We go to our Mother (Pope St. John Paul II / Pope Francis)

May Mary, who in the freedom of her ‘Fiat’
and her presence at the foot of the cross,
offered to the world Jesus the Liberator,
help us to find him in the Sacrament of the altar.

--Pope St. John Paul II

    Our Lady listens to our cries and heals our sorrows. We should learn this: when there are difficulties in life, we go to our Mother; and when life is happy, we also go to our Mother to share these things. We need to go to these oases of consolation and mercy, where faith is expressed in a maternal language; where we lay down the labours of life in Our Lady’s arms and return to life with peace in our hearts, perhaps with the peace of little children. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: Josef Janssens, Crucifixion, Cathedral, Antwerp, Belgium (ca. 1903-1910), https://airmaria.com/2009/04/11/there-at-the-foot-of-the-cross-2/
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 24, 2026: We were all given to drink of one Spirit...

We were all given to drink of one Spirit…

Are we ready to become sources of living water for our world? 

    We are a people of hope, hope in a promise. Our first reading for the Vigil Mass of Pentecost is the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel, whose inhabitants desired to make a name for themselves, an act of pride that ultimately led to division. Come, let us build ourselves a city and so make a name for ourselves, they say. But God then confuses their language and scatters them all over the earth. In so doing, the people are humbled, but, sadly, they are also divided. It is that division that Pentecost reverses. 

    We see hope for the people of Israel in the remaining readings for the Pentecost Vigil. In the Book of Exodus, Moses reminds the people that God desires relationship with them, so long as they hearken to God’s voice and keep God’s covenant. Unfortunately, they do not do so, and yet God remains faithful, promising the prophet Ezekiel that he will open their graves and have them rise from them, and bring them back to the land of Israel. The prophet Joel similarly speaks of God’s desire for renewal: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; then everyone shall be rescued who calls upon the name of the Lord. Before Jesus’ death and resurrection, renewal and reunification were not yet possible, but in John’s Gospel, Jesus promises that, not only will they be restored to God, but his disciples will become a source of living water pouring out to renew the earth. And, at the time Paul writes to the Roman community, although the Spirit has come to all believers, Paul knows our ultimate union in Christ will be in heaven: we hope for what we do not see, and wait with endurance. 

    The readings for Pentecost Sunday turn our attention even more closely to the workings of the Holy Spirit. When, in John’s Gospel, having risen from the dead, Jesus comes to the disciples who are hiding behind locked doors, he breathes on them, saying, Receive the Holy Spirit! They are now fully one in him and he in them. At last, filled with the Holy Spirit, they are ready to give witness and speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim – a total reversal of the sin of Babel, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles. The language the disciples now speak is a language that is universal, for it is the language of love, and they are returned to the world, that rivers of living water can flow from them onto the world. 

    As Paul reminds the Corinthians, we were all baptized into one body, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. It is the Spirit that banishes division, the Spirit that makes our union in Christ possible. And so, may we pray, as we hear in Psalm 104, Lord, send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth. In Pentecost we are created anew, drenched in the Spirit, that we too might offer hope as we proclaim that Jesus is Lord… to all! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

A realm of power already within us (Marianne Williamson)

    Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. The world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world. 

--Marianne Williamson 

Image source: Rembrandt, The Ascension, detail (1636), https://ryanadorjan.com/why-are-you-just-standing-there-staring-at-the-sky-ascension-sunday-2021/
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Go and make disciples of all nations (Bishop Robert Barron)

    [In Matthew’s Gospel,] Jesus assures us that he will always remain with us. Only when we realize that our lives are situated in a context of a Life that stretches infinitely beyond them, only when we know that our wills are related to a Will that encompasses and surpasses the whole of the cosmos, are we ready to live. 

     Matthew brings his Gospel to completion with Jesus’ Great Commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. . . . And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” We must come to terms with the fact that our lives are not about us. 

    There is Another who will tie us up and take us where we never imagined we could or would go; there is a Power that is operative in us and accompanies us whether we know it or not and that will accomplish what we, by our own power, could never accomplish. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Image source: Frank Salisbury, Ascension, The Victoria & Albert Museum, originally created for Richmond College, Surrey (1932), https://www.facebook.com/groups/303462353173920/posts/2891612621025534/
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To perceive the divine mystery (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

     Love [people] even in [their] sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. 

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
The Brothers Karamazov

Image source: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/understanding-is-love-and-the-world-needs-more-love/
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Starting from the heart (Julian of Norwich / Pope Francis)

All shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well…
For there is a force of love
moving through the universe
that holds us fast and will never let us go.

--Julian of Norwich

    It is only by starting from the heart that our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling differing minds and wills, so that the Spirit can guide us in unity as brothers and sisters. Reconciliation and peace are also born of the heart. The heart of Christ is ‘ecstasy’, openness, gift and encounter. In that heart, we learn to relate to one another in wholesome and happy ways, and to build up in this world God’s kingdom of love and justice. Our hearts, united with the heart of Christ, are capable of working this social miracle. 

--Pope Francis,
Dilexit nos,
Paragraph 28

Image source: https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/sacred-heart-of-jesus-a-symbol-of-love-and-mercy/
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You've got to let go (Rowan Williams)

At his Ascension,
our Lord entered Heaven,
and he keeps the door open
for humanity to enter.

--Oswald Chambers

 

   [At] the Last Supper, when Jesus says, “It is expedient for you that I go away,” as if Jesus is saying, “If I stay around, it’ll be all too easy for you to be comfortable with the assurance of the love of God and the healing power of God that I have embodied for you. But actually, for you to be open to the full range and depth of what God is going to give through the life of the Holy Spirit, then you’ve got to let go of having me around as a best friend. It’s more than that.” 

--Rowan Williams,
Former Archbishop of Canterbury

Image source: Jacques Le Chevalier, Ascension Window, Notre-Dame des Otages, Paris (20e), https://www.mesvitrauxfavoris.eu/Supp_G/vitraux_jacques-le-chevallier.htm
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Sing in jubilee to the glorious Virgin (St. Bonaventure)

      All ye nations, clap your hands: sing in jubilee to the glorious Virgin. For she is the gate of life, the door of salvation, and the way of our reconciliation. The hope of the penitent: the comfort of those that weep: the blessed peace of hearts, and their salvation. 

     Have mercy on me, O Lady, have mercy on me: for thou art the light and the hope of all who trust in thee. By thy salutary fecundity let it please thee: that pardon of my sins may be granted unto me. 

—St. Bonaventure

In May we honor the Blessed Virgin Mary... 

Image source: Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, The Virgin in Prayer (ca. 1640-1650),  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_in_Prayer#/media/File:Sassoferrato_-_Jungfrun_i_b%C3%B6n.jpg
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 17, 2026: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you...

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you…
Are we ready to exercise the power of Christ’s love? 

    We are always in a state of misunderstanding. Faith can and will lead us to understanding, but it is a process, not a fiat. The early Christian community was left with many questions when Jesus ascended to heaven: When will he be back? How will he return? In the Acts of the Apostles, they ask outright, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Before he ascends, Jesus needs them to finally recognize that his power is not intended to topple regimes but to win hearts. The power Jesus gives his disciples – and that he gives us – is the power to love and to love profoundly, to love past barriers. We are still working toward mastering this power. 

    It helps to remember, as Paul tells the Ephesians, that if the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, then we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call. Christ, in dying and rising, did the one thing that could bring salvation: he offered himself for all humanity, a superlative act of love that made him king eternally, seated at the right hand of God in the heavens. But the throne of which Psalm 47 sings, the throne God mounts to shouts of joy, is also and always, for Christians, the enthronement of Jesus Christ in us, for all eternity. 

    To believe this is to have true knowledge of him, which then empowers us – who, like the eleven disciples in Matthew’s Gospel, worship, though we doubt – to go and make disciples of all nations, revealing his love that we choose to participate in, secure in the love that makes him king of our hearts, with us always, until the end of the age. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

A union that will reveal You to the world (Erin Flynn)

What use is it if I receive You
and do not bear You to the world?
“Mary went in haste…”
What use is it
if I join myself to You in love
and do not love my brother?
“They’ll know you are my disciples…” 

Is it even possible to be
truly united to Goodness
and not share that goodness?
What kind of union is it,
if I stay my same self thereafter? 

Do not allow me to remain as I am, Jesus.
Help me to prepare my heart
for true union with You,
a union that will reveal You to the world
uniquely through me. 

For what use is it if You come to me
and I refuse You to my neighbor? 
What use is it, Lord, if You fill me
and I do not overflow? 

--Erin Flynn               

Image source: Elizabeth Polfus, Overflowing, https://theologyandchurch.com/2017/09/17/a-prayer-on-sunday-11/overflowing/
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If God loves us with all his being (Pope Leo XIV)

    If God loves us with all his being, then we too must love one another. We cannot love God whom we do not see without loving our brother and sister whom we do see (cf. 1 Jn 4:20)... 

    In following Jesus, the ascent to God passes through descent and dedication to our brothers and sisters, especially the least, the poorest, the abandoned and the marginalized. What we have done to the least of these, we have done to Christ (cf. Mt 25:31-46). 

    In the face of disasters, wars and misery, we bear witness to God’s mercy to those who doubt him only when they experience his mercy through us. 

--Pope Leo XIV 

Image source: Pope Leo XIV blesses a baby as he greets people before celebrating Mass with those assisted by the Albano diocesan Caritas agency at the Shrine of Santa Maria della Rotonda in Albano Laziale, Italy, Aug. 17, 2025, https://catholicreview.org/burn-with-fire-of-gods-love-pope-says-at-mass-and-lunch-with-the-poor/
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Joy and duty (Bishop Robert Barron)

    Joy and commandments: these are not terms that we would readily juxtapose. We usually associate commandments with the carrying out of duty and responsibility, or laying down the law and establishing order and discipline. But all of this seems opposed to joy. 

    We find joy in God alone, for our souls have been wired for God. We must acquire God if we are to be joyful. But here’s the trick—and the whole of the Christian life is on display here: God is love. God is self-emptying on behalf of the other. But this means, paradoxically, that to acquire God is to make of oneself a gift. To have God is to be what God is—and that means giving one’s life away. That alone will make you joyful. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Image source: Marc Chagall, Crucifixion, Union Church of Pocantico Hills, New York, https://hudsonvalley.org/article/union-church-of-pocantico-hills-virtual-tour/
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What is a Paraclete? (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

     What is a Paraclete? A Paraclete is one who comforts, who cheers, who encourages, who persuades, who exhorts, who stirs up, who urges forward, who calls on, what the spur, and word of command is, to a horse. [The Paraclete] is what clapping is to a speaker, what a trumpet is to a soldier. That is what a Paraclete is to the soul: one who calls us to the good. 

      A Paraclete is just that, something that cheers the spirit of one, with signals and with cries, all zealous, that one should do something and full of assurance that if one will, one can, calling us on, springing to meet us halfway, crying to our ears, or to our heart: This way to do God’s will, this way to save your soul, come on, come on! 

--Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Sermons & Devotional Writings

Image source: https://www.justhorseriders.co.uk/blogs/news/legends-of-the-saddle-the-10-greatest-horse-riders-and-equestrian-disciplines?srsltid=AfmBOorCX-J44yMX7Xrgvbmecqi20pUYf9dhnA9bqAjsDWP_wD_5bBT_
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Bless all mothers (A Mother's Day Prayer)

Heavenly Father,
We thank You for the gift of mothers,
through whom Your love is revealed in so many ways.

Bless all mothers:
those who are joyful, and those who are burdened,
those expecting new life, and those who mourn a loss,
those who nurture children now, and those who lovingly remember. 

Grant them strength, patience, and joy in their vocation.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord,
be their guide and consolation.
Let their sacrifices be honored,
their love returned,
and their hearts filled with peace. 

We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Happy Mother's Day to all
who fulfill the role of mother!

Image source: Filippo Lippi, Madonna with Child and Two Angels (ca. 1460-1465), https://mymodernmet.com/madonna-and-child-art-history/
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God broke open his own heart in love (Bishop Robert Barron)

     In his passion to set right a disjointed universe, God broke open his own heart in love. The Father sent not simply a representative but his own Son into the dysfunction of the world, so that he might gather that world into the bliss of the divine life. God’s center—the love between the Father and the Son—is now offered as our center; God’s heart breaks open so as to include even the worst and most hopeless among us. 

--Bishop Robert Barron

Image source: https://inspiration.org/spiritual-life/an-open-heart-for-god
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Mary is not passive (China Galland)

     Mary is not passive. The image we've been shown has truth in it, but it is a limited truth. I derived great comfort in the fact that Mary was an earthly mother, that she went through a pregnancy as a teenage mother, that she had known homelessness, that she had borne at least one child. She had witnessed that child's suffering and death, she knew the depths of a mother's sorrow. ⁠ ⁠ 

 

     But Mary's passivity may be all we've allowed ourselves to see. A woman rising up against authority, a woman strong and fearless, a ferocious woman, an independent woman, a heroic woman, a physically courageous woman - to have seen Mary this way would not have served the social order...⁠ ⁠ 

     This is a Mary we need now, a fierce Mary, a terrific Mary, a fearsome Mary, a protectress who does not allow her children to be hunted, tortured, murdered and devoured. 

--China Galland 

Image & quotation source: Margo Humphrey, Black Madonna (2013), https://periodpastor.com/2020/12/13/mary-knew-and-she-still-said-yes/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 10, 2026: Always be ready to give an explanation...

Always be ready to give an explanation…
What role do we play in the revelation of God’s infinite love? 

    It is through relationship that God is revealed. In John’s Gospel, Jesus reassures his disciples at the Last Supper that, while he will not longer be visibly or physically present to them after his death, he will ask the Father, and he will give them another Advocate, the Spirit of truth. This Spirit will remain with them and will be in them. Jesus came to bring us to God, to give us access to God’s infinite love. All that Jesus said and did points to that and was working to make that happen. To be church is to find our union in the love of God revealed in the death and rising of Jesus and revealed in the Spirit at work in our lives. If we as a church are one, then we share in the relationship shared by Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit. And we can only enter into that union through surrender, which requires that we keep his commandments. Our true identity lies in our connectedness, in the participation of all as one. 

    After Jesus’ death and rising, then, it was left to the Twelve and to the disciples that came after them to continue to reveal God’s infinite love to our world through the Spirit that dwelt in them. In the Acts of the Apostles, Philip proclaims the Christ to the people of Samaria, and then Peter and John also come to Samaria and pray for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit. The disciples are channels through which God works, through whom God is revealed, and that revelation is cause for great joy! 

    That joy is to be evident in our communal witness to God’s action in our lives: Shout joyfully to God, all the earth; sing praise to the glory of his name, Psalm 66 reminds us. Such joy is precisely what allows us to, as the First Letter of Peter recommends, give an explanation to anyone who asks us for a reason for our hope, with gentleness and reverence. Our challenge is to make sure Christ is revealed in our answer, and that the love of God is manifest in our response. In this way we can further Jesus’ purpose in coming, as in our words and deeds, we too offer access to God, revealing God’s love to all, so that all the earth can indeed cry out to God with joy! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Join in that love (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

    I was at St. Kevin’s on Cortland Avenue in San Francisco during a period when Cortland Avenue was a little rougher than it is now, with a lot of drug dealing and using and a lot of people hanging around doing nothing and creating havoc. 

    One day at morning Mass, there was this man who was a good 6’6” – much taller than anyone else, or so it looked. He didn’t look like he’d had a bath for a month or so. His eyes were glazed, and he was totally unfocused. At the Our Father, Margaret Ahearn, who was all of 4’6” and had a smile that was about five feet wide, walked to the man with a big smile, took his hand, looked up at him (which was quite a feat), and then prayed the Our Father with him and everyone else. What she couldn’t see were the tears running down his face. How long had it been since someone had touched him? How long had it been since someone recognized that he, too was a human being, he too was loved into existence by God? When was the last time anybody had recognized his dignity? 

    Margaret was amazing; I’ve known very few people like her. I never met her husband Matthew; he was dead before I arrived in the parish – but she would talk about him. She said that she and Matthew wanted children, but they never had any, so they adopted everybody they met. And they did: everybody they met. It didn’t matter who, they had a place in the hearts of the Ahearns, a place in their home, if they needed it. Come Thanksgiving, if you didn’t have anyone to have Thanksgiving with, they had more than enough room. And they were happy to have you. 

    Because Margaret took this seriously: If God has loved us first – it doesn’t happen the other way around – if God has loved us first, what other response can we have but to love God and to love what God has made? Our gospel text is the conclusion to last week’s text: Remain in me as I remain in you. Love one another as I love you. As I love the Father and the Father loves me, join in that love, be one in that love, join us, be with us, never part from us … for our love for you is eternal. Let your love for each other try and reach the same lack of limitation. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, May 5, 2024

Image source: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/11/16/what-its-going-church-when-youre-homeless/

Creating and nurturing communiies of faith (Carolyn Jacobs)

    There is a healing power for those gathered in prayer who trust that God is in the midst of them. While we may share hope for a specific outcome, we must remember that line of the Lord’s prayer where we ask for God’s will to be done. Trusting in God frees us to hear the Holy Spirit’s guidance, not just our own desired outcome, for in the midst of the community and in our hearts as we become open to new ways of hearing the other, we realize that whatever the outcome may be, we are not alone on our journey. We are in the family and community where God calls us. 

 

    The challenges of our church and our world are invitations to continuous discernment of how to dialogue, to forgive, and to be obedient to the urgings of the Spirit. We live in a time when we need to step out and invite others to prayer, dialogue, and action. We need to trust the Holy Spirit to guide us. For the challenges invite us to become open to our personal and collective vulnerabilities in creating and nurturing communities of faith that are inclusive. To remember that we are not alone, that we are because others exist in the world surrounding us. We trust that whatever challenging circumstances or people we meet on our journeys, we are called to listen for God’s voice as we gather in groups of two or more and hold in our hearts the love of our neighbors as ourselves. 

--Carolyn Jacobs, MSW, Ph.D. 

Image source: OLMC Liturgical Ministers Retreat, August 2022, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5555792571148786&set=a.5555795787815131
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Only Christ's love (Pope Francis)

     Only Christ’s love can set us free from a mad pursuit that has no longer has room for a gratuitous love. Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love whenever we think that the ability to love has been definitely lost. 

    The Church also needs that love, lest the love of Christ be replaced with outdated structures and concerns, excessive attachment to our own ideas and opinions, and fanaticism in any number of forms, which end up taking the place of the gratuitous love of God that liberates, enlivens, brings joy to the heart and builds communities. 

--Pope Francis, Dilexit nos,
Paragraphs 218 & 219 

Image source: Pope Francis shares a meal with the poor and homeless of Rome, June 29, 2018, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-06/pope-francis-dinner-poor-homeless-krajewski.html
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At its best, the church is a murmuration (Rev. Spencer Reece)

     [Starlings] fly in one mass of love. They have no leader. They pulse as a single entity. The starlings are the words of Paul come to life: ‘For all of you are one.’” 

     At its best, church is a murmuration. If it’s done right, a priest is a leader who is being led. But if you’re a leader and you think your ego is in charge of all the starlings, it won’t work. You have to shrink your ego to the size of a pea, and that’s not an easy thing to do. The power of church is community and community-building. And the future of the church is how it will bridge to the secular world. 

     The beauty of starlings is as beautiful as the murmuration of the disciples as they gather for the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus stands before them like the Statue of Liberty and asks them to consider a call to radical love. Bless everyone you can think of until you can’t think straight. Everyone listening, in a mass of love. Everyone led by Jesus, a leader who is led.

--Rev. Spencer Reece

To watch a beautifully filmed murmuration of starlings, click on the video below: 

Image source: https://www.carolynanderson.com/blog/174266/a-murmuration-of-starlings
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The Church the world needs today (Pope Leo XIV)

Here is the church.
Here is the steeple.
Open the doors and
see all the people.

--Children's rhyme

      A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today. 

--Pope Leo XIV, Dilexi te

Image source 1: https://saintcoleman.org/cst-love-for-poor

Image source 2: https://katyandtheword.com/2012/06/15/here-is-the-church-here-is-the-steeple-open-the-doors/

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Her full, total yes (St. Edith Stein / Fr. Settimio M. Manelli F.I.)

The kingdom began on earth
when the blessed Virgin spoke her
Be it unto me.

 --St. Edith Stein 

    Such ‘consent,’ given by Mary, is not merely private, but expresses the willing participation of man, of humanity, in the work of salvation. In the freedom of Mary, at that instant, were contained all the desires, fears, and hopes of man in need of redemption. And the New Eve spoke her full, total yes to the angel of light, just the first Eve had once spoken her yes to the angel of darkness. Moreover, the response given by Mary to the angel also expresses, in addition to her consent, a humble and unconditional dedication to the plan of God entrusted to her. 

–Fr. Settimio M. Manelli, F.I.

In May, we honor
the Blessed Virgin Mary…

Image source: Daniel Braniff, Annunciation window (1966), Dominican College, Belfast, Ireland, https://www.facebook.com/groups/303462353173920/posts/3134290370091090/
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