Fr. Brendan McGuire - Podcasts that Break open the Word of God

There are two things about this gospel that have always stood out for me and have somewhat troubled me. Here is my homily from the Second Sunday of Easter, sometimes known as Thomas Sunday or Divine Mercy Sunday.

My hope today is that today as we celebrate this Eucharist and come around this time, to recognize the sacredness and the grace and the preciousness of this time that God has given us no matter how long it is.

When we come to the Cross today, we see what Christ gave us. It was courage. It was commitment. It was community. And it was all in love. Love that costs everything.

Today, the Lord challenges what it means to serve. It is to get down on our hands and our knees and to wash another person’s feet, to love them the way Christ has loved us. Do we realize what he has done for us? He who is our Servant. He who is our Master and our Messiah, Teacher and he has showed us a different way. Let us do what he has done for us and love one another.

Today, we celebrate the Passion of Christ and we celebrate the clarity when Christ became the best friend to all humanity. Of course we know what defines a person is a friendship beyond all others is to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. Christ does that for every single one of us.

The constant theme that Christ brings about time and time again in his ministry, a reminder that God is already with them here and now, in his presence that he will be with them forever, with them forever. That in this presence God reminds us that the gift that he gives to us is his complete, enduring presence; that no matter what happens in our life God is with us.

"Whoever lives the truth come to the light." Can we not see the light right now that shines right in our midst; let us rejoice with the gift of the light of God; that Christ shines in the midst of our darkness and has never, ever left us.

I do not know what it is about the human condition that we find ourselves so easily distracted. We are trying to do something and then “Oh, look. Over there, oh, look; oh squirrel, oh squirrel.” And we just go and start doing something else. It is this very mindset of distraction that the scriptures speak to today.

Lent is an opportunity for us to re-evaluate and see where our God already is in the world; that Jesus is right here with us. I sometimes fear that we look for God in all the wrong places because he is right among us. He is right here.

In this Lent as we enter into this classical time, and it is a wonderful joy-filled time, if we can enter into the true spirit of metanoia, this repentance of changing our mind and our heart; can we leave a little bit of white space for ourselves and for God; for others and for God. So that together the season truly will be a season of joy.

Sometimes, the longer we leave something, the harder it becomes to do. That certainly is true of bad habits and sinful ways. That is why the Church gives us these reminders every year of this 40-days to once again turn our hearts back to God; or as the scripture says today to rend our hearts; to lay open our hearts back to God and to be renewed.

I do not think there is a time in our history where we have not acknowledged the power of touch more than today in the middle of this COVID crisis. Who among us now does not miss the touch of our relatives and our friends? 

The ultimate strength of Jesus is his relationship with God the Father and when he is under this constant pressure he digs deeper and goes deeper into his relationship with his Father. His ultimate source of strength is God’s love. And he knows that. So every morning he goes to pray. (Read more...)

Our discipleship is not just about coming to Church; it is about being Church. It is about being the family of God. And when we are family, we make decisions as a family and we stand with each other through thick and through thin.

We are called to choose unity, goodness and truth over division, evil and lies. And that each one of us has to choose that for ourselves and we have to find inside of ourselves to say, “There is enough, there is more than enough for me and for everyone else.”

We tend to become like those we listen to. It makes sense, right? Those to whom we listen and whom we spend time with and the more time we spend with them, the more we will become like them. It is true for all of us.

We all know that we need community.  The Church, the Body of Christ that we claim to be   is a unique community, a community of true belonging  that says that Christ is at the center in the One Lord;  in the One Table; in the One Jesus Christ.

When COVID first broke and we were ordered into our first shelter-in-place, one of the requirements was to stay home and to not hike in any park that was more than five minutes away from your house. Up until that point, I had been hiking regularly in a park called “Sierra Azul,” a twelve minute drive from my house. So I had to find another place to hike. 

Remember the famous line from Shakespeare’s play? Indeed a lot is in a name. Right? We are proud of our names. We know our names. We even sometimes know the history of our names.