A holy human soul (Frederick Douglass / Marilynne Robinson)

 

The soul that is within me
no man can degrade.

--Frederick Douglass

    Once in a lifetime, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world. And if you love God, every choice is made for you. There is no turning away. You’ve seen the mystery – you’ve seen what life is about. What it’s for. And a soul has no earthly qualities, no history among the things of this world, no guilt or injury or failure. No more than a flame would have. There is nothing to be said about it except that it is a holy human soul. And it is a miracle when you recognize it. 

--Marilynne Robinson, Jack

Image source: Elizabeth Catlett, Recognition (1970), https://www.swanngalleries.com/news/fine-art/african-american-art/2015/12/elizabeth-catletts-varied-mediums/
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Learning from St. Joseph (Thomas Griffin)

    Each moment we have as fathers, whether before or after the birth of our children, and whether it is beautiful or challenging, is an opportunity to learn from St. Joseph. Joseph knew what it was like to wait for the birth of his child, and he knew what it was like to embark upon an unknown pilgrimage into the future. Joseph is the king of dealing with unpredictable and unforeseen situations -- from the pregnancy of Mary before they lived together (Matthew 1:18), to having no place for her to give birth in Bethlehem (Luke 2:7) all the way through the flight from Egypt in fear for their lives (Matthew 2:13-14) and providing for his family with his small carpentry shop. 

     Life has uncertainties and challenges, but following St. Joseph’s lead will allow you to perceive God’s fingerprints in every present moment – no matter what might come. Joseph’s silence in the Bible, humility in following God, and trust in God’s plan made him the best suited stepfather to Christ. 

--Thomas Griffin 

God bless all fathers,
biological, adoptive, and spiritual, today!
Happy Fathers Day! 

Image source: El Greco, St. Joseph and the Child Jesus (ca. 1600), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cathedral_of_Toledo,_sacristy,_with_paintings_by_El_Greco_%2815%29_%2829161098404%29.jpg
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Salvation comes (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

    God wants to embrace every human being. Salvation – the kingdom of God – comes when every human being allows themselves to be embraced, when they understand that love is a way of life, not hatred, when love creates the world that God came to create, not to diminish it. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, February 23, 2025

Image source: Jesus embraces John, The Chosen, Season 5, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/newsletter/2025-06-20/the-chosen-prime-video-a-king-like-me-netflix-long-way-home-apple

Fear not (Pope Francis)

    There is no need to worry and fret, for our story is firmly in God’s hands. We are heartened by Jesus’ invitation not to fear. Indeed, at times we feel imprisoned by a feeling of distrust and anxiety. It is the fear of failure, of not being acknowledged and loved, the fear of not being able to accomplish our plans, of never being happy, and so on. And so, we scramble to look for solutions, to find a space in which to emerge, to accumulate goods and wealth, to obtain security. 

    And how do we end up? We end up living anxiously and constantly worrying. 

    Instead, Jesus reassures us: Do not be afraid! Trust in the Father who wants to give you all you truly need. He has already given you his Son, his Kingdom, and he always accompanies you with his providence, taking care of you every day. Fear not: this is the certainty that your hearts should be attached to! Fear not: a heart attached to this certainty. Fear not. 

--Pope Francis

Image source 1: https://chrisgoringe.net/2023/06/many-sparrows/ 

Image source 2: Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, Procrustes (2023). For a compelling explanation of how this piece embodies human fear, go to: https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/matthew-25-14-30-2025/
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 21, 2026: Lord, in your great love, answer me...

Lord, in your great love, answer me…
 What does salvation look like? 

    Humankind’s understanding of what constitutes salvation has evolved greatly over time. When the prophet Jeremiah prays to the Lord, he is hoping to be saved from his former friends, now his enemies: Perhaps he will be trapped, Jeremiah imagines them saying, then we can prevail! Jeremiah’s community has no concept of an afterlife, and so Jeremiah believes that any vindication he might see – in the form of verification of his prophecies – needs to happen in his lifetime. Ultimately, however, Jeremiah has confidence in God’s love: to you I have entrusted my cause. Jeremiah has much in common with the author of Psalm 69, who has become an outcast to his brothers, a stranger to his mother’s children. Yet, like Jeremiah, the psalmist knows that he must not change his message simply because he feels threatened. Instead, he will trust in the Lord’s help, for bounteous is God’s kindness and mercy. 

    When, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sends out the Twelve, his principal request is that they fear no one. Fear makes us defensive, and if the disciples are defensive, then Jesus will not be able to be present to the communities the disciples are hoping to reach. Rather than fear, therefore, the disciples must remain confident that Jesus is with them, present to them at all times, that they might go and love and heal their world. They have entered into relationship with Jesus, and consequently they know salvation. To deny him before others would be to deny their own identity. Clearly, Jesus has every confidence that his Twelve will remain faithful, and thus be effective in their ministry. 

    Paul will remind the Romans that the vindication of all mankind comes from the one God has sent, for the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflows for the many. When Adam and Eve chose control over relationship, sin entered the world, but Jesus’ unselfish, generous gift is not like the selfish transgressions of Adam and Eve. Indeed, God’s response to transgression is a generous and absolute love. We know salvation because we know Christ. So long as we remain in him, we too can trust in the bounteous kindness of the Lord, entrusting our salvation to his infinite mercy. 

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

We cannot remove the scales of sin on our own (Haley Stewart)

    The confessional requires our vulnerability. We can have no veils between ourselves and God, and he himself has torn the veil of the temple that might separate us. To examine our conscience with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we can see ourselves with the help of God’s divine mirror. 

     Before becoming Catholic, I might have felt guilty about things I had done, but that guilt never could be truly addressed and overcome. The sacrament of Reconciliation not only makes it possible to accept the reality of my sin; confession offers the gift of leaving the shame in the confessional. Sin has been spoken, it has been faced—and it has been met with mercy and washed away by the blood of Christ. 

     We may try to uncover our “faces” inch by inch and day by day, but like Eustace Scrubb in one of C.S. Lewis’ stories, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we cannot remove the scales of sin on our own but only through the mercy of God, in order that one day we can truly meet him “face to face.” No flimsy veil of self-deceit can protect us from the power of that mercy. The grace is there, waiting for us. Thanks be to God. 

--Haley Stewart

Image source: https://anunexpectedjournal.com/lewiss-dragons-and-materialism-a-reflection-on-eustace-scrubb-and-other-dragons/
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Compassion lies at the heart of prayer (Henri Nouwen)

    Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world; when I pray for the endless needs of the millions, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience I realize that compassion is not mine but God’s gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are, that is, when God allowed all of us to enter into his intimate life, it became possible for us to share in his infinite compassion. 

    In praying for others, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found by the divine love that holds the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace. 

 --Henri Nouwen 

Image source:   https://www.crosswalk.com/church/end-racism/a-convicting-prayer-for-compassion-on-those-affected-by-racism.html
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Proclaim the compassionate love of God (Fr. James Martin)

    Jesus calls a whole group of people to spread the Good News, not just one. That is, he doesn’t just appoint a kind of assistant—one person, like Peter. No, he appoints 12 of them and then more. In other places in the Gospels, we’re told that there were as many as 72 disciples. The 12 is an image of the 12 tribes of Israel, a kind of "gathering in." But these numbers are also a reflection that Jesus knows we need one another, even amid divisions—like the disciples faced. And like we face today. 

    Jesus also calls them by name. He doesn’t call a mass of nameless people, but individuals: Peter, Andrew, James, John, and so on. And he calls them, which was unusual in those days, when the student sought out the teacher. Today, Jesus calls each of us by name, too. Knowing our strengths and weaknesses, our likes and limitations, our desires and dreams. 

    Every person here has at some point realized that God is inviting him or her, or them, into a relationship with God. But that relationship is not just for you and God, it’s for everyone. God calls us each of by name and sends us out. To do what? The same thing Jesus asks his disciples to do: to heal diseases and illnesses. Not in the same way of course, but diseases nonetheless; the disease of violence, the disease of exclusion, the disease of ignorance and the greatest disease of all, the disease of hatred. 

    So go into the world, proclaim the compassionate love of God, knowing that the Good Shepherd is with his flock, with his feligresía, and with you always. 

--Fr. James Martin, S.J. 

Image source: https://catholicmagazine.news/the-defining-moment/
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His heart fills with compassion (Fr. John P. Fitzgibbons S.J.)

    The future we all long for, the Reign of God, is found in the present moment. It seems to me that is what Jesus senses in today's gospel passage from Matthew (9:32-38). After a long series of stunning cures -- a hemorraghic woman, the raising of a synagogue official's daughter, the cure of two blind men, and the exorcism of a possessed man -- Jesus breathlessly looks out over the crowd. Instead of shrinking away, his heart fills with compassion and sorrow for the multitude "because they were harassed and dejected." Surely he, too, was exhausted! 

    Yet what issues from his mouth is a prayer for more ministers of mercy: "The harvest is good, but the laborers are scarce. Beg the harvester to send laborers to gather the harvest.” 

    I think what gives Jesus the energy and the heart to labor and live so well in the present is an insight. It's hard to name exactly, but the insight starts when looking into the eyes of someone who needs. It grows when we reach out and heal by caring. It becomes a harvest when a community begins to act this way. 

--John P. Fitzgibbons, S.J. 

Image source: https://timeofmercy.com/time-of-mercy-blog/2021/1/5/6x7gnsd1sds2mhzcxvn33n1itn15zm

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Compassion will flow (John O'Donahue / Pope Leo XIV)

There is a place in you...
that is the eternal place within you.
The more we visit there,
the more we are touched and fused
with the limitless kindness and affection of the divine…
If we can inhabit that reflex of divine presence,
then compassion will flow naturally from us.

--John O’Donahue 

      If Christ shows us the face of a compassionate God, then to believe in him and to be his disciples means allowing ourselves to be changed and to take on his same feelings. It means learning to have a heart that is moved, eyes that see and do not look away, hands that help others and soothe their wounds, shoulders that bear the burden of those in need. 

--Pope Leo XIV 

Image source: Eustache Le Sueur, Christ Healing the Blind Man, https://www.wikiart.org/en/eustache-le-sueur/christ-healing-the-blind-man
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To celebrate this forgiveness (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

    To be his, whether we live or die, means that his love means everything to us, and his love is the primary goal each day. We seek to live in it. And when we fail, when we die to that love a bit, we know that he is there to bring us back. 

    I think that, growing up, I didn’t understand why we had a sacrament of reconciliation. What was its power, but to celebrate this love, to celebrate this forgiveness that lifts us up – like moms of old, brushing off our knees, kissing our booboos, and getting us up and toddling off again… to try. 

    It is the cycle of remaining in him – that is the beauty of this sacrament, to remain in him always. To never lose sight of a love that forgives, a love that restores, a love that lifts up. 

   We’re not looking for an absolute transformation. We’re looking for a transformation of attitude, a transformation of mindset, a transformation of vision, how we see. 

    You can clamor after all the power in the world, but the only power worth having, the only power worth exercising, is the power of mercy. And it is born of our own experience in God. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, November 6, 2025

Image source 1: https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/grace-through-reconciliation/

Image source 2: https://www.miraclecenter.org/wp/the-magic-kiss/

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 14, 2026: Jesus' heart was moved with pity for them...

Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them….
How is God’s infinite compassion active in your life? 

    God’s patient compassion for humankind is extraordinary. In the Book of Exodus, while Israel is encamped in front of Mount Sinai, Moses goes up the mountain to God, who proposes to establish a bond between himself and the people: If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people. God has cared for the people of Israel constantly, bringing them out of Egypt, bearing them up on eagle wings, that they might become a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. In no other faith tradition of the time was there established this kind of relationship in which God is bound to the people as they are bound to God. We are his people: the sheep of his flock, Psalm 100 proclaims, he made us; his we are! God’s compassion toward his people is evident in his infinite kindness and faithfulness, forever! 

    Jesus’ compassion for humankind is likewise extraordinary. In Matthew’s Gospel, seeing people who are troubled and abandoned, Jesus’ heart is moved with pity, and he addresses their needs. Then Jesus sends out his disciples to be his presence in the world, to reveal him to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The disciples are sent out to take eternity to the world, to gather the lost sheep back to the God of infinite compassion, restoring them to relationship with their Lord. That restoration, Paul tells the Romans, finds its fullness in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Thus we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son. We can’t effect reconciliation, but God can and does, in an extraordinary and ongoing way; we can but participate in that forgiveness that is already active, and celebrate it! 

    The compassion of God is extraordinary, beyond our ability to comprehend, yet it is revealed again and again and again every time we open ourselves to it. That infinite compassion is meant to work in our lives as well, recreating us as a kingdom of priests, sent out to bring the promise of eternal life to all the world! 

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

We've got bread and wine (Fr. Gregory Pine O.P.)

    When you approach the Sacraments, you’re approaching a powerful sign, because it’s a sign that makes men holy; it brings about what it signifies. We’ve got bread and wine. We associate bread with nourishment and sustenance. We associate wine with festivity and hilarity. What does that mean for us? They bring [these graces] to bear in our lives, which is the virtue of charity. They stir us up. They kindle the grace of charity in our hearts and make flame forth more ardently. 

    How do you get bread? How do you get wine?… Out of many grains, one loaf, and out of many grapes, we fill one chalice. So too, out of many Christians, the celebration of the most holy Eucharist makes the people of God. It makes the mystical body and makes one Church. My encouragement is that sometimes when we go to Mass, and we’re like, I have to get everything out of Mass now. But if we just attend to the signs patiently, trusting that God will make us as holy as he makes us, and that these signs are ordained and instituted for our sanctification — then there’s a lot to profit from there. 

    When you hear these conversations about identity, it’s clear that everyone wants to be unique and everyone wants to belong. It seems like those things are in tension, but I don’t think they’re contradictory. I think you can see them play out in the mystical body, because God has a place for us in his body. It might be small and it might be humble, but it’s precious. He wills it for us, but it also knits us together with the Christian community. It gives us a home and a genuine place in which to abide. 

--Fr. Gregory Pine OP 

Image source: https://www.facebook.com/mountcarmelmv
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Our famished heart (M. Soledad del Villar T. / Estelle Frankel)

Our hunger for food, our longing for human touch,
and our hunger for God are all part of the same desire
that shapes our famished human lives,
and challenges us to take risks, to engage with others,
and to strive for liberation, not just for us but for all.

--M. Soledad del Villar T.

    Freedom is, ultimately, uncertain and unpredictable. One of the first lessons we all must learn in order to be free is how to “bear” uncertainty and trust in the unknown. In the biblical myth of the Exodus, the manna was a vehicle for learning this lesson. Each day for forty years, the Israelites would have to go out and gather their daily supply of manna—just enough for that day…. 

    The manna challenged the Israelites to develop beginner’s mind—to experience something new and fresh while eating the very same thing each day. Instead of seeking the answers that might put their questions to rest, the manna taught the Israelites to continually live the questions, to understand that the journey to freedom is about remaining awake and curious and not going into sleep mode…. 

     Beginner’s mind is a way of life. Each day we are challenged to see the same familiar people and landscapes with new eyes. Just as the cosmos is created and sustained anew each moment, everything is alive and changing, ourselves included, if we are spiritually awake and paying attention…. When we see existence as alive with possibility, we come out of Egypt, our personal places of bondage and constriction. 

--Estelle Frankel,
Center for Action and Contemplation

Image source: Marguerite Huré, Manna, Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce, France, https://www.tripadvisor.es/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g1194572-d3258706-i111429460-Eglise_Notre_Dame_de_Toute_Grace-Passy_Haute_Savoie_Auvergne_Rhone_Alpe.html
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O make my heart beat with Thy Heart (Matthew Kelly / St. John Henry Newman)

While we are searching far and wide in this world
for something to satisfy our hunger,
God is waiting to feed us the one thing
that truly satisfied us: Himself.

--Matthew Kelly

O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus,
Thou are concealed in the Holy Eucharist,
and Thou beatest for us still… 

I worship Thee then with all my best love and awe,
with my fervent affection,
with my most subdued, most resolved will. 

O my God, when Thou dost condescend
to suffer me to receive Thee, to eat and drink thee,
and Thou for a while takest up Thy abode within me,

O make my heart beat with Thy Heart.
Purify it of all that is earthly,
all that is proud and sensual,
all that is hard and cruel,
of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. 

So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day
nor the circumstances of the time
may have power to ruffle it,
but that in Thy love and Thy fear 
it may have peace. 

--St John Henry Newman,
qtd. in Dilexit nos, ¶26

Image source: https://www.keytruths.com/gods-heartbeat/
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Take me into your life (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

    Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. Every word that comes forth come the mouth of God is God speaking love to us. Every word is filled with his life, with his love, and Jesus is that Word. Remember that John’s Gospel begins with, In the beginning, there was the Word. Jesus pre-exists. God’s love already pre-exists creation. And the Word was made flesh: Incarnation. 

    Why would God, divine, eternal, take on limitation and human flesh? Why, except that he loves us that much. Eat my flesh: recognize Incarnation within you. Recognize that he is born in you. Mary didn’t just give birth to a baby, but to salvation, to redemption, to all life, that God might dwell among us. Eat my flesh: take me into your life, allow the Incarnation to touch you, to change you, to move you. Drink my blood, the blood of my Passion the blood of my sacrifice. 

    Jesus didn’t just give us a passing gift; he gave us himself, all that he was. He gave us everything. God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son, not just as a gift in name, but a gift in truth. The bread and wine is not just bread and wine in the Eucharist – it is gift from God, the Incarnation, God among us, and we take him into ourselves, that he might heal our wounds, and lift us up from our falling, and fill us with a life that has no end. 

    The change in bread and wine is not in its physical properties, but in what it is essentially, what it is in spirit, what it is at work in us. It is truly Jesus present in our midst. It is God whose love is so profound that he found it necessary to join us in this life, so that we might know him, so that we might recognize him in ourselves and in each other. 

    We are a Church whose foundation is the Eucharist, his real presence in our midst, in our bodies, joining us, uniting us, and sending us. It was meant to transform not our bodies, but our hearts. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, June 11, 2023

Image source: https://www.ekklesiaproject.org/lectionary/blog/2021/07/the-work-of-god-the-bread-of-life

Jesus enters into the intimacy of our innermost self (Henri Nouwen)

        By entering into the intimacy of our innermost self, Jesus offers us the opportunity to enter into his own intimacy with God. By choosing us as his preferred dwelling place, he invites us to choose him as our preferred dwelling place. This is the mystery of the incarnation. 

--Henri Nouwen

Image source: First Holy Communion, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, 2025, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1129598872538859&set=a.1129601709205242
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Christ changes us into him (Pope Benedict)

    Precisely because it is Christ who, in Eucharistic communion changes us into him, our individuality, in this encounter, is opened, liberated from its egocentrism and inserted into the Person of Jesus who in his turn is immersed in Trinitarian communion. The Eucharist, therefore, while it unites us to Christ, also opens us to others, makes us members of one another: we are no longer divided but one in him. Eucharistic communion not only unites me to the person I have beside me and with whom I may not even be on good terms, but also to our distant brethren in every part of the world. 

    This transformation is possible thanks to a communion stronger than division, the communion of God himself. The word “communion,” which we also use to designate the Eucharist, in itself sums up the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Christ’s gift. 

    In being brought closer to Jesus in the Eucharist, we are then brought closer to other people. This why it is called, "Holy Communion." 

--Pope Benedict, Corpus Christi, 2011
 

Image source 1: Nicolas Poussin, The Seven Sacraments: Eucharist (1647), https://www.wga.hu/html_m/p/poussin/3a/2sacram2.htmlImage source 2: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8010750/Pope-Visit-UK-Full-text-of-Benedict-XVIs-sermon-at-Westminster-Cathedral.html
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 7, 2026: We all partake of the one loaf...

We all partake of the one loaf…
Do you hunger for God? 

    God cares for God’s people in so many ways. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people that the Lord, your God, has fed you with manna in times of hunger and brought forth water for you from the flinty rock. Manna was alien to the people of Israel; they had never experienced it before. In their time of need, God provided the people with something extraordinary, something outside of their experience, taking them to that which unknown, and thereby leading them closer to him. 

    But the ultimate extraordinary gift of God the Father was his Son Jesus, John’s Gospel reminds us, the living bread that came down from heaven. Word made flesh in the Incarnation, Jesus gives his flesh for the life of the world, true food and true drink. This gift, which we remember into each Eucharist, invites us into life in him, invites us to participate in the life he offers us. We receive him into ourselves that we might live in him and he in us, and we in God. Frustrated with their failure to live as one body, Paul challenges the Corinthians, asking, The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? If it isn’t, it should be! The Corinthians struggle (as, so often, do we) because fear tells them they need to remain in control, but union with Christ is only possible when we recognize that we, though many, are one body, one body in Christ. 

    In the desert, to thirst and to hunger is to know what it means to be human and to hunger and thirst for God, desiring encounter. Intimacy with God is elusive, and yet to follow God’s commands is to enter into life with him, to enter into that intimacy that we – and God – so ardently desire. Eucharist is our extraordinary opportunity to gather, to know that intimacy, to be one in him, that he might be one in us. God created us to thirst and hunger for him; in communion, we take Christ into ourselves, that we might be transformed. What more extraordinary way might God show his love for our world than this?

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

Grace makes our heart flip-flop (Paula Nelsen)

    We can have a grand view of our world from a mountaintop, but it's a grand view from within our community of believers as well, folks who invite us over and over to believe in Jesus, to put our hope in him. We believe in God with all our heart; our vision isn't limited to the physical world, because we have the promise Jesus gave Nicodemus, that everyone who believes in him can have eternal life. This is the hope we are given in the Easter season and beyond. 

 

    Nicodemus was a devoted, intellectual, and hard-headed Pharisee, who knew and taught all the Jewish laws with passion and pride. He really knows his stuff! But his stuff prevents him from understanding and letting the winds of the Holy Spirit move him. He then meets Jesus, and his whole carefully constructed set of laws falls down around him. His heart recognizes the goodness and wisdom of Christ, but his head fights against it. Jesus has to use tough love, saying, You are a teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things? Listen to me, watch me, and learn from my life; I live that you might believe and have eternal life. 

    Our hearts soar freely and our soul can transcend this world at a moment's notice, and each time, it's a surprise. Grace makes our heart flip-flop -- it's the gentle touch of the Holy Spirit. It's reminding us that it's not about "me" -- it is about showing up and fearlessly living in a loving manner in whatever situation God puts us into. 

--Paula Nelsen,
Communion Service,
April 18, 2023

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=814EnoSLb8c

A communion of love (Dr. Wendy Wright / Fr. Patrick van der Vorst)

Divine love is ecstatic and communicative.

--Dr. Wendy Wright,
Heart Speaks to Heart:
The Salesian Tradition

    The truth is, even the most introverted among us long for companionship. We are not made for isolation. Deep down, we know we are only fully ourselves when we are in relationship to others. If we reflect on the happiest moments of our lives, most will involve moments spent with friends and family. Despite living in an age of heightened individualism, something within us insists that we are not islands. 

    And this longing for relationship reflects something even truer of God. At the very heart of God’s nature is not isolation, but communion. God is not a solitary being; He is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, united in a perfect, eternal relationship of love. This divine community is not closed or exclusive, it is radically open. The love shared between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit overflows and reaches out to include us. Jesus speaks intimately of His Father and of the coming of the Holy Spirit. He reveals that God’s deepest desire is not distance but closeness, not detachment but union. 

    This sacred mystery is captured in our painted panel by Laurent Girardin, created around 1460 in Lyon, France. The painting depicts the Holy Trinity in a striking composition: God the Father, wearing a papal tiara and a richly embroidered cope of crimson velvet adorned with gold pomegranate patterns, supports the crucified Christ, His Son, with the Holy Spirit hovering above as a dove. The grandeur of the Father’s vestments, paired with the profound suffering of the Son, creates a tension between majesty and sacrifice. Surrounding them are radiant cherubim. This artwork invites us not just to look upon a theological truth, but to stand in awe of a divine relationship: a communion of love that calls us not into isolation, but into the very heart of God Himself. 

--Fr. Patrick van der Vorst 

Image & quotation source 2: https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/john-16-12-15-2025/
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He brings salvation (Fr. Bill Brown / Marcy St. John)

In John 3:16,
to give = love + sacrifice.

--Fr. Bill Brown,
OLMC Scripture Class,
May 28, 2026

    What is Jesus telling Nicodemus? He tells Nicodemus that he has come down from heaven to tell us of heavenly things, and that he will be lifted up like the serpent in the desert to bring eternal life to those who believe in his teachings. He is telling Nicodemus that he brings salvation, and this message is not something that can be reasoned out, or held in one’s hand, or seen with one’s eyes. It requires seeing with the eyes of one’s heart, the eyes of the heart that are open through Jesus’ death and resurrection, through our faith and baptism into that faith. Once one opens those heart eyes and lets in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, like the wind, comes right in and leads us to the quiet, gentle space where we can grow in Spirit and feel with our whole heart the words and message of Jesus. 

    Nicodemus doesn’t understand. He is still in the world, and he is caught between trusting his heart’s eyes and believing that Jesus is the Christ. 

    With Jesus’ death and resurrection, and our baptism, we are born of the Spirit, and our days on earth are to give us the many challenges and opportunities to become closer to that Spirit, to grow in gentleness, to grow closer to God, to God’s love for us, to Jesus’ love for us. 

--Marcy St. John,
Communion Service,
April 9, 2024

Image source: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicodemus Visiting Christ (1899), https://jesusscribbles.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/sermon-on-nicodemus-trinity-sunday/