​The Gospel for this Sunday, the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the beginning of St John Chapter 15 where Jesus reveals Himself as the True Vine.

In the time of Jesus most people were familiar with the grapevine process. If they weren’t growing grapes in commercial quantity, they certainly had a vine or two at home.

However, for most of us in the 21st century this is not the case.

An exploration of websites and video clips on how to prune a grapevine was eye-opening.

Jesus is the True Vine and we are the branches, and the Father is the vinedresser.

One vintner said that they spend 4-5 months pruning their vines every year. While machines are around to chop off far flung branches, machines cannot replace humans when it comes to the pruning process. Surprisingly pruning is considered the single greatest influence on the quality of the harvest, and the most strategic part of a vintner’s business.

Some plants like roses will produce a harvest from new branches.

But other plants like apple trees and grape vines only produce fruit on 2nd year branches.

This means that the pruning choices have a view to not only this year’s harvest, but also next year’s harvest.

Every grape vine is assessed individually. Each grape vine has a trunk, and most of them have two big branches called cordons. From these cordons the new branches called canes grow, and each cane grows from a bud on an older branch. It is the cane branches that get vastly reduced in the pruning process, so that each spur of previous cane growth has only two promising buds left. Unless these canes are reduced the vines will grow more leaves than grapes and the grapes will be significantly smaller. It is the difference between energy being diffused and energy being concentrated.

If the vine is weak, the vinedresser will leave less buds to grow than average. If the vine is vigorous, the vinedresser will leave more buds to grow than average.

A wine grower can time rather accurately the interval between pruning and the emergence of new growth; and will use this knowledge to stagger the order in which the sections of vineyards are pruned, so as to stagger the resulting harvests from those vineyard sections. That way, if there is adverse weather at harvest time, not all of it will be lost.

So what does this mean for us?

It means that God the Father invests a massive amount of time and forward planning with each and every one of us individually. Please linger with that thought for a while, and give it a chance to sink in.

It means that on a regular basis He is going to take away things from our lives that are less fruitful in order that more fruitful aspects of our lives can flourish. Knowing this should enable us to more graciously yield to the Father’s will when the time comes to let go of a relationship, place, ministry, hobby, job, - and levels of health and independence.

It means that we should have a level of patience when something new shows up in our lives, or in the lives of others, because often fruitfulness doesn’t come until the second year.

It means that after a period of loss and of feeling dormant, stuck, becalmed, that we can expect a lot of flourishing to happen that feels like it is happening ‘all at once’. But that we need discernment to work out the part of that new growth that the Father is favouring, and to co-operate with that.

It also means that two major things on the front burner and two quietly on the back burner are about as much as anyone can deal with fruitfully.

It means that until we work out what God is favouring, ‘or blowing on’, we should hold all of that new flourishing lightly, because most of it will get trimmed away relatively quickly.

It means that we should trust in Him more, especially when the parts of our lives that He prunes are very painful to let go of.

Amazingly challenging, yes?
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Dear Heavenly Father, please help us to co-operate more fully with You every time a new season of pruning takes place in our lives. Please grant us the patience and discernment that we need to find the new beginnings that You have lovingly chosen for us. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the middle section of St John Chapter 10 where Jesus reveals Himself as the Good Shepherd.

Most of us have very little to do with sheep, apart from purchasing cuts of meat from a supermarket or similar. Those of us who do have something to do with sheep in Australia have an average size herd of just under 3000 sheep. In the time of Jesus the average number of sheep per shepherd was 100. The smaller size herds make knowing individual sheep possible.

So what could possibly induce a shepherd to be willing to risk his life to save his sheep?

To modern minds this is beyond comprehension; and verging on crazy.

And it is, until you consider the amount of time the shepherd spends with the sheep, and how frequently a shepherd has to check for wounds, health of gums, and the quality of wool. For much of the time the shepherd is alone with the sheep; and has plenty of time to study them and to note and remember their individual differences.

Some will be placid, some will be adventurous, one might have a stiffer leg, a higher pitched bleat, a floppy ear, or be a fussy grazer. It is this long term build-up of the knowledge of what makes each sheep unique, which makes the sheep matter to the shepherd. In the same way it is the long term build-up of relationship of the sheep with the shepherd that engenders trust, making the shepherd matter to the sheep.

Jesus knows us this well. He has studied everything about us, and He can also see the traces of our various lineages too. He remembers who our parents and grandparents were, and He knows the various character traits we share with them.

He knows us this well that we matter to Him, despite being merely sheep.

Yesterday the residents at the local aged care facility had Mass for the first time since Christmas. Many of them we see each week for Communion services, and those unable to attend receive individual visits. Having been reflecting upon this Gospel passage, I could see the parallels. The more we get to know each resident, the more they matter to us. It was so good to have so many of them in the same place, and to reconnect with some we haven’t seen for a while because someone else has been doing their individual visits. At the same time, the absence of those who couldn’t be there was keenly felt.

It strikes me that this is the kind of long term deep relationship that Jesus wants with us, and that He wants for us with each other. It requires us investing time with Him; and investing time with each other.

​Therein lies the challenge because there is no shortcut to this process. 

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There is nothing to compare with one on one time for getting to know someone, or even few on few.

Perhaps that is why parish visitation used to be a core part of a parish priest's ministry. 

These days it tends to be meetings and administration, but it is still possible to carve out time to go and visit the flock, 'just because'.

Admittedly these days it is not advisable to go alone without a companion as a witness and a protection, but it could still be done with a bit of planning and rotations of visiting companions.

I note with some sadness that once upon a time bishops used to come and visit the children preparing for Confirmation. It was an effective way of knowing that the children had been prepared. But these days the bishops seem to delegate that to the priests, and the priests in turn delegate that to the sacramental co-ordinator, and he or she depends on the group leaders - and even then it is a very brave group leader who will say a child is not prepared because they missed lessons, didn't pay attention, or doesn't seem at all interested.

Visiting parishioners and spending time with them is crucial if we are to imitate the Good Shepherd.     

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the almost the last verses in the Gospel of St Luke (Chapter 24) and contains an account of Jesus appearing to His disciples on the evening of the Resurrection.

Jesus shows up while everyone is chatting about His encounter with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus.

Even after the accounts of the holy women and the Emmaus disciples, their first reaction to the presence of Jesus is alarm and fright.

It takes some considerable time and patience on Jesus’ behalf before they calm down enough for them to be able to listen to Him.

We see a similar pattern of gradual revelation here as we saw last week with St John’s account.

First He is present, then He speaks to them, then He invites them to inspect His body, and then to touch Him. Jesus then uncovers His hands and feet for them. Then He shows them that He is still capable of eating.

Despite their zombie-like reactions, this is a crucially important encounter. They are seeing their Jesus for the first time as the Crucified and Risen One. It is to this reality that they are to become witnesses to the whole world.

Again, just like in St John, Jesus shows His resurrection before He reveals the evidence of His crucifixion. We know ourselves how much easier it is to talk about Jesus as the Risen One compared to talking about Him as the Crucified One. We all want to partake in His resurrection; we are definitely not so keen on sharing His path of suffering, agony and death. Yet until we know Him both ways, we cannot be effective witnesses.

Once the disciples have calmed down enough for their higher brain functions to kick back in, Jesus comes to the second part of His purpose for this visitation.

It is only now that they have encountered Him as Crucified and Risen that Jesus can unfold the whole wonderful plan of God to them. It is through Jesus, Crucified and Risen, that all of salvation history makes sense. Without this lens we cannot understand the fullness of God’s eternal purpose.

How Jesus does this with the disciples is very different to how He did it with the Emmaus disciples. He deliberately and miraculously opens their minds to fully understand the Scriptures. Can you see that it is important that they receive this revelation directly from Jesus, and not indirectly from the Emmaus disciples, so that we can have confidence that our faith is founded on the power of God and not on human reasoning?

Yet the Emmaus disciples are still a gift to the other disciples, because with all this knowledge to crunch through and make sense of, having them as memory keepers of the best scriptural starting points for understanding these mysteries is a very big blessing.

Jesus tells them to look for all the times in the Law of Moses, in the writings of the Prophets and in the Psalms that prefigured and prophesied about Him, to be amazed at how the Crucified and Risen plan of God permeates the Scriptures, and to see the ultimate reason: inviting people back into full relationship with God through repentance.

We know the Church has taken these words and actions of Jesus seriously because Sunday by Sunday the readings and the psalms are chosen to shed light on each other, with the Old Testament prefiguring the New, and the New fulfilling the Old.

This means that we cannot know Jesus fully unless we know Him Crucified and Risen, AND we also know Him through all of the Scriptures.

This also means that there are levels of understanding the scriptures that can only be opened up to us by the power of God. We should diligently ask for these graces.

We can also see that Jesus knew that it would take the disciples time to unpack and digest all the infused knowledge He gave them. That is the purpose of that first season of Easter weeks. It was a vital preparation for Pentecost. Without this process they could never have preached effectively and authoritatively. We know it worked, because on Pentecost morning Peter gets up and quotes from Joel, 2 Samuel, Isaiah, and Psalms 16, 110 and 132 with great confidence.

Let’s pray.
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Dear Heavenly Father, where we do not know Your Son Jesus in His resurrection, crucifixion, and Holy Scripture to the extent that You want for us, please grant to us that precious revelation. It doesn’t matter to us whether You use the Emmaus method, the Upper Room method, or a combination of both; only that we come to know Jesus in the fullness that You want for us. Please make that happen so that we can become more effective witnesses to You and to Your wonderfully grand plan of salvation. Amen.  

​The Gospel for this Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, Year B, comes from the last part of St John Chapter 20 and contains the first and second appearances of the Risen Jesus to His disciples.

It seems to be God’s modus operandi to want a deep heartfelt commitment from us, and this requires that we come to that point of our own free will and at our own pace. It is a process that takes time. If you remember the parable of the sower, God isn’t interested in those who show lots of initial promise and then fade quickly away. He is interested in those willing to go through the full maturation process and then produce outstanding harvests.

If Jesus had burst upon the disciples with His full brilliance, there would have been immediate response, but responses that were unsustainable over the long term.

We see Jesus reveal His risen Self in stages.

Firstly He comes among them as they are standing together reciting evening prayer. He waits patiently until they realise that He is with them.

Only then does He speak to them. He waits patiently until they have all processed what He said.

Only then does He uncover His hands and side to them, so that they may gaze upon His wounds and begin to understand His passion and death.

Only when they have all seen His wounds does He commission them and begin the activity of the Holy Spirit within them.

We also see that it took the disciples time to process what Jesus showed them of His resurrection, and what it meant.

If they had processed it quickly, Thomas would have seen evidence in their changed behaviour and consequently believed what they told him of the resurrection. But eight days later, the doors are still closed/shut/locked.

We don’t really see any profound change until several weeks have passed and the Holy Spirit comes in power. All of these Easter weeks were needed for Jesus to teach them the many things He couldn’t teach them prior to the resurrection, and for them to begin to get their heads around it.

If Jesus treats them with such patience and merciful kindness, we should do the same for each other.

Have you noticed that people who love to quote Pope Francis about sour faced Christians not being Christians at all are usually naturally cheerful and positive people? It is a stick they like to brow beat the rest of us with at this time of year.

However the truth is that we are all in process; and some might be closer in that process to comprehending the impact of the resurrection than others, but it doesn’t give us the right to denigrate anyone else’s progress or lack thereof.

You could also look upon this process as stages in spiritual growth:

Most of us first get a sense of Jesus when we are gathered together in corporate prayer. For some this will take the form of prayer groups, or worship groups, or liturgical prayer, or the Mass.

When that awareness grows, then we begin to receive communications from Him. That could be the bible verse that jumps off the page, or a deep sense of the rightness of a particular decision, or even the interior voice He sometimes uses.

Only when we have got to know Him to a certain level, does He then take us to the level of understanding Him through His wounds and His Passion. 

Only then when we have begun to understand the sufferings and redemption He won for us, only then can we be sent out as witnesses, and only after the Holy Spirit has had His full way with us.

And a big part of that mission is reconciling relationships into unity through forgiveness. We cannot draw closer to God unless we draw closer to each other as well.

Let us remember that the first disciples actually saw the risen Jesus, and yet they still struggled to comprehend what it meant, and this process took significant time for them too.
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May the risen Jesus grant us a share in His patience and merciful kindness, so that we might be a lot gentler to ourselves and to each other on our shared journey to comprehend the fullness of the resurrection. Amen.

This Easter I came across a very strange phenomenon – Evening Masses on Easter Sunday being scrapped. Sometimes they were replaced with late morning Masses, but sometimes they were just scrapped.

This is Wrong!

Biblically Wrong! 

And it is time the Liturgy was updated too!

John 20:19-31 contains the answer.
It is the Gospel for every Mass held on the 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday).

But curiously it contains two stories: what happened on the first ever Easter Sunday evening, AND what happened a week later.

Other big solemnities have different readings for vigil and for Mass during the day (eg Pentecost). Christmas has different readings for vigil, during the night (a.k.a. Midnight), dawn and during the day.

Easter already has vigil and during the day, why not also have special readings and prayers for Easter evening?

You see, Easter Sunday evening should be celebrated with special gusto for two important biblical reasons.
1. It is the time that Jesus first showed His risen Self to His disciples.
2. It is when He initiated the sacrament of Penance.

That’s when Jesus showed up to be with His apostles and disciples.
Shouldn’t we be there to meet Him?
Shouldn’t we be celebrating both things ‘at the time it happened’, like all the other events of the Paschal Triduum?

Wouldn’t it be dreadful if Jesus showed up in our churches at that time with bucket loads of graces to give away – and there was no one there to receive Him, nor His gifts?

The liturgical gurus tell us that the Paschal Triduum does not end until vespers (evening prayer) on Easter Sunday, and there are in some liturgical rites quite a bit of pomp and circumstance attached to Easter Sunday vespers.

There’s no reason why we can’t have the Gospel for Easter Evening as John 20:19-23, and still have John 20:19-31 on Divine Mercy Sunday.

Surely it is time that we gave God proper thanks and praise for the institution of the sacrament of penance!

And then give Him due thanks and praise for His whole grand plan of unfathomable Mercy on the second Sunday of Easter.

It isn’t ‘double handling’.
Both are truly worthy of liturgical veneration.

It is time this ‘missing link’ in the Paschal Triduum was no longer missing.
​
Can I get an Amen, please?

A strange thing happened on Good Friday; an email asking if I’d like to pen 600 words of an inspiring nature about my 2021 Paschal Triduum experiences. At that point the Holy Thursday ceremonies had been sub-par and disappointment was beginning to creep in. With this unusual time in history and the unusual confluence of Passover coinciding with Easter, I had dared to hope for some of the more dynamic manifestations of the Holy Spirit during these holy days.

Rants I could provide.
Inspiration – not so much.

But the consideration did clarify some of what I wanted to see during these holy days:

I'm never going to be happy until I see signs of God's supernatural action during the Triduum.

That means:
*Homilies that are beyond human wisdom and convict and uplift the heart at the same time.
*Pandemonium because people have come back from Holy Communion and have found themselves healed.
*People sitting in the pews long after the ceremonies are over because they have been caught up in God.
 
Things like that.
 
But I haven't seen it yet, so I remain disappointed, because that's how Easter is supposed to be.
 
The Triduum liturgy has the structure and the capacity to hold and channel Resurrection power.

I don’t know about you, but I believe in an Almighty God who can do far more than give me uplifting emotions, and I want far more than that. Emotions come and go. Action changes the status quo. I want action, not only for me and my loved ones, but for everyone present and their loved ones.

I want the newspapers filled with testimonies about what happened during the Triduum.

But I know we can’t get there if the homilies are lacking the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

“Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved. But they will not ask His help unless they believe in Him, and they will not believe in Him unless they have heard of Him, and they will not hear of Him unless they get a preacher…. Faith comes from what is preached, and what is preached comes from the Word of Christ.” Rom 10:13-15a,17

The first homily spoke primarily of the gifts of the eucharist and the priesthood, and didn’t speak much about the Giver, on His night of nights.

The second homily was long, but began to improve mid-way, touching many of the right notes but without any power riding on or through them.

The third homily didn’t mention any of the banquet of scripture readings, and could have been a replay of similar homilies given in different locations; did say all the expected things, but didn’t have Jesus as the primary focus.

When a homily is as it is supposed to be, it makes Jesus present, and enables us to encounter Him.

But that takes not only study, and time, but assiduous prayer and more than ordinary levels of holiness, and it also requires responding to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit (no matter how ‘out there’ they might feel) both in the preparation phase and in the delivery phase.

We also can’t get there without intercessory preparation, i.e. a parish army praying daily all through Lent for those who will attend the Triduum (in whole or in part), that their hearts and souls will be good soil for the Gospel, and further, for the Holy Spirit to act upon them to convict, save, heal, direct and commission those attendees according to His holy will.

Truly inspired parish armies will also pray afterwards that the good seed sown in hearts and souls will come to full harvest under the action of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, God can act sovereignly without these levels of human co-operation, but generally His modus operandi is to work with us rather than without us – as long as we take all our cues from Him.

In all honesty we can’t expect Him to show up and take our plans from good to great without seeking His input in the planning – even though planning without seeking His input (but, perhaps, for a brief 30 second prayer at the beginning of a planning meeting) appears to be our normal modus operandi.
​It takes more intentional effort than that!
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Please God, may He make us so dissatisfied with our Triduum experiences that we put Him first, front and centre next time, and ever after. Amen.

The Gospel for the Easter Vigil, Year B, comes from the first part of St Mark Chapter 16 and contains the discovery of the empty tomb of Jesus.

Three things stood out to me from this Gospel passage, and they speak of God’s providence, His knowledge and His mercy.

In their hurry to get to the tomb of Jesus as early as possible, and therefore to attract as little attention as possible from passers-by, the women fixated on getting the spices ready and on transporting them successfully have forgotten to bring any man-power with them. The stone covering the entrance to the tomb is extremely large, and not something that the combined might of three women could budge. This worrying thought only dawns on them after they have set out for the tomb, and then consumes their thoughts for the rest of the journey. But God in His providence has already solved this problem for them, and before they even remembered that they needed help. The women don’t have to work out who is going to stay and guard the spices and who is going to go back and get help, they can proceed with their plan.

Only there’s no one to embalm with spices.

However there’s a young man dressed in a long white robe like the upper classes wear, someone of significance, sitting on the tomb ledge.

So much for not being discovered! The women experience a range of emotions that gets translated as alarmed, terrified, greatly astonished, awe struck, struck with amazement. The young man tells them ‘do not be ….’ and he uses the exact same base word for those range of emotions. Telling us that God knows exactly what we are going through, and exactly what we are feeling, and can calm us down.

Since a messenger must have a message to give; explanations for why the tomb is empty of Jesus and the details of a new mission for the women follow.

‘You must go and tell His disciples and Peter.’

If you remember the Passion narrative from St Mark, Peter well and truly blotted his copybook with Jesus; multiple
denials, emphasized with cursing, and with oaths.
Thus this message is important.

It also has at least two layers of meaning. The first layer is ‘go and tell My disciples and take special care that you make sure Peter gets the message’. The second layer is ‘go and tell My disciples, and also go and tell Peter that if he wants to become a disciple again, that the door is open for him to return’. Both layers of meaning are an invitation for Peter to receive the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus. It is quite possible that Peter might have never found the courage to return to the disciples without this merciful message.

So let us rededicate ourselves to the risen Lord Jesus, remembering that His providence anticipates our needs, remembering that He knows us better than we know ourselves, and remembering that He is willing to be reconciled with us no matter how badly we have stuffed things up.

May He help us remember, and may He enable us to increase our trust and confidence in Him. Amen.