that Christ is right here -- as close to us as our own breath -- keeping us alive to be his presence in our world.

As we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus, let us celebrate the presence of the Risen One in our midst! Not far off from us, but actually within us, as Jesus told the disciples…“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.” (Jn. 14:20)

Before his ascension Jesus gave a clear command and mission to his disciples…and to us. We are charged with preaching the “Good News” of Jesus Christ and called to be a healing, loving and welcoming presence in a world filled with sickness, hatred and exclusion. And the way that we are empowered to take on such herculean tasks is precisely because of this indwelling of The Divine within us.

We must in this time of such turmoil and suffering in our world, open up ourselves, at our deepest levels, to this Divine presence within us and allow the Holy Spirit and the Risen Christ to guide us into personal and communal action aimed at building the “beloved community” where all persons are loved, respected, and valued and included -- just as they are! Just as Jesus loves them and accepts. Just as he loved and accepted the Samaritan woman at the well with all of her former husbands, and just as he did with the tax collector and cheat, Zacchaeus, whose home he chose to dine in before Zacchaeus had the chance to repent for his way of life. Jesus loves us as he finds us and then that love transforms us into better people.

Emboldened by this Divine presence within me, how can I be a “healing, loving and welcoming presence” to the immigrant, the refugee and to those who experience discrimination, racism and bigotry, and sexism?

Let us ask ourselves, how do I “preach” the Good News of Jesus Christ to my family, friends, coworkers, and to those in political power?

And how and where do I experience the presence of the Risen Christ in my life, and how does that experience of the Risen Christ impact my relationships with people, with nature and creation, and with my relationship to material things?

Easter Blessings,

Fr. Tim

Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers, and to all the women who mentor and care for us and create opportunities for us to grow into the fullness of our potential. May God’s most abundant blessings be upon them today and all the days of their lives! And may each one of us always value and respect all women, everywhere, and work for the safety and equality of all women around the globe.

Last week the Gospel lent itself to reflecting on the topic of loneliness, which is certainly a pertinent topic in our society today. And, so again, this weekend it does. Pretty much everyone has felt lonely, rejected, or abandoned by friends or loved ones at some point in their lives. Most of us have felt fearful, wondering how we will make it through rough times with our children or parents, siblings, or friends.

We suffer personal loss or illness and wonder if we will be able to go on. And certainly as we find ourselves trying to navigate through the remnants of this strange new world after COVID 19, we need today’s Gospel message that tells us -- in the midst of our “lost-ness”…in the midst of our loneliness…in the midst of the fear of what may lay ahead -- that we are never truly alone, we are not abandoned, for the Risen Christ remains with us, always.

When I was little, I used to think that Christ was with me, but only when I was doing something good or only in holy or sacred places. How wrong I was! In today’s Gospel Jesus tries to help his disciples understand that no matter what or how they feel….no matter where they go, he will be with them. And, even more, the Holy Spirit will be given to them and find a resting place within them.

We are the inheritors of this same promise. We are never alone, never abandoned! Our God is always with us. Even when we can’t feel that presence or sense it, God is with us.

Even in the midst of our worst moments, our most selfish actions; even in the midst of our greatest sin, God is present and loving us through that dark moment. And of course, that means that God too is present in and with “the other,” even in their worst moments, in the midst of their most selfish actions!

God’s presence is not dependent on our actions, we do not control God’s presence! No matter how desperate our situation is, God is with us…loving us in the midst of it all.

The real question then seems to be: so what will my response be to that loving indwelling of the Divine presence within me, and within “the other”?

How do I share God’s love with the immigrant, the refugee, the marginalized, the one who is hated or despised because of their nationality or because of the color of their skin, or looked down upon because they are a woman? How do I recognize and value the one who is “other” than me? What is the Holy Spirit calling me to…or away from in my life?

Easter Blessings,
​Fr. Tim