Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 31, 2026: Blessed are you, O Lord...

Blessed are you, O Lord…

How can we pray to a God who is Three Persons in One? 

    From the beginning of time, humankind has had trouble capturing an image of our ineffable God. In the Book of Exodus, when Moses goes back up Mount Sinai, taking along the two new stone tablets on which the Lord will again write his commandments, God proclaims his name and then offers three important insights into his own identity: he is the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity. Having stood with the Lord, Moses can invite him to come along with them on their journey through the desert and receive them as his own. In this scene, we do not get a complete picture of God in God’s fullness, but we do get a sense of what it means to experience the presence of God in a grace-filled moment of theophany on the mountain. 

    In John’s Gospel, Jesus tries to help the Pharisee Nicodemus to understand that God sent Jesus, the image of the intangible God, for the salvation of all, because God loves all: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life. Jesus, God’s Son, incarnate, is God’s gift, freely given – he is the very grace of God, an embodied invitation to Nicodemus to be born again. It is an invitation Paul will extend to the recalcitrant Corinthian community: Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace. The Corinthians do not yet know union because they can’t get beyond their own worldly divisions. Paul’s wish for them is essentially Trinitarian: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. Such a multi-dimensional experience of the Lord’s presence would indeed allow them to rejoice! 

    The three Persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are bound in love to one another, indeed, so perfectly in love that they are one. We may not be able to get our minds around this concept very easily, but if we are one in Jesus, we are one in God and one in the Spirit and they are one in us. Yet this relationship is not static; there is a dynamism to the Trinity that invites us to grow in knowledge of the Lord who has given us life, welcoming the transformation such knowledge entails, that we might have an ever better experience of how God is active in our lives, everywhere, always, involved in everything. Then we too can rejoice and pray, as in the canticle of the Book of Daniel, Glory and praise to our God who is exalted above all forever! 

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

We give witness to his love (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

     So many generations after, we also are asked to give witness. We are reassured that God will be by our side, God will defend us, God will protect us. We’re to understand that, not to mean that we won’t actually meet our end – death will come – but that God will protect us, eternally. God will never lose us, as we give witness to his love in the world. 

    It’s hard to imagine that, by loving, you would in fact run into conflict, but it has happened in every generation. Love is a power that people find hard to comprehend, because they don’t have power over it. Human beings like the kind of power they control, but love cannot be controlled. 

    That is wherein we find its truth. Love is given without cost. Love is given freely. And by God, love is given fully. It is in that love that [the saints] proclaimed that love. It is in that love that we continue that ministry of proclaiming the good news. [Their] deaths are a sign to us, a promise of the life that love provides, the life that does not end, because love does not end. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, August 29, 2025

Image source 1: Eglise Notre-Dame de Pentecôte, La Défense, Paris, https://www.flickr.com/photos/51366740@N07/15311253760
Image source 2: https://answeredfaith.com/summary-acts-chapter-2/

A direct encounter with the Risen Christ (Fr. James Martin)

    [F]rom a spiritual point of view, [the disciples’] fear makes no sense. In John’s Gospel, Jesus had, towards the beginning of his ministry, told them about his death and resurrection (2:19). More recently, they had just seen him raise Lazarus from the dead (not to mention all the other “signs” they witnessed during his public ministry). Moreover, Mary Magdalene, whom they knew well, had told them a few hours before that Jesus had risen from the dead. 

    What keeps them locked behind closed doors is what keeps us locked behind closed doors: not simply fear, but the belief that God could never bring anything good out of a bad situation. It’s a form of despair. Thomas Merton wrote that despair is “the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that God is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves.” 

    That’s a pretty harsh judgment on those who fall into despair, but it basically means that despair is refusing to believe that God can do more than we can imagine. Ultimately, it’s a form of pride because it says, “I know better than God. And what I know is that God cannot change this.” 

    What enables the disciples to be fearless, to not despair, is a direct encounter with the Risen Christ. 

--Fr. James Martin 

Image source: https://friarmusings.com/2018/04/12/opening-hearts-witnesses/
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The Spirit frees us (Lance Lambert)

   
   The Holy Spirit, whenever He comes, brings life. 

   

   Why? 

   We read in Romans 8:2, The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 

   That’s what the Spirit of life does. He frees us from all these guilty fears, all this evil conscience, all this sense of condemnation, all this bondage from the past, all these things we carry over from the old life. 

   He frees us again and again, progressively. 

--Lance Lambert,
The True Anointing

Image source: Khrystyna Kvyk, Pentecost (2020), https://digitalcollections-staging.lancaster.ac.uk/view/VS-ICON-10410/1
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Those who have died in the cause of freedom (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Those who have long enjoyed
such privileges as we enjoy
forget in time that men have died to win them.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt

God of power and mercy,
you destroy war and put down earthly pride.
Banish violence from our midst
and wipe away our tears,
that we may all deserve to be called
your sons and daughters.
Keep in your mercy those men and women
who have died in the cause of freedom,
and bring them safely into
your kingdom of justice and peace. 

We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. 

Image source: https://whyy.org/articles/what-is-memorial-day/
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Prayer source

Peace be with you (Fr. Ron Rolheiser / Yunuen Trujillo)

Name your deaths. Claim your births.
Grieve and adjust. Stop clinging and let go.
Receive the Spirit of new life.

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser

    “Peace be with you.” Now, let me say that again—but this time, try to feel it in your heart. Close your eyes and take a deep breath: “Peace be with you.” 

    We are living in tumultuous times—both for our country and for the world. Tumultuous because a toxic theology and worldview have become mainstream in the halls of power. A worldview that tries to convince us that marginalized groups—whoever is “the other” for each of us—are to blame for everything that goes wrong. A worldview that wants us to fight each other for resources and for God’s love, as if God’s love were a pie to be divided among us. 

    Sometimes, it feels as though any hope for peace is far away. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

    For those of us who believe in the Gospel, this sense of hopelessness and fear might feel familiar. After Jesus' death, his disciples were in despair and fear. When the apostle of the apostles Mary Magdalene reported seeing the risen Jesus early on the morning of the resurrection, the other disciples struggled to believe her, continuing to live in fear. That evening, the resurrected Jesus appeared to them, greeting them with "Peace be with you." He told them the Holy Spirit would come to them, yet they still remained afraid. It wasn't until Pentecost, which we celebrate today, that the Holy Spirit came, and their hope was renewed. Filled with the Spirit and with enthusiasm, they were transformed, boldly proclaiming the message of the Gospel. 

    The main event that filled them with enthusiasm was the realization that, despite their differences—in language and otherwise—they could finally understand one another. They finally had a shared purpose, understanding, and language. 

--Yunuen Trujillo 

Image source: Gabriel José Ramírez, mosaic, Iglesia Luterana Cordero de Dios, Puerto Rico, https://www.facebook.com/corderodedios.iglesialuterana/
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Living water (Pope Francis)

    Christ, in fact, is the Temple from which, according to the prophets, flows the Holy Spirit, the living water which purifies and gives life. Whoever thirsts for salvation can draw freely from Jesus, and the Spirit will become a wellspring of full and eternal life in him/her. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: Susan Bradbury, Water of Life, Ayr Cathedral (2000), https://www.visitstainedglass.uk/location/ayr-roman-catholic-cathedral-ayrshire
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