ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely: You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time. — St. Augustine For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God’s Word and Christ’s Body. CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The Profession of Faith, Article 3

T he risen Jesus never tires of offering himself to us over and over, now under one image, now under another. What he wants to be for us is such a mysterious and profound reality that it cannot be reduced to only one image. Last Sunday he presented himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep ; today he tells us the parable of the Vine and the Branches. This metaphor invites us to consider the absolute need for the branches to remain attached to the vine, and this verb remain (or abide ) recurs no fewer than seven times in the gospel text. Jesus’ message is clear: ‘Whatever you do, make sure you do not detach yourselves from me!’ Life laid down by the Good Shepherd; life infused by the stock into the branches: whatever the image, we should never forget that we do not generate our own life but must receive it from the One who loves us. As used in the Old Testament, the image of God the vinedresser and Israel as God’s vine evokes a general religious conviction: th...

There can be no properly Christian conversion without a piercing of the heart, because only the man whose heart is pierced loves, and only the man who loves—the man whose spiritual substance truly flows out of him—can be called “healthy” in a fully Christian sense. There is no true health of the soul besides authentic, self-giving love. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Explorations in Theology V, Man is Created, 284

Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may more truly be called so. Live by God's commandments every day; treasure chastity, harbor neither hatred nor jealousy of anyone, and do nothing out of envy. Do not love quarreling; shun ignorance. Respect the elders and love the young. Pray for your enemies out of love for Christ. If you have a dispute with someone, make peace with him before the sun goes down. And finally, never lose hope in God's mercy. ST. BENEDICT The Rule

At the close of life you will be examined as to your love: learn to love God as he wishes to be loved, and give up all that is your own. SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS Spiritual Maxims

Does it not strike you how much the Lord loves to spoil us, especially during these Fifty Days of Easter? All the texts of the Liturgy overflow with expressions that should fill our hearts with joy and gratitude. On this 4th Sunday of Easter, for instance, the Church invites us to contemplate the image of Jesus the Good Shepherd. This is much more than just a comforting theme, since it is not any poet or preacher who announces it to us but the Lord Jesus himself. He looks into our eyes and, with all the ardor of his Heart, reveals to us his identity: I am the Good Shepherd! It is the Son of God himself, dead and risen, who speaks to us. And what does he seek from us by doing so? Quite simply, that we give him permission to take care of us!   Jesus is indeed the Good Shepherd; but are we humble enough to allow him to cast us in the role good sheep ? Do we even want to be such? Admittedly, it is more than a little humiliating to be called a “sheep”, an animal famous for its stupidity...

Selfishness makes people deaf and dumb; love opens eyes and ears, enabling people to make that original and irreplaceable contribution which – together with the thousands of deeds of so many brothers and sisters, often distant and unknown – converges to form the mosaic of charity that can change the tide of history. ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II World Day of Youth, 26 Nov. 1995

Have you ever been struck by this astonishing fact of the Easter Mystery: that the risen Jesus, instead of returning immediately to the Father in heavenly glory, insists rather on pursuing his beloved disciples doggedly over the course of fifty days by visiting them repeatedly wherever they may be, searching for their love and wanting to heal them with his presence? When the Risen One appears to them today, we hear that they were startled and terrified. And what Jesus does on first encountering them is to take away the fear they feel thinking they are seeing a ghost. He does this by urging them to explore his corporeality in the most tangible way possible. Yes, he offers them his body for palpable contact, with repeated protestations of love in the form of commandments to intimacy: Peace be with you! It is I myself! Touch me! He seems bound and determined to remove any obstacle still separating him from constant union with his friends. He knows his work of redemption will not be comple...

The unbounded loving surrender to God and God’s return gift, full and enduring union, this is the highest elevation of the heart attainable, the highest level of prayer. Souls who have attained it are truly the heart of the Church, and in them lives Jesus’ high priestly love. Hidden with Christ in God, they can do nothing but radiate to other hearts the divine love that fills them and so participate in the perfection of all into unity in God, which was and is Jesus' great desire. SAINT TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS (EDITH STEIN) The Hidden Life

That “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” contains a subtlety which the popular pessimist cannot follow, or is too hasty to notice. It is the thesis that there are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions. Only Calvinists can really believe that hell is paved with good intentions. That is exactly the one thing it cannot be paved with. But it is possible to have bad intentions about good things; and good things, like the world and the flesh, have been twisted by a bad intention called the devil. But he cannot make things bad; they remain as on the first day of creation. The work of heaven alone was material; the making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual. G.K. CHESTERTON St. Thomas Aquinas

  An unwanted interruption, a sigh, my eyes roll back, I force a smile, then, “Sure, let me get the car.” This was a damp, foggy Sunday morning years ago, when a brother asked me to take him driving around the property. He was a bit unsure of himself after an injury and wanted some practice behind the wheel. I sat in the passenger seat; we didn’t speak much. He was intent, maneuvering carefully down north road, then around to south. I gazed out the windows transfixed. There was a breathtaking, most delicate beauty all around us. Our hills and fields were wrapped in deep fog, as we inched along through what seemed a Japanese watercolor painting, thick mist resting on early spring trees, droplets on the branches’ delicate tracery. Hills and fields would disappear and then softly emerge into view. A mystical ride, unexpected and experienced only because a brother rudely interrupted my morning routine, as he relaxed with relief and good pleasure and found his flow behind the wheel. Thi...

"When the angel appeared to Mary, God was announcing this love for the new humanity. It was the beginning of a new earth, and Mary became ‘a flesh-gift Paradise to be gardened by the new Adam.’ As in the first garden Eve brought destruction, so in the garden of her womb, Mary would now bring Redemption.” FULTON SHEEN "The Annunciation teaches us that God's ways are not our ways, and his plans are not our plans. It invites us to trust in his providence, even when we do not understand." ARCHBISHOP CHARLES CHAPUT

Today is the Octave of Easter, meaning that it has been Easter Day all week long, culminating today. This Octave Day has lately been given the name Divine Mercy Sunday as a way of attesting to the fact that the Easter Resurrection is the epitome of the Divine Mercy revealed to us in the Paschal Mystery of our redemption: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We need not look to the writings of St. Faustina or to a somewhat recent liturgical directive for the origin of the name for this Sunday: it is rooted in the New Testament, most explicitly in the First Epistle of St. Peter, our first pope. He writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy ( IN HIS GREAT MERCY!) gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” We hear in this passage the resurrection of our Lord Jesus as the manifestation of the the Divine Mercy. This ...

God does not belong in a special way to any one people; for it is he who calls us, convokes us, invites us to be part of his people, and this invitation is addressed to all, without distinction, for the mercy of God “desires everyone to be saved.” Jesus does not tell the apostles or us to form an exclusive group, a group of the elite . Jesus says: go out and make disciples of all peoples (see Matt. 28:19). Saint Paul says that in the people of God, in the Church, “there is no longer Jew or Greek…for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). I would like to say to anyone who feels far away from God and the Church, to anyone who is timid or indifferent, to those who think they can no longer change: the Lord calls you to become part [of] his people and he does this with great respect and love! He invites us to be part of this people, the people of God! POPE FRANCIS General Audience

We may ask why, after Jesus’ Resurrection, he stood on the shore to receive the disciples, whereas before he walked on the sea. The sea signifies the world, which is tossed about with various causes of tumults, and the waves of this corruptible life; the shore, by its solidity, symbolizes rest. The disciples then, in as much as they were still upon the waves of this mortal life, were laboring on the sea; but the Redeemer, having by his Resurrection thrown off the corruption of the flesh, stood upon the shore. ST. GREGORY THE GREAT Homilies on the Gospel of John

The modern technological world may have tremendous problems that seem utterly remote from the Gospel, but ultimately it comes down to the attitude adopted by Jesus in his living and dying: the attitude of perfect, selfless love, service to the very last and the fruitfulness that comes from it. This is the innermost meaning and core of all mankind’s questions, including those of politics, economics and other fields. And the attitude shown by Jesus is the attitude of God himself to the world. Thus anyone who follows Jesus is walking in God's footsteps, in the footsteps of absolute truth and goodness. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR You Crown the Year With Your Goodness, 255

If any persons had removed the body of Jesus, would they have stripped it before doing so? Or if anyone had stolen it, would they have taken the trouble to remove the cloth, and roll it up, and lay it in a place by itself? They would have taken the body as it was. On this account John tells us, by anticipation, that the body of Jesus was buried with much myrrh, which glues linen to the body even more firmly than lead. So when you hear that the linen wrapping lay apart, you may not endure those who say that the body of Jesus was stolen. For a thief would not have been so foolish as to spend so much trouble on a superfluous matter. Why should he undo the clothes? And how could he have escaped detection if he had done so? He would probably have spent much time in so doing, and be found out by delaying and loitering. But why do the clothes lie apart, while the cloth was folded together by itself? That you may learn that it was not the action of men in confusion or haste, the placing some i...