Living Sacrifice: Growing in Faith Through Scripture and the Mass

Jesus looks upon us with love and mercy and allows us to respond to His grace as disciples and to bear fruit.

In St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body we discover the "nuptial meaning of the body," that we were created for communion and in that beautiful reality we image the blessed Trinity.

God gathers us together to fill us with His Spirit and sends us out to gather the scattered children of God.

Christ calls St. Peter, and all of us, to see the cross from God's perspective.  

Jesus, the Messiah, comes to restore and renew us in His divine love and grace.  

The heart is the place of encounter between God and humanity.  Christ calls us to purify our hearts and to always be ready for the encounter with God.

"The flesh is the very condition on which our salvation hinges" (Tertullian).

"Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you."

Jesus gives us His own body and blood as food for the journey on our pilgrimage home to God.

We are called to a dialogue with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and we should be ready to listen to what He has to say.

In the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus anticipates the future institution of the Eucharist, roots the Eucharist in the past and gives us grace in the present moment.  

Jesus, our true Shepherd, leads us through the dark valley to find new and eternal life in God.

Jesus gives us the paradigm for a truly missionary Church this weekend: a Church called and sent, a Church dependent totally upon Him, and a Church that imitates His call to repentance and new life.  

Each baptized Christian is called to share in the prophetic ministry of Jesus Christ. We do so with receptivity, knowledge that we may be rejected, and ultimately with a spirit of renewal.   

The created world listens to the voice of its Creator.  When we listen to the voice of God we find that peace we long for, even in the midst of the storms of life.

The parables of Jesus about the Kingdom of God require that we have humility and faith, and that we become men and women of prayer.  Jesus wants us to enter fully into the Kingdom of God and to bear great fruit!

God calls us to much more than return to Paradise.  He calls us to share in His own Divine life and to share in the glory of the risen Christ.  He heals us of the wound of original sin and calls us to build up those around us.

Jesus fulfills the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant by sharing in our life, offering His body and Blood on the cross, and giving us Himself as a meal in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

God has revealed Himself as an eternal exchange of love, Father Son and holy Spirit, and has invited us to share in that exchange. 

God wants to pour  the Holy Spirit into our hearts like honey, His sweetness and gentle new life.  Through prayer we expand our hearts and purify them to receive this great gift.

Jesus teaches us that we do not belong to the world anymore than He does, but also that "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  Christians are called to live differently than the world, but to also bring the message of the Gospel to the world that desperately needs to hear it.

God's love is unconditional, but to be friends with God necessitates that we love.  By loving those around us enough to share Christ with them, we truly fulfill the commandment of love.

Creation and the redemption are the fruits of the communion of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, in His image of the vine and the branches, invites us to likewise bear fruit in communion with Him.  The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Jesus' body and blood that allows us to remain in Him, and He in us, and to bear great fruit.

Are you saved?  In the Catholic vision of salvation, we are touched by Christ personally and socially, spiritually and physically, historically and in a transcendent way.  Jesus, the Good Shepherd, comes to us to bring us this salvation.

The kerygma or core Gospel message has the power to change and transform the world.  How are we receiving it and is it changing our lives in this Easter season?