Monday | May 6, 2024
John 15:26
...the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me.
The 6th Week of Easter
Invite the Holy Spirit
We have a natural human response to want to explain ourselves, to rationalize, to defend our choices or our motives. This happens especially in situations where we feel we have been wronged or wrongly accused, mischaracterized or disrespected. We can waste so much valuable energy trying to maintain control over situations, things and people. If we divert this fearful, defensive energy and return our focus back to God, our trust will become the catalyst for our freedom and our peace.
The Spirit of truth will testify just as it validated the truth of Jesus. The Holy Spirit works in us and through us and in all situations to restore clarity, harmony and divine right order.
Invite the Holy Spirit into your heart, into your thoughts, into your life, into your relationships, into your workplace, into your communication, into all your circumstances, and watch the transformation.
- Kristin Armstrong
Acts 16:11-15 • Psalm 149:1-6, 9 • John 15:26—16:4a
Sunday | May 5, 2024
John 15:13
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
6th Sunday of Easter
Jesus’ Love for Us
We can always discover a deeper meaning of a Scripture text when we read it within its context. These words of Jesus about loving one’s friends were spoken at the Last Supper. That was the momentous night before he would lay down his life for his friends to be nailed to the cross. These words about laying down one’s life were extremely personal to Jesus at that precise time. The statement gives a clear insight into his mind the day before his crucifixion. Jesus explains that there is no one who has more love for one’s friends than one offering one’s supreme self-sacrifice.
In this same chapter of John, Jesus explicitly says that we—all of us—are the friends he has chosen and loves beyond description. We need to bow our heads with profound humility, realizing Jesus’ intense love for us exceeds even his intense pain on the Cross.
- Fr. James McKarns
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48 • Psalm 98:1-4 • 1 John 4:7-10 • John 15:9-17
Saturday | May 4, 2024
Acts 16:9
During the night Paul had a vision.
The 5th Week of Easter
Trusting in Dreams
In her book Left to Tell, Immaculee Ilibagiza recounts the gruesome details of the genocide in Rwanda and how she discovered God through her survival. Faith in him had her envisioning the future she thought he wanted for her. Trusting in his plan led to each dream coming true: achieving freedom after hiding for ninety-one days in a three by four-foot bathroom during the violence, earning a job at the United Nations after the war, getting her memoir published through a miraculous turn of events and making The New York Times Best Seller list.
In Acts 16:1-10, we see examples of how Paul and Timothy relied on visions to determine where they should and shouldn’t go. Their dream was to spread the Good News to people who would receive it. It was their trust in God to map out their destinations that led to that dream coming true.
Creator of Dreams, reveal to me what you envision for my life. Increase my trust in you to follow your lead.
- Claire McGarry
Acts 16:1-10 • Psalm 100:1-3, 5 • John 15:18-21
Friday | May 3, 2024
John 14:7
If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
Sts. Philip and James
Seeing and Knowing God
People who have met my parents say I look just like my mother and that I have my father’s temperament. When people see me, they can see part of my parents. In some way, by seeing and knowing me, they begin to know my parents as well. As we take the time to know Jesus and let Scripture penetrate our hearts, we begin to know what God sounds like and how God responds. Through knowing Jesus, we know that God puts love first. This is why Jesus gave up everything so that we may live, love and feel compassion. Through Jesus, we know that God walks with everyone, including those excluded or ignored for any reason. Through Jesus, we know that God is about reconciliation and washing the feet of all, including those who might eventually disappoint us. We know God because we know Jesus. We know God because the face of God is apparent in every face we encounter.
- Vivian Amu
1 Corinthians 15:1-8 • Psalm 19:2-5 • John 14:6-14
Thursday | May 2, 2024
John 15:9
Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.”
St. Athanasius
Abide
Over the years, I have deeply appreciated watching the transformation of my nephews from single young men into tender fathers. At our family holiday gatherings, when all the little ones playing together escalates in loudness, we know that sooner or later there will be tears. Then I am so touched as one of the fathers scoops up the wailing child and cradles her in his arms. There’s something about being embraced in love and gazed at with such love that feels holy.
“Remain,” Jesus says. Abide. Rest in the place of knowing yourself beloved. Imagine his voice saying: Stay on the path I have set out for you. Remain in your deep listening to my words and your attentiveness to my Spirit.
- Sr. Chris Koellhoffer, I.H.M.
Acts 15:7-21 • Psalm 96:1-3, 10 • John 15:9-11
Wednesday | May 1, 2024
John 15:5
I am the vine, you are the branches.
St. Joseph the Worker
Connected to the Source
Recently, a good friend of mine—Diane, a former student and regular email correspondent—died in an automobile accident that also claimed the life of a young motorcyclist. Both deaths were sudden and untimely, but it was Dianne's that left her husband and three daughters bereft.
The Gospel for the funeral Mass, taken from Luke 12, was an exhortation on being prepared, “for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come” (v. 40). But still, how could anyone be prepared for such a moment?
To this, I offered that, quite remarkably, Diane was prepared. That’s a judgment left to God, of course, but Diane was vigilant in staying connected, day after day, with the source of her life. I know she understood herself to be a branch on the vine of Christ—and the care she took to live from that truth bore fruit in her vocation as wife, mother and friend of those in need. “She was so incredibly loved,” the family wrote in her obituary. Love begets love, and drawing from the one who is Love, she herself loved much.
- Fr. Dennis Gallagher, A.A.
Acts 15:1-6 • Psalm 122:1-5 • John 15:1-8
Tuesday | April 30, 2024
Acts 14:22
It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.
St. Pius V
Move On
If you want an idea of how the early Church survived and grew, look no further than today’s reading from Acts. Put bluntly, here we discover a church on the move. The disciples’ method was simple: proclaim, pray, sail, repeat. Even Paul, after being stoned and thought to be dead, “got up and entered the city” (v. 20) and the very next day moved on to this next stop.
No matter what, the first Christians kept going.
There’s simple wisdom for us here and now. How often do we feel discouraged? Defeated? Do we feel our faith drying up? Do we think the world is against us? When we feel beaten down or broken, often the best thing to do is to take a page from Paul.
Defy expectations. Get back up. Keep going. Don’t stop.
But how? “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel (John 14:27).
That was what helped fuel the first Christians.
It can still keep us moving today.
- Deacon Greg Kandra
Acts 14:19-28 • Psalm 145:10-13, 21 • John 14:27-31a
Monday | April 29, 2024
Acts 14:11
When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they cried out in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in human form.”
St. Catherine of Siena
The Center of My Life
When my husband died suddenly in 2009, leaving two sons ages 4 and 7 behind, I had a choice to make.
How were we going to go on in a healthy way? Did I want the loss to be the focus of my sons' lives for the rest of their lives? Of course not. And their father certainly wouldn’t have wanted it either. To center our lives around this, admittedly, sad event, this loss, would not only be unhealthy and limiting—it would be making an idol of it, maybe even of him.
Those who saw Paul heal a crippled man wanted to call him a god. Idols, though, come in many forms. The temptation is often great to put a person, an event, an interest, a goal at the center of my life—where God should be instead.
Lord, you alone can give lasting peace and joy.
- Amy Welborn
Acts 14:5-18 • Psalm 115:1-4, 15-16 • John 14:21-26
Sunday | April 28, 2024
John 15:5
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.
5th Sunday of Easter
The Power of Dependence
I remember moments of my adolescence when I began to feel my independence from my parents. Starting high school, first job, driver’s license—all were small steps that led eventually to the necessary separation between child and parent.
As we mature in faith, God asks the opposite of us—not independence from God we no longer need but, rather, the growing realization of how much we need God. Jesus asks not for the boldness of “I can do it alone” but for a radical dependence and recollection that we are children of God, never made to go it alone.
Today, offer your adult responsibilities and independence back to God. Let go of something that burdens you and let God take control.
- Steve Givens
Acts 9:26-31 • Psalm 22:26-28, 30-32 • 1 John 3:18-24 • John 15:1-8
Saturday | April 27, 2024
Acts 13:44
…almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.
The 4th Week of Easter
Hearing the Word
The first reading today specifically states: “Almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.” Almost everybody was there, but some were missing. We might wonder why they didn’t go. Maybe illness or something that couldn’t be rescheduled. Or maybe fear of what the Word of the Lord would do for them or demand of them. As believers, we gather with family and friends daily or weekly to hear the Word of the Lord at Mass. But even that is not enough. Reading the Word of God, meditating and living it are daily tasks. What is our frequency in opening the Bible and hearing God’s voice? If it isn’t daily or often, what might change to better prioritize it? When would be a good time to read Scripture? Can I read and reflect on it with my household, co-workers or friends?
Hearing the Word and responding to it will do the same thing it did for those early disciples—our souls will be filled with joy.
- Fr. Edward Looney
Acts 13:44-52 • Psalm 98:1-4 • John 14:7-14
