Our mission
as the parish community of
Our Lady of Hope
is to give witness to the love of Jesus in our families, our parish community and the world.

Our parish has a wonderful spirit and all of us together make that possible. Many people, who were here before us, believed that God is bringing us together and guiding our steps. They often asked, "What if …?" or "Why not …?" They gave thanks for what is and they hoped for what could be. We ask the same questions and share the same hope. Those who come after us will continue the same tradition that has been fashioned by the people of Our Lady of Hope, St. Bridget, St. John Vianney, Sacred Heart and Holy Cross.

Bruce's Notes

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Bruce's Notes for the 7th Sunday of Easter

I think that the easiest and clearest way to explain the Gospel reading for this week (John 17:20-26) may be to restate the passage, with us as the disciples Jesus is praying about. This passage becomes much more important when we realize that it is about us. (We are Jesus' disciples, aren't we?!)

In this passage, Jesus prays to God, explaining that he prays not only for us, but also for those who believe in him through our word. Jesus prays that all may become one (just as God is in Jesus and Jesus is in God), prays that we disciples may also be in God and Jesus, and prays that the world may believe that God sent him.

Jesus says that he is giving us the glory that God gave him, in order that we may become one whole, joined together as God and Jesus are joined together, Jesus in us and God in Jesus. That way, we disciples may be brought to perfection as one whole, so that the world may know that God sent Jesus and that God loves us (just as God loves Jesus).

Jesus presents us as his gift to God! He wishes that wherever he is, we may also be with him, so that we may see the glory that God gave Jesus (because God loved Jesus even before the foundation of the world).

Concluding his prayer to his "Righteous Father," Jesus says that the world does not know God but that Jesus knows God, and that we disciples know that God sent Jesus. Jesus made God's name known to us, and Jesus will make it known to all, so that the love with which God loved Jesus may be in us, and Jesus may be in us.

Wow! That's how important you and I are to Jesus! That's how important we are to God. We are Jesus' gift to God! And God's love and Jesus are both in us! So, the next time you or I start feeling small or unimportant or regretful or sad about this or that, let's remember how Jesus and God see us, and love us, and really treasure us! And let's try to keep that our view of ourselves, as we carry our Christian love out into the world.

Bruce's Notes for the 6th Sunday of Easter

This week's Gospel (John 14:23-29) raises some valuable and challenging questions for us, as people who profess that we believe in Jesus and in what he says in the Gospels. Here, as elsewhere, Jesus gives us some essential truths, very simply and clearly. But we disciples often seem to have a lot of trouble believing—really believing, really putting our trust in—some of those truths he tells us, as we wade through all the many complications of our daily lives.

For example, in this Gospel Jesus tells us: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” That’s pretty straightforward. So how come there is so much we haven’t learned very well and so much of what Jesus told us that we forget? Also in this Gospel passage, Jesus instructs us, unequivocally, “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” So why then do we let our hearts sometimes be troubled or afraid why Jesus told us not to let them be that way? And yet again, Jesus tells us if we loved him, we would rejoice that he is going to the Father, who Jesus says is greater even than he is. So, if we should rejoice that Jesus is going to the Father, why don't we always rejoice that our loved ones, or the people we read about in the papers, or we ourselves, are going to the Father?

Really, the question is not “Why?” but “What?” What can we do about our fears and doubts, which seem so often to overwhelm our belief? Here is one way: we can be alone, close our eyes, and just let God in. Only you and God. Just let God’s love and warmth fill your mind, your heart, your whole being. Let yourself be in that place, at peace, for as long as you want and need. And then, only when you are really ready, open your eyes…and the world appears the same but different, suffused with the light of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit, of God the Father. God is always there, always ready to catch us when we fall, always ready to receive us and hold us. In that state of mind, there are no troubles or fears, only our trust and belief in a loving God.

Bruce's Notes for the 5th Sunday of Easter

In this week’s Gospel (John 13:31-33a, 34-35), Jesus gives us all “a new commandment: love another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” So short and to the point, so rich with meaning, and so challenging! How do we live out this commandment?

Just to be clear, Jesus doesn’t say all will know that we are his disciples if we profess our faith strongly or take communion regularly or attend church. No., he says that all will know that we are his disciples if we have love for one another. But how are we to have love for one another? And how are we to love one another as Jesus has loved us?

Jesus loves his disciples (us included) as a servant leader, one who sets a great example of leadership and service. And he loves us with a willingness to give all he has for our benefit. What a great challenge for us: how, in our everyday lives, can we give all we have to others? I don’t think it means we have to die for others, or give away all our savings, but it does mean that we are called—expected— to do whatever we can for the benefit of others, of everyone we meet, from family members to the total stranger.

I think that if we keep that image—of everyone as “one another”— in our thoughts and prayers, we will keep finding ways to love and help others with compassion and without judgment. And when we do that, people will take notice and be affected by our attitude. That’s my experience, at least.

Bruce's Notes for the 4th Sunday of Easter

This little gem of a gospel passage this week (John 10:27-30) helps remind us about what we so love and treasure about our faith.

Jesus said:
²⁷ “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.
²⁹ My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
³⁰ The Father and I are one.”

What peace! What security! To know that we “shall never perish,” that we are alive not just now, not just for the 80 or 90—or even 100—years we may have in these physical bodies that need to breathe and eat and drink, but eternally, without end, forever! Not only that, but also Jesus says that we are in his hand and that no one can remove us from his hand. One line later, Jesus tells us, moreover, that we are in “the Father’s hand," and one line after that, Jesus reminds us that “The Father and I are one.” That means clearly that we are in God’s hand, now and forever. How much comfort and security is that?!

But what does it mean to be in Jesus’ hand? in the Father’s hand? In God’s hand? It means that we—the eternal children of God the Father—are always protected, always secure in God's love, always (this moment, the next moment, every moment). How does that verse in our Easter Allelujah go? "I will never die; I will live telling God's deeds."

It means that you and I are held and cared for by God and so have nothing to worry about, not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Whatever may happen to our physical bodies, we—the real you and I—rest secure in God’s hand and God’s love. All that we need to do to be happy is to remember that and keep listening to Jesus’ voice.

Bruce's Notes for the 3rd Sunday of Easter

In this week’s gospel (John 21:1-19), Jesus reveals himself again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. But they don’t recognize him at first! Not until he repeats the “catching fish'' miracle that he first performed when he called Simon and his fellow fishermen to follow him. So if his closest disciples do not recognize Jesus until he “proves” himself to them, what does that mean for us, Jesus’ modern-day disciples? How often, how dramatically, how literally, how provably does Jesus need to reveal himself to us before we can “see” him, recognize him, follow him, and understand his message that “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”?

With our outer eye, we just do not see Jesus walking around in the flesh. But to our inner, spiritual eye, to our heart of faith, Jesus can reveal himself in many ways. Certainly, we can see him in one very particular way, for he has told us, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” By this, Jesus is telling us more than that he has a special connection to the poor, the weak, the needy. He is also telling us that what we do for—or to— them, we do also for—or to— him. If we feed those in need, we feed Jesus; if we do not, we let Jesus starve. if we clothe them, shelter them, visit them, we do those deeds of love to Jesus. If we ignore them, we ignore Jesus.

So, who are those in whom we need to look and see Jesus? Certainly they are the old and weak, homebound or in a nursing home. Certainly they are those individuals or families who struggle to afford food, housing, clothing…the means to live. Certainly they are the children, vulnerable and fragile. But Jesus has also told us, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Not one particular neighbor, every neighbor. Maybe, just maybe, we need to look for Jesus in everyone. It sounds hard, but with practice it becomes easier and easier, and with that vision–—seeing Jesus in everyone—we can change the world!

Bruce's Notes for the 2nd Sunday of Easter

As I have mentioned before, I get maximum value out of many Gospel passages by seeing the people in the story as myself (us). Helpful meanings stand out in greater clarity when I see the story in personal terms. This is certainly true of this week’s passage (John 20:19-31) about Jesus appearing to the disciples in their locked room.

There we are, locked in inner rooms of our own making, afraid of whatever outside seems to be threatening us, be it work or money or physical problems or family problems or something we can’t quite name. And into that room, where we are isolated by our fear and worry, comes the risen Jesus, saying, “Peace be with you.” Then he breathes on us, charges us with carrying out his mission of love and compassion, and gives us the Holy Spirit to accomplish that mission.

Can we let ourselves believe that? Can we let the Holy Spirit and our belief in Jesus and his mission—really our mission—lead us past our fears to do what we are called to do? Can we accept that no real inner/soul harm can come to us when Jesus breathes out the Holy Spirit on us—which he is always willing to do whenever we open up to him?

If we can let ourselves believe that, then we will be able to go out into the world, looking upon everyone with interest and equity, without judgment, bestowing good will on all and making the world a better place. And then indeed, we will “have life in his name.”

Bruce's Notes for Easter Sunday

This Easter weekend’s two Gospel stories of the women at the tomb (Luke: 24:1-12 and John 20:1-9) present us with two very different experiences of perception, which illustrate, once again, the great challenge we all face in reconciling the worlds of spirit and matter.
In John’s Gospel, when Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and sees the stone removed, she runs and tells the disciples, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” She is, at this moment, seeing and judging only through her physical eyes and through her worry and fear. “They,” (people not like us, alien and menacing) have taken Jesus away. Though she loves Jesus and truly believes in him, right now she is regarding him as a physical human being and so her concern is for where have they taken the
body.

In Luke's version of the story, the women from Galilee (presumably including Mary Magdalene) come with the spices to the tomb, and they also see the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. But then they are addressed by “two men in dazzling garments”—clearly angels or some kind of celestial beings—who explain that the women should not be looking for “the living one among the dead” because “he has been raised.” They also remind the women that Jesus told them what was going to happen, including that he was going to “rise on the
third day.” And then the woman remember Jesus’ words.
When the women are addressed by the angels at the tomb, their eyes and minds are opened, to a world beyond the merely physical. Like the disciples present at Jesus’ transfiguration, it is given to them to perceive “beyond the veil.” They now understand the spiritual reality (that Jesus has risen from the dead), and so they go and announce to the other disciples, who do not believe them because they, too, are seeing with physical eyes and cannot yet picture anything beyond the physical.
And don't we do the same? We rely mostly on our physical senses to tell us what is so. It is only when we let ourselves become open to more than the physical—through whatever combination of sustained spiritual practice and startling revelation—that the scales fall from our eyes and we “see”—with our inner eyes—a new world, full of new and wonderful possibilities. And isn‘t this what Easter is all about: going from a sense of loss, of something being taken from us, to a sense of joy and hope and certainty that we have been given something precious, more fulfilling than anything else, that can never be taken from us. We call this new world, this gift, “the kingdom of God.”

Bruce's Notes for Passion Sunday

Before I begin this week’s Notes, my apologies for last week’s Notes. The story of Jesus and Lazarus is a wonderful story to write on—and would have been the correct Gospel if we had been using The Scrutinies, but we weren’t! So, sorry about that!

There is so much to reflect on in this week's momentous Gospel (The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke) that I want to focus on the Passover meal ("The Last Supper") and a couple of powerful lessons I think it has for us.

First, we notice that Jesus is the one at the meal who is centered. Everyone else is off balance. Certainly Judas, who is not only sharing an intimate meal with his Lord, his teacher, but also planning to betray him! Certainly Peter, so passionately declaring his loyalty, only to be told that he will deny his Lord three times! Certainly the other disciples: “And they began to debate among themselves about who would do such a thing…. Then an argument broke out among them about which of them should be regarded as the greatest.” Jesus alone understands what is happening, where his center is and needs to be. This is a really good lesson for us: to focus on reality—on what is—and not be distracted by all the fears and other distractions that want to pull us away from God, from Christ, from our one sure center, our one sure support

Second, at the Passover meal Jesus tells the disciples that he will not eat it again or "drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." This pronouncement is often taken to mean that the kingdom will come only at the Second Coming, when Jesus returns, this earth passes away, and all is revealed. But, this interpretation doesn’t quite work for me, because just a couple of days after his death and resurrection, on the road to Emmaus, Christ meets, stays with, and yes, does share a meal with some of his disciples. And in Acts 10:12, it says that the disciples “ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” So, I hear the Gospel telling us that actually the kingdom of God did come, right then and there. We don’t have to wait for it; the kingdom of God has already come and is right here, right now, always. It is our kingdom, to claim in this moment and every moment, as we connect with Christ and keep him always at table, always at home, in our hearts and minds.

Bruce's Notes for the 5th Sunday of Lent

This week’s Gospel story, the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45), has much to teach us, about Jesus and about ourselves.

This is a complex story. As I read it over and over, it slowly becomes clear that before He travels back to Judea, Jesus already plans to “awaken” Lazarus—raise him from the dead— but privately, with just the disciples for witnesses. It is only when Martha, and then Mary and the crowd of mourners, comes to Him with grief and entreaty, that Jesus becomes “perturbed” and realizes that He must perform the miraculous ministry publicly. Jesus performs His miracles out of love for others and for the glory of God, but it “perturbs” Him that many will believe only when they get to see this for themselves. (Notice that Martha tells Jesus that she believes that He is “the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world,” but then goes and secretly summons Mary to entreat Jesus to raise Lazarus.)

The story of Lazarus, like so many gospel stories, is really our story. We all are Lazarus. Again and again, Jesus calls us forth from our own tombs (of fear and worry and discouragement and sorrow) to begin life anew, as new, reborn beings, filled with Jesus' love, with new strength and resolve to follow in His footsteps, with faith and without fear. And every time you and I stumble and fall and become entombed again in this world's worries and woes, He calls us forth, and says to all our wants and fears—our inner demons—"Untie him, and let him go."

Bruce's Notes for the 4th Sunday of Lent

Once again we have a Gospel reading (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32) to teach us about the workings of the spiritual world and the material world.
In Jesus’ parable, when the prodigal son returns home from the degenerate life he has been leading, penniless and penitent, his older brother complains bitterly to their father: “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fatted calf.” The older brother is bitter because he feels that his father has not been just in sharing his material possessions. He is also standing in judgment and condemnation of his younger brother—and of his father.
And don’t we do the same? Comparing our physical lives and material possessions with those of others, especially others whom we may have judged to be less deserving than we are. And it really doesn’t matter whether we do that with wealthy CEO’s of large companies or unemployed people on welfare; we are still comparing, still judging, still condemning.
But in the realm of the Spirit, everything is different. The father in the parable (God, our Father) tells his elder son (us, his discontented children): “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.” We are always connected with God (even when we are not aware of it). God gives all of us everything we need spiritually, all of the time. No exceptions, no more to one than to another. When we are open to the Spirit. we have it all, from God, plain and simple. The prodigal son lost his spiritual way but found it again, coming home to his always loving father. (And the elder son lost his way, too, every time he judged his brother and his father.)
When we stop judging and just let ourselves connect with God’s love, we have a surefire plan for longterm joy and contentment.

Bruce's Notes for the 3rd Sunday of Lent

This week’s Gospel (Luke 13:1-9) contains valuable lessons for us about how we can get caught in wrong thinking and acting, and about what God wants for us and from us,

First, Jesus refuses to accept that some are greater sinners than others. He tells the people that they all must repent; in other words, they need to change their thinking, and therefore their way of living, because their current way does not lead to life but rather to death. While some think this refers to physical death or to permanent death (as opposed to eternal life), I want to suggest that the principle also applies to the quality of our life right here and now. If parts of our deepest and truest humanity—loving God and neighbor, being kind, welcoming. compassionate, nonjudgmental—atrophy and die, then we feel alone, cut off, afraid, unworthy. But Jesus came to “take away the sins of the world,” to help us repent/rethink and correct our mistakes so that we can live the way God wants us to.

And how does God want us to live? Loving…and joyful, too. (The two are good companions to each other.) I think of the joy experienced by so many of those whom Jesus meets, heals, frees. I think that this is an aspect of the “life” Jesus refers to. We all know what “death” in our souls feels like: when everything in our lives that we regret, feel guilty about, feel is missing, comes up to aggravate and torment us and hold us back. But when, with the help of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we are able to live in the moment, in which we judge not but instead see ourselves and the other person only through the eyes of Love, then we can feel ourselves open and grow, like green blades in the spring, and we gaze with hope on a redeemed world. Now that’s Life!

Bruce's Notes for the 1st Sunday of Lent

As I was carefully reading and rereading this week's familiar Gospel (Luke 4:1-13), about Jesus' temptation in the desert, two new observations leapt out at me. (I find that when I let this happen, it is like seeing for the very first time!)

My first revelation was that Jesus did not just go into the desert, after which somehow he was tempted by the devil. The Gospel says that Jesus, "filled with the Holy Spirit…was led by the Spirit into the desert…to be tempted by the devil." In other words, it was intentional on the part of the Holy Spirit to lead Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil, who is, significantly, the king of materialism -- and of lies. The devil tempted Jesus with three materialist temptations, to each of which Jesus responded with a spiritual answer. And after that, the devil "departed from him for a time." (In other words, he would be back!)

My second revelation upon rereading the Gospel passage was that Jesus' temptation in the desert is not just a story about Jesus. It is also the story of our own temptation, in our own daily lives. Our senses may tell us that we live only in a material world. But Jesus, and the Holy Spirit within us, tell us that our perceptions can mislead us, that in order not to fall into error (sin) we need to be renewed first in the spiritual world, in God’s kingdom, before we make assumptions about and try on our own to deal with the material world.

This, of course, is a constant challenge: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." We get stuck so easily in the material world, in our own desert, again and again, caught in confusion and temptation. What can we do? The good news, the really Good News, is that God, that Jesus and the Holy Spirit, can guide us through, from our desert to the Kingdom. So we pray, we listen, we open ourselves to God and God’s truth… and when Jesus says “Follow me,” we do!

Bruce's Notes for the 8h Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week's Gospel (Luke 6:39-45) contains Jesus’ famous teaching to us, "Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?” When we really study this closely, we see that it is a much more challenging question than we may think. For what, really, is the wooden beam in our own eye? For some of us, it may be one (or more) of the Seven Deadly Sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride). It may be arrogance or selfishness. But for others of us, what is blinding us may also be guilt or fear, self-consciousness or feelings of unworthiness.

The beam that blinds us, our "blind spot," is often not apparent to us; it can be woven so far into us, with tendrils so deep, that we actually cannot perceive it. That is what makes it our blind spot!

I once knew a woman who was obviously very angry much of the time. We all could see it and often tried to point it out to her, but she not only steadfastly denied it, she actually could not perceive it in herself! Finally, a friend pointed out to her that whenever she was angry, she would vigorously jiggle her leg up and down. At last, she had a way of spotting her deep-seated anger and was able to chip away at that beam in her eye.

It often takes others to point out our blindness to us, to enable us to see. This may be really hard, feel really awkward, but we can, we should, let others help us, just as we can try to help them. This is one practical, caring way of applying "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" or “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Bruce's Notes for the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time

In this week's Gospel reading (Luke 6: 27-38), Jesus gives us a clear, detailed prescription for how to enter (and remain!) in the Kingdom of Heaven. The prescription is so easy to read…and so difficult to follow! Jesus simply asks us to:
- love our enemies
- do good to those who hate us
- bless those who curse us
- pray for those who mistreat us
- give to everyone who asks of us
- be merciful to all
- stop judging
- forgive
Imagine what the world would be like if we all followed what Jesus instructs us to do! It would be a happy world, without strife, without poverty. If we try, we can actually picture such a world in all its peace and joy and beauty. So why does it so often feel so far away from us, a world impossible even to believe in? St. Paul addresses that question in our second reading (1 Corinthians 15:45-49) when he talks about the earthly man (Adam) and the spiritual man (Jesus), meaning those two warring parts of our own human nature. How can we ever resolve the conflict and allow the spirit to rule and redeem the earthly?

The plain and simple answer is that we can’t, not on our own. But we can ask for help! That’s why Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to us: to guide us, to strengthen us in our resolve, to listen to our struggles and pain and frustration and inspire us with God’s love. And every time we bounce back from our failures and frustrations and we love, forgive, bless, and do good to others, especially to those those we feel are mistreating us, Jesus tells us “gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

Bruce's Notes for the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time

When reading Luke 6:17, 21-26 (“Blessed are you who are poor…who are now hungry…who are now weeping”), I began to remember this wonderful documentary movie, made about ten years ago, called simply “Happy.” The filmmaker visits a very diverse group of people all over the world who have just one thing in common: they are happy.

One memorable happy person in this movie is an Indian man who ekes out a meager living doing a very lowly job: pulling a rickshaw. He works very hard and is very poor; his family and he live in a hovel on an unpaved street in a big city slum. But this man smiles a big, warm, genuine smile at the camera and shows us his poor, dilapidated dwelling and his impoverished family with pride and joy and tells us how happy he is and how blessed he feels to have his house and his family and his job (his life.) Materially, this man is poor; perhaps we think he should really feel wretched. But spiritually, he's filled with what I can only call God's grace. Spiritually he resides in the kingdom of God. Spiritually he is alive and full of joy in being alive.

I think this is what Jesus is calling us to in this passage. He wants us to embrace the world, to love the world, with the spirit God has given each and every one of us. He wants us to stop being complacent and self satisfied and instead open ourselves to God’s grace, to have faith in God and not be trapped in constant useless worries about our position, our wealth, our status, our lacks. He wants to help us get unstuck and become able to listen to God, listen to Jesus, listen to the Holy Spirit, who will guide us with true wisdom, if we let them.

Bruce's Notes for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 5: 1-11, the story of Simon and the other fisherman encountering and then following Jesus), concludes with the words "They left everything and followed him." This is one of the great invitations and challenges to us as Christ’s disciples. Just what does it mean, to leave everything and follow Jesus?

Jesus can be pretty clear and direct about this. He says “Follow me” in one way or another thirteen times in the four Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). He is also clear about looking forward and not looking back, about following him and letting “the dead bury their own dead.” But what does all this mean about how we are to live our own lives, today? How do we leave “everything'' to follow Jesus?

The challenge is to live in this world but not be of this world. And, as hard as that may sound, overall, I think that it is really doable, through our own determination and God’s help. We can go to work, be with our friends and family, take care of our daily chores, be a part of our community, and also follow Jesus, living by Christian values and letting God lead us.

We know, of course, that we will fail, and fail again, and again, to follow our Lord properly, straying from the path, sinning -- as Simon and all the other early disciples did, too. But we also know, as they came to know, that we will be forgiven, immediately, completely. We simply confess and ask for help. That is the wonder of our God, who wants only the best for us and will help us as soon as we ask.

And then, with our minds and hearts clear again, we do our best to follow him wherever he leads us.

Bruce's Notes for the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Here are a few things we know about Jesus: he always tells the truth, he cares deeply about people, and his love and concern include everyone, especially the oppressed and marginalized, regardless of race, tribe, or nationality. This attitude, which seems to us today so obvious and right and proper, clearly upset -- even enraged -- many of his own people in his time. This week’s Gospel passage (Luke 4: 21-30) is another striking example of this.

For his fellow Jews in the synagogue, it was bad enough that Jesus -- after all just a hometown boy in their eyes -- had already preached the “blasphemy” (in last week’s Gospel passage) that Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled “in your hearing,” meaning through Jesus himself. But now, in what the Jews considered their most holy place, Jesus was telling them, reminding them, that God, through His prophets Elijah and Elisha, had given special help not to Jews but to outsiders: a starving non-Jewish widow in Sidon and Naaman, a leper who was also a captain in the enemy Syrian army. Jesus was challenging the deeply held belief that they, the Jews, were not only God’s chosen people but His only chosen people.

Do we do that, too? Do we think that we are the chosen ones? That God favors Catholics more than Protestants? more than Jews? more than Buddhists? more than Muslims? more than Hindus? More than those who doubt that God even exists? If we each look carefully and honestly at our own reactions to these questions, we may discover feelings not so different from those of the Jews of Nazareth who drove Jesus out of the town and even wanted to kill him for his “blasphemy.”

And if we find in our self-examination that we do harbor such feelings, here’s what we can do: we can confess to almighty God (who loves us completely, unconditionally), we can repent (rethink our position), and we can believe the Good News. Then we will be again in harmony with God, and, as Julian of Norwich writes, “all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”

Bruce's Notes for the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

We can view the Gospels on a number of different wavelengths at the same time. We can see them as a story, a history of what happened. But we can also experience them as happening now; the stories seem alive and near. And we should always treat them as lessons, from God to His people (us)..

In today’s Gospel, for example, when we hear that Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, we know that this is going to be a story and a lesson, about Jesus further revealing himself as who he really is -- and what that means for us.

In the synagogue, Jesus reads the passage about being anointed to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to let the oppressed go free. And then he says simply, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

So, what does this passage mean for us? First, the word “today.” Jesus spoke that word 2000 years ago, but we read it, take it into our consciousness now, in the present. We are his disciples today, not 2000 years ago, not yesterday. Today, and every day, is this Scripture passage fulfilled in our hearing.

And what is that Scripture passage from Isaiah about? That the Lord has anointed us, me and you -- every single one of us -- to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to let the oppressed go free. As Jesus’ disciples of today, that is what we are called to do, today.

How do we meet this call? How do we carry out this ministry for which we have been anointed? We do the best we can, in whatever ways we can find in our own lives. We reach out to others, in our parish family and in the wider community. We help our greater, universal Church carry out its ministries, to the poor, to captives, to the oppressed, by supporting our parish’s second collections, by contributing to our Diocesan Appeal to Catholic Charities, and to various other organizations also working towards fulfilling those objectives.

And why do we do all that? Because we care about others and we, like our Lord, walk in the Power of the Spirit. And if we listen carefully enough, with our hearts, not our ears, we can hear our Lord saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and to hear that is worth everything.

Bruce's Notes for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

I can’t think of any Gospel story that both pleases and intrigues us more than this week’s account of the wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-11). It is like this wonderful gem that we can turn over and over, each time enjoying its beauty but also seeing different facets of its message to us.

But I think that this is the wonderful aspect of so much of God’s Word, which calls to us to look deeper, re-examine, question, puzzle over, and sometimes come to a new understanding that enriches our faith. Here is what peering deeper into this story this time has brought me:

   Mary, Jesus’ mother, is at a wedding at Cana. So are Jesus and his followers.
   Mary points out to her son (who, of course, she already knows is remarkable, extraordinary), “They have no wine.”
He is reluctant. “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour (for glory, for beginning the miraculous aspect of my ministry) has not yet come.”
   Mother Mary doesn’t argue with Jesus. She simply says to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.” What brilliant, motherly insight into her child and their relationship. She knows him well!

And so, what happens? Jesus performs his first miracle, and in doing so reveals his glory, and his disciples begin to regard him and believe in him in a new, deeper way. And all this because of Mary’s motherly, attentive devotion to God and to their son, beginning with her submission to the Will of God before Jesus’ conception and continuing all the way through to her holding Jesus’ lifeless body in her arms after his crucifixion (what we sometimes call "the Pietà").

As Catholics, we could say that in a very real way, every day is Mother’s Day!

Bruce's Notes for the Baptism of the Lord

In today’s Gospel (Luke 3:15-16, 21-22), John tells the people coming to be baptized, “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming…. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” It is important to understand what these different baptisms mean for our faith and our lives.

We are baptized with water, most of us as young children, and so become members of the Roman Catholic Church. When John baptized with water, his purpose was to bring those people, mostly adults, to repentance (rethinking) about their faith and the way they led their lives. Certainly, as we grow and mature within our Church, that is what we also try to do, to rethink and strengthen our faith and our lives as Christians.

We know that baptism with the Holy Spirit is a deeper, stronger baptism, meant to inspire us and light up our inner life. The Holy Spirit will not force Himself on you; He will wait for invitation, but when we invite Him in, He helps raise our faith and the way we lead our lives to an ever higher level than before.

What about Jesus’ baptism with fire? Isaiah tells us that “He is like a refiner’s fire,” that fire used to burn away impurities in precious metals and leave the gold and silver pure. Jesus’ refiner’s fire purifies us in the same way. It burns away the impurities, our doubts and desires, leaving only the precious gold, our faith, our love for God, for Jesus, for our neighbors (all of them). We do have to undergo this baptism of fire again and again, but step by step it sets us free, free for a life of love and service.

John’s baptism of water opens a door to repentance (rethinking), but Jesus’ baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire opens the very gates of the “kingdom of God.” All of us have already received the baptism of water. Have we received, are we continuing to receive, the baptisms of the Holy Spirit and fire?

Bruce's Notes for the Feast of the Epiphany

One way of analyzing our dreams is to see everyone in the dream as some aspect of ourselves. As one writer expressed it, "We see things not as they are, but as we are." Applying that approach to the Epiphany story in this week's Gospel (Matthew 2:1-12) can give us some valuable insights, about the story and about ourselves.

Herod, and all of Jerusalem, are troubled by the impending birth of Jesus, whereas the magi, the wise ones, are expectant and overjoyed. What about our own inner Herod and inner magi?

In our lives, are there impending changes that are, in reality, full of promise and new opportunity but instead make our inner Herod feel troubled, suspicious, and threatened? I think we can find a number if we take a close look.

On the other hand, can we find a way, through prayer and other inner work, to access our inner magi, our inner wisdom, and greet those changes with the hope and joy that they deserve? This is what God wants from us and for us: that we make ourselves open and ready for the changes He wants to work in our lives.

In this Epiphany season, let us strive to follow every star God sends us that guides us toward the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

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Bruce's Notes for the Feast of the Holy Family

We all know the story (in Luke 2:41-52), of how Mary and Joseph took twelve-year-old Jesus to Jerusalem and then could not find him for three days -- imagine not knowing where your child is for three days! -- only to finally discover him conversing with the elders in the temple. When Mary asked her son, “Why have you done this to us?” Jesus replied, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Luke relates that Mary, the Blessed Mother, “did not understand” what Jesus said to her. At least she did not understand with her head. But, Luke tells us, she “treasured all these things in her heart.” Her heart, that very same heart that wise, elderly Simeon, years before, predicted would be pierced by a sword “so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” For Mary is not just the Blessed Mother of Jesus but of us all. It is the thoughts of our hearts that are revealed through the piercing of Mary’s heart. This profound mystery reveals so much about who Holy Mary really is, and what motherhood really means.

This story also reminds us that our Lord did not come to play act, to pretend to be human. He came to be human and through that to give us an example to follow of becoming human in the highest way, connected with God and God's will. We, of course, cannot be Jesus, but we can certainly try to follow his example in every way we can.
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Bruce's Notes for the Forth Sunday of Advent

In today’s Gospel (Luke 1:39-45), Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, expectant mother of John the Baptist, asks Mary (and, I think, each one of us) an extraordinary question. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she cries out, “And how does it happen to me, that the mother of our Lord should come to me?” I want to focus on two ways of looking at this question.

First, we can notice that Elizabeth is asking, in wonder and great joy, “How can this be? How can something so amazing, wonderful, unexpected, be happening, and to me?!” And that, of course, is a question that can never fail to fill and inspire every one of us. Every time we are struck by the enormity of the gifts that God, the almighty, really gives us, a part of us asks “And how does this happen to me?” And we are filled with gratitude and awe and wonder. (Even if this feeling, this experience, flashes by in an instant, we know we felt something really strong and important!)

Second, we can realize that Elizabeth’s question naturally, necessarily, leads to a second question: “Now that I have experienced the great joy of a visit from the mother of our Lord, what must I do to have her come to me again, and again?” What can we do to invite Our Holy Mother to keep coming to us and aiding us?

One way is to say the Rosary, by ourselves or with others. This prayer practice can really grow on us. We feel ever closer to Our Lady as we repeat our “Hail Mary” prayer, both as a mantra and as a conscious, ever-deepening worship experience. If we let ourselves slow down and really connect with the Rosary, our minds and hearts keep finding new facets and wonders within it, and it begins to become part of how we see ourselves, and reality. Our inner world expands and deepens and changes as Our Lady comes to us more often, and more powerfully, the more we work to strengthen our practice.

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Bruce's Notes for the Third Sunday of Advent

In this week’s Gospel (Luke 3:10-18), John the Baptist says about Jesus: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Taken one way, this sounds rather sinister and frightening: Will I be judged as wheat or chaff when I die, when the Day of Judgment comes? Unquenchable fire?! So, here’s another way to look at this passage.

We are all wheat and chaff, you and I. The wheat is that God-given inner core of my soul, my true and highest self, “me” the way God created me and intended me to be: righteous, loving, happy. The chaff is all my thoughts and deeds, what I have done and what I have failed to do, that only serve to get in my way (and in other people's way as well). In other words, my sins. (Sins is just another way of describing the chaff.) “But what can I do about that?” cries out the sinner in despair.

That’s where the Holy Spirit and fire come in! Isaiah foretold this, as he foretold so many things, describing one of the seraphim touching his lips with a burning coal and purifying him (Isaiah 6:6-7). When I open myself to the Holy Spirit and invite Him in, He touches my soul, burns away my sins (the chaff), and leaves me purified (the wheat). That’s what God wants for me, and for each and every one of us dear, sinful human beings. We are asked to try to be good, but also to let God heal us, purify us, bring us home to His kingdom. Amen, amen!

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Bruce's Notes for the Second Sunday of Advent

To really penetrate this week’s Gospel passage (Luke 3:1-6) we need to find a way to make Isaiah's powerful images our own:
A voice of one crying in the desert,
"Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight his paths.
Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."
Try seeing the passage as a description of something inward, happening in our own souls. Into our inner "desert" of pain and doubt and confusion comes a voice (the prophet’s voice, God’s voice!) instructing us to make our inner way ready, ready for the Lord to come to us. That is the same message Jesus keeps bringing us: get ready, be ready, for the coming of the Lord. And Isaiah promises us that the way will be made ready, all the barriers will be cleared away, so that God the Lord can come to us, change us, save us.
How do we fill in our inner valleys, make low our inner mountains, straighten out our winding inner roads, and smooth out the rough places in our souls? We know the answer, though sometimes we don't like it: prayer, learning to listen to the Holy Spirit...in other words, practice.
But is all that hard work ever worth it! This passage from Isaiah is an exultant cry of triumph: spiritual victory is coming! "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." In other words, we, humanity ("all flesh") will see, will experience being saved, being transformed, being in that deeply desired "kingdom of heaven."

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Bruce's Notes for the First Sunday of Advent

As is often the case, the answer lies in the regular, daily work we do to strengthen our faith practice. Just as we work to keep our physical bodies strong through physical exercise, we should work to strengthen our “spiritual muscles” through regular prayer and reflection. Whenever we can, wherever we are, we can work to keep a part of our minds on Jesus, on God. (We all do this in different ways, but repeating Jesus-centered mantras is one way that some people find effective.) As we make this an ongoing discipline, bit by bit we find we can keep mindful of God a little more each day, until we build this ongoing sense of connection with (and gratitude towards) God. And this keeps us open, ready, for Jesus’ coming, in whatever form and whatever time that is.
This is what God wants for us. Don’t let “the anxieties of daily life” rob you of the joy and love that Jesus offers every time we let him come to us!

In this week’s psalm (Psalm 25), it says, “...for you are God my savior, and for you I wait all the day.” And In the gospel passage from Luke (21:25-28, 34-36), Jesus exhorts his disciples (us): “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from…the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap…..Be vigilant at all times….” So we know that God keeps telling us to be vigilant, be ready, but how can we wait for God “all the day” and “be vigilant at all times"?

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Bruce's Notes for the Feast of Christ the King

Almost all of us have grown up in a democracy. We may complain about “the government,” about elected officials’ decisions or behavior, but basically, we believe in having leaders whom we the people can elect (or unelect). So then, just what do we mean when we say Christ is our “king”?
For many hundreds of years people believed that their kings (and queens and emperors) derived their power from God. Ordinary people like you and me revered their monarchs. Or at least they wanted to revere them; after all, a good king loved, helped, and protected his people, and the people saw the love, help, and protection as coming from God (through their king). But the people also were painfully aware that bad monarchs could be most unloving and unhelpful, even dangerous, and it became ever clearer that there was no way to guarantee that a monarch would turn out to be a “good king” So people in most of the world’s countries slowly but steadily have moved toward systems of governing themselves, through an electoral process.
But Christ is different. Christ IS a good king; he is our good king! He is the One we can count on, each and every time. He never fails us. He is exactly what we want in a ruler: one who not only loves us but also frees us -- often from ourselves -- to live happy, loving lives, with great inner abundance (regardless of our worldly circumstances). He gives himself to us, in the hope that we will give ourselves to him.

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Bruce's Notes for the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

When we read the gospels, it’s important to remember that they’re meant for us. They’re not some old history stories about Jesus teaching other people a long time ago. Jesus always has something to teach us right now about ourselves, in everything he says and does. He wants us to grow in ourselves so as to be prepared, at every moment, to enter the kingdom of Heaven and be united with him. So, in this passage (Mark 12:24-32), where Jesus describes the sun being darkened, the moon not giving its light, the stars falling from the skies, he is showing us signs and asking us to be watchful, to be ready. But ready for what? Here’s one approach:
Jesus has given us a description of the inner changes that our souls need to go through. That is a familiar story in our lives: in stage after stage (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age), we experience the dying of the old world so the new world can be born. Sometimes it feels as if everything is crashing down and falling apart: disappointments, reversals, losses, sorrow, regrets. Jesus’ description is of the greatest change of all: letting everything go so that we can see “the Son of Man coming” and gathering “the elect.” The “elect” is us, if we repent (rethink) and believe in (commit ourselves to) the good news, namely that “Love is lord of heaven and earth,” and if we walk out with this song in our hearts, we are in the kingdom of Heaven right here, right now. And whatever passes away, his words, and God’s love, will not pass away.

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Bruce's Notes for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

Usually, when I hear the story of “The Widow’s Mite,” (in this week’s gospel, Mark 12:41-44), I think about questions of money, gifts, generosity. But today, as I thought about it more and more and tried to look at it with new eyes, I realized that Jesus is also telling us something deep and important about wealth and poverty not of money, but of spirit. And as I thought about the widow in the story and her poverty, something clicked: Jesus is teaching us about poverty of spirit…as in “poor in spirit” from last week’s gospel (The Beatitudes). “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” Yes! Jesus is telling us that the widow’s poverty is what she needs -- and what we need -- to enter the Kingdom of heaven.
So, what is this quality of being poor in spirit and how do we access it in ourselves? It’s like that old story:
A noble who approaches a wise man and says, “Teach me wisdom.” The wise man starts pouring tea into a cup that is already full. The wise man keeps pouring, and the tea overflows the cup. The noble demands an explanation. The wise man says, “When the cup is already full, there is no more room for anything new to enter. First you must empty the cup.”
Through prayer, meditation, fasting, whatever works for each of us, we need to find moments, every day, to empty our cup, to give away all of ourselves, so that in that moment of the deepest poverty, the true wisdom can enter us. And in that moment, the Kingdom of heaven is ours!
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Bruce's Notes for the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Jesus is a great and wise teacher. When he gathers us, his disciples, and teaches us (in Matthew 5:1-12a, the passage we call “The Beatitudes”), he opens our eyes and helps us see others differently -- through the eyes of the Son of Man -- so that we can appreciate them and love them for who they really are: the blessed children of God. (The Greek word for “blessed” also means “happy” and “fortunate.”) In this particular teaching, Jesus leads us through different groups of people often looked down upon or pitied and points out particular characteristics in those groups that, far from being faults or weaknesses, are exactly those qualities needed to receive what God wants to give all His children. (Keep in mind that the Greek word for “blessed” also translates as “happy” or “fortunate.”)
- The poor in spirit are humble and self-effacing, qualities well suited for the Kingdom of heaven.
- Those who mourn have had their hearts pierced by sorrow, opening those hearts for comfort.
- The meek are gentle and patient, just what they need to survive the ongoing storms of politics and conflict. (The meek, the ordinary people like you and me, will inherit the land: we will still be here, living our simple lives the best we can, regardless of who “wins” or “loses” in affairs of state or nation.)
So, here is a two-part exercise for all of us:
1. Look over each of the other Beatitudes and try to explain to yourself how that particular quality leads to that particular blessing
  
  Hunger and thirst for righteousness…will be satisfied
  
  Merciful…will be shown mercy
  
  Clean of heart…will see God
  
  Peacemakers…called children of God
  
  Persecuted for the sake of righteousness…theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
If you feel like it, email me one of your explanations (brucefrishkoff@gmail.com). I’ll choose some of the explanations and share them in future Bruce’s Notes. (Let me know whether you want your name used.)
1. Whenever you meet someone, practice noticing which of these blessed qualities that person has, and find ways -- it doesn’t have to be in words -- to appreciate and treat that person in a new way. (Hint: everybody -- yes, everybody! -- has one or more of these qualities; you just have to look harder sometimes to spot them.)
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Bruce's Notes for the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time

Last week, I asked us to picture ourselves as Bartimaeus the blind man. Now I am asking us to picture ourselves as the scribe in this week’s gospel story.
In Mark 12:28-34, Jesus, in answer to the scribe’s question (our question), says "The first [of all the commandments] is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” We reply by agreeing with Jesus that these commandments are “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices,” and Jesus tells us that we “are not far from the kingdom of God.”
So, why, according to Jesus, are we only “not far from the kingdom of God”? Why are we not IN the kingdom? What more does Jesus want from us? Several weeks ago, the rich man was asked to sell what he had, give to the poor, and follow Jesus. Here also, I think Jesus wants more than our agreement about the commandments. He wants us to look deep within ourselves, at our commitment and practice.
Do I really devote my whole heart and soul and mind and strength to Him? If not, how can I eliminate distractions that get in the way? Do I really love my neighbor as myself? If not, why is getting in the way there?
Jesus is not asking us to be perfect, but he is asking us to be more conscious, more rigorous, not just to speak agreement about the Two Great Commandments but to do our very best to practice loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. “Our very best” is what Jesus wants -- which is good, because that is really all we have to offer Him, and that is good enough.

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Bruce's Notes for the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Because we hear and read the same Gospel passages many times in our years of churchgoing and bible reading, we run the risk of getting stuck in the way we view the passages. Here’s an approach that works particularly well for this week’s familiar story (about Bartimaeus the blind man [Mark 10: 46-52]):
Picture yourself as Bartimaeus. Jesus is passing by. Your faith is strong; you know that Jesus will have mercy* on you So you cry out to him, “Jesus, son, of David, have mercy* on me. And you are so persistent and full of faith in your cry that Jesus does call you to him. And he asks you, “What do you want me to do for you?” What do you answer?
I think it’s best not to focus on physical miracle requests here. Instead, focus on the statement, “Master, I want to ______.”) Do I/you want to: be more loving? resist temptation? not judge so much? not lose our temper so much? not get so troubled or discouraged? Each of us has their own answer; with some thought and prayer, you will come up with your request to Jesus.
Remember that Jesus tells Bartimaeus (us) that “your faith has saved you.” So we are guaranteed that our faith -- with the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit -- will save us, will help us with our own personal change. To paraphrase the end of the Bartimaeus story, we will receive whatever we asked for and follow Jesus on his way. Thanks be to God!

*Our Missal translation reads “Have pity on me,” but the Greek word eleēson really translates better here as mercy, which includes helping the person.

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Bruce's Notes for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time

In today’s gospel story, Jesus tells the disciples (us): “Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve….” We have heard this many times, but what does it really mean to us to serve, to be the servant, the slave, of all, especially when we live in a society that seems to place so much value on winning, being first, getting ahead, not falling behind?
Actually, we know what that is like. We know that something lights up, deep within us, each and every time we serve others. No matter how hard or dirty the task, underneath all our weariness or complaining is this core of liquid gold, this glow, this small, still voice that says “Yes. Yes. Yes!” This is the Christ within each of us, smiling at our labor, our service.
It is really important that we not lose contact with that holy core within us, because a dark, harmful aspect of all the emphasis on winning and being first, being successful, is this nagging voice within us that says “Not good enough,” that reminds us of our “failures” and hardships, that gives us all kinds of “logical” reasons for “justified” discontent. But when that incessantly negative voice succeeds in making us impatient and annoyed at ourselves and others, it is vital that we remember that the voice does not come from God, from the “better angels of our nature” but rather from the Enemy, who calculates that making us self-critical and grouchy will help separate us from God, Who wants nothing more than that we love and serve God and one another.
Don’t let that Enemy into your heart. Tell him “No!” Just continue to serve others in every way you can; that is the door to the kingdom of God, which brings us all that we truly long for in the depths of our souls.

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Bruce's Notes for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

We all know the story of the rich young man who approached Jesus; for many of us, it has probably been a valuable instructive story since we were teenagers or young adults. But I still think it's worth looking at more closely.
The man asked Jesus what he must do "to inherit eternal life." Jesus mentioned five of the Ten Commandments. The man asserted that he had observed all of these since his youth. Listen carefully to what comes next, because this is the part we can easily miss: "Jesus, looking at him, loved him" Only after that did Jesus instruct him to sell his possessions, give to the poor, and then come and follow him (Jesus).
Jesus didn't instruct the man right away. First he loved him. What does that mean? It means that with deep affection and compassion Jesus perceived who the man really was/could be, what was best for him, and what he needed to do to achieve full, eternal life. And with that preparation and deep, loving commitment to the man, Jesus told him what to do. Love came first. Love informed Jesus’ perception and advice (as seems to be always true of Jesus). We know the man went away sad, but you can bet that Jesus’ words made a deep and lasting impression on him for the rest of his life.
The question for us, of course, is: how can we, through love, perceive others’ needs and respond to them? As the old joke goes: practice. Try focusing on the other person with love, with appreciation for what a wondrous creation of God he or she is, and then see what loving advice comes to you. You may find yourself responding in new and wonderful ways. That is what we are called on to do, as Jesus’ disciples: to give our very, very best to each other. (And remember that the Holy Spirit is always there to consult.)

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Bruce's Notes for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

First, let me be clear that this is not a column about divorce or about adultery. It is about marriage. It is about Jesus saying“...a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.” What is the mysterious gift that God has given us through these words and how do we work with it?
Marriage is a form of alchemy, of the transformation of elements into something new and more valuable. (For example, alchemy, as practiced in the Middle Ages, attempted to transform base metals into gold.) So in marriage, these two people, with all their strengths and weaknesses, attractions and aversions, somehow become one, one mysterious alchemical compound. And so, for example, most people see and treat married people not as two but as three: the first person, the second person, AND the couple. When we go to a couple’s house for dinner, we go to “Biil and Janes” or “Susan and Bob’s”. We know that they are individuals, but in our minds they are also one couple. Wonderful and mysterious.
The challenge for every couple, of course, is to sort out the three elements: myself, my spouse, the couple (the “one flesh”) in a way that works. But what does this mean? The great Rabbi Hillel, who lived about 100 years before Jesus and also believed in not just the letter but the spirit of God’s law, gave us this wise and helpful saying: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?" I find this most valuable in applying to the complexities of marriage:
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Well, God, of course! But the point is that I have my own work to do, through faith and practice, to help myself become the best Bruce possible, the person God wants me to be.
“If I am only for myself, what am I?” My spouse -- with whom I have become, through God’s alchemistry, one flesh -- is not only equal to me; he or she is integral to me (meaning I cannot be whole without her or him). To the extent that I am only for myself, I actually become deformed: since through my selfishness and self-occupation I actually injure the marriage, the “one flesh,” and as it becomes deformed, so, too, am I.
“If not now, when?” At every interaction with my spouse, I have another opportunity to strengthen the great mystery we share. If we work on it, separately and together, my spouse and I can learn and practice the art of strengthening ourselves, strengthening each other, and strengthening the being of the marriage. No reason to wait, is there?

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Bruce's Notes for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week we get to hear more from the wonderful letter of James. Often termed the most Jewish book of the New Testament, it is considered by many scholars to be written by Jesus’ brother James, and no wonder, since some passages, such as our second reading for this week, sound as if James heard the words from Jesus himself:
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits…. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.
Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members?...You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
What does James mean about our asking wrongly, “to spend it on your passions”? Addressing this question is important for our understanding of how to pray, and what to pray for.
Jesus has given us two commandments “on which hang all the laws and prophets”: love God, love your neighbor as yourself. We are commanded to keep our focus on these two above all else, under all circumstances. All our intentions, our prayers, and our actions are to be directed not toward feeding our passions, our wants, but toward fulfilling these two commandments; they, and only they, are to be the “laws” governing how we lead our lives.
This means that whenever we meet any other person, we are to do whatever we can to love and share God's love with that person. No exceptions. No matter how someone treats us, or mistreats us, we are to do all we can to love that person--our neighbor--as ourselves. Simple words but, we know, sometimes a challenging, seemingly impossible task. And that's what we need to ask God for: the strength, the patience, the inner peace necessary to show God's love to everyone. That's asking rightly, and that request, if we believe Jesus and James, God will answer, and that help we will receive.
So when we pray to God, let's focus on asking first and foremost for whatever helps us fulfill the Two Great Commandments, and then let Jesus and the Holy Spirit lead us in that holy direction.

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Bruce's Notes for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week’s Gospel passage from Mark confronts us with one of the greatest challenges we face as Christians and as human beings: suffering. Why did Jesus have to suffer? Why do we have to suffer? Isn’t there anything we can do about it? While we try to comfort ourselves with the answers we have been taught over the years, a big part of us still sees suffering as bad, harmful, evil, to be avoided at all costs, because suffering hurts, and great suffering hurts a lot, whether to experience ourselves or have to watch in others.
But Jesus tells us that “the Son of Man must suffer greatly” and “whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” How do we understand this, come to terms with it?
Jesus suffered, at least in part, to show us that suffering, and even death, can be overcome. Let's see how Jesus overcomes his own suffering, and we can overcome ours.
At one point, on the cross, Jesus’ accumulated suffering becomes so great that even He, now in His fullest, most vulnerable humanity, feels abandoned by God. We know what that is like: to be, at some point in our lives, in such pain and distress that we feel abandoned, alone, left with nothing but the pain (be it physical, emotional, or spiritual). Jesus cries out, with all of us in that black hole of despair, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" How terrible!
And then...something happens. It’s like that passage in 1 Kings (19:11-12): after the great wind that rends the mountains and breaks in pieces the very rocks of our lives, after the earthquake and the fire that seem to destroy everything we hold dear, leaving us, we think, with nothing, nothing!...there comes a still small voice. It’s God’s voice, saying “I hear you. I love you. I have never left you. Come to me. Rest in me. I am all you need.”
And that voice, the voice of our God, leads us back from despair, back to trust in God, and our eyes are opened, and we know that nothing can ever come between us and God. And we commend our life, our spirit, our all, to God’s Love and God’s plan. We let go, and let God, and experience peace and hope once again.

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Bruce's Notes for the Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week’s Gospel story is one that touches us every time we hear it or read it, about Jesus healing the man afflicted with deafness and a speech impediment. It is, of course, a moving example of Jesus' power and love and compassion, but it is also, as so many Gospel stories are, a message to us about how to behave as Christians. We are to follow Jesus, to imitate Him. As Jesus does, so should we strive to do. Let us explore what that means.

People beg Jesus to help the afflicted man. So, too, do people beg us all the time to help them. Are we aware? Do we take notice? Do we notice not only the ones who ask with words but also the ones who beg us with a look, or beg us just by being so obviously in need of help-- if we would just look and see?! Do we really look at people when we are with them, or when we pass them in the street, at work, in the supermarket, at home? Do we see their need, their unspoken longing for our healing, our caring?

I know, we know, that this is not an easy task. Even Jesus, when he is healing the deaf man, looks up to heaven and groans. It takes effort to look up and notice, effort to discern what to do or what to say, and then more effort to do it or say it. (It also takes effort to discern what not to do or what not to say.) But the more we practice noticing others’ needs and reaching out to them, the easier and more natural it becomes over time, and the more we then experience that special glow that comes from being Jesus’ disciples and reaching out, for Him, with Him, to heal the world with Love.

There’s a wonderful old John Prine song, “Hello in There,” that eloquently addresses this:

...people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.”

So if you’re walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don’t just pass ‘em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, “Hello in there, hello.”

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Bruce's Notes for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

In this week's Gospel passage (from Mark), Jesus summons the crowd and tells them/us, "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile."

So, two challenging questions. What can we do to keep our hearts clean? And what do we do when, despite our best efforts, our best intentions, evil thoughts and other evils, whether large or small, still come out of us and hurt us and those around us?

We know what to do when we’re in trouble: we ask for help. There are many ways of doing this. We can pray, in whatever ways work for us. We can confide in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. (We do need to make sure when doing this that we listen as well as talk.) We can confess our sins: to God, in communal and private prayer, to a priest, in confession/reconciliation. And we can receive (or assign ourselves) penance.

Penance, when taken seriously and done properly, does cleanse and heal us. But all too often we let our penance become just another thing we do. It’s one thing to recite a certain number of “Hail Mary”s or “Our Fathers”s as just another task on our schedule, and quite another to take the time to really focus our attention, as we slowly, prayerfully offer the words of these two powerful, healing prayers to God.

Mindfulness isn't easy, but it is important.

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Bruce's Notes for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

In his letter to the Ephesians (4:30-32), Saint Paul teaches us, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.”

Try to picture what would happen If we all truly took up such a practice, such an approach to living, in which everyone treats everyone else with only kindness and compassion? Take a little time, go someplace quiet, and picture what such a place, such a way of life would be like. I think such a way of living would lead us right to the kingdom of God, in which we would find what we truly seek: a world of love and joy and peace. And that is what God (and Saint Paul) want from us and for us.
In John’s Gospel (6:47, 51) Jesus tells us some more about what God wants from and for us. Jesus says, "whoever believes has eternal life…; whoever eats this bread will live forever.” So God wants life for us, not death but rather the life that never dies. And how do we get that life? Through believing/trusting in Jesus and his love-centered approach to living (love God, love your neighbor).

Through eating “this bread,” taking Jesus into ourselves, forming a union with Jesus, following his path. And where does that lead us? Once again to the kingdom of God, to heaven on earth. To Life.
Yes, as Jews say, “L’chaim!” (to Life!)

This week’s Epistle and Gospel reading raise and address two profound questions often on our minds and on our hearts: What does God want from us? And what does God want for us?

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Bruce's Notes for the Feast of the Assumption

So many times we have heard those stirring words at the beginning of Mary’s Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” But what do these words have to do with us?

Let us be clear that Mary is not proclaiming just for herself when she says these words; she is proclaiming for all of us, giving all of us a mighty call to faith. And it is not just that her spirit is rejoicing in God; it is a call for our spirits to do the same. In her words, as in her actions, Mary is opening a door for each and every one of us, a wondrous door that leads to a transformed life of joy and love and power in the service of the Lord.

How do we experience the greatness of God? Do we give ourselves time (in the morning, in the evening, during the day) to open to the myriad wonders around us? We can do this important inner work while praying or sitting quietly or taking a walk, driving a car, doing our chores. God’s greatness is around us everywhere...and, of course, is in us, too! And we can, with practice, find our own ways of letting our souls proclaim God’s greatness, whether through spoken prayer or singing or silent adoration. But we do need to allow ourselves the time and space to do the experiencing and the proclaiming.

Mary cries out, “My spirit rejoices in God my savior.” St. Paul reminds us to “rejoice always!” As a friend recently corrected me, we are not being asked to experience joy every minute; we are being called to be active, to engage in the act of rejoicing, of celebrating and delighting in the God who saves us.

We have a great God, who saves us from what sometimes feels like a painful, frustrating life in a broken and bewildering world, who offers us instead a life of service to God and neighbor that pays us back big time. It is a life of loving and being loved, being forgiven and forgiving, comforting and being comforted, a life in the eternal kingdom of God, doing what good works we⁷7 can and being always loved, forgiven, lifted up. And that is worth rejoicing, always!

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Bruce's Notes for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week’s Epistle and Gospel reading raise and address two profound questions often on our minds and on our hearts: What does God want from us? And what does God want for us?

In his letter to the Ephesians (4:30-32), Saint Paul teaches us, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.”

Try to picture what would happen If we all truly took up such a practice, such an approach to living, in which everyone treats everyone else with only kindness and compassion?
Take a little time, go someplace quiet, and picture what such a place, such a way of life would be like. I think such a way of living would lead us right to the kingdom of God, in which we would find what we truly seek: a world of love and joy and peace. And that is what God (and Saint Paul) want from us and for us.

In John’s Gospel (6:47, 51) Jesus tells us some more about what God wants from and for us. Jesus says, "whoever believes has eternal life…; whoever eats this bread will live forever.” So God wants life for us, not death but rather the life that never dies. And how do we get that life? Through believing/trusting in Jesus and his love-centered approach to living (love God, love your neighbor).

Through eating “this bread,” taking Jesus into ourselves, forming a union with Jesus, following his path. And where does that lead us? Once again to the kingdom of God, to heaven on earth. To Life.
Yes, as Jews say, “L’chaim!” (to Life!)

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Bruce's Notes for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week Saint Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, has a lot to teach us about how to put our old, burdensome lives aside and live the new, spirit-filled lives that God offers us and wants for us.

St. Paul talks about the “futility” of our minds, “corrupted through deceitful desires.” We know what he means, to be pulled this way and that by longings, frustrations, regrets, resentments, all those snares of the devil that bind us and cause pain to us and those around us. St. Paul offers us a better way: “be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way of righteousness and holiness of truth.”

So, we need to put aside our old selves and put on our new selves in Christ. But how do we do that? Actually, we know how: through prayer, through asking the Holy Spirit for help -- which He is always ready to give -- and allowing the joy and wonder of this life God has given us to come to the fore, displacing those temptations (“the world, the flesh, and the devil”) that Jesus had to face in the desert and we have to face daily in our modern, often complicated lives. We can do it; we must do it, if we are to be able to love God and our neighbor the way we are commanded and invited to do.

A phrase from this week’s Gospel reading is also helpful in putting aside that old self and putting on the new one. Jesus says that “whoever believes in me will never thirst.” The Greek word used for “believes” here is pistis, which really means to trust, to put faith in. “Let go,” says Jesus. “Trust me.” And as we have learned so many times -- and have forgotten so many times! -- when we “let go and let God,” our lives are renewed and transformed. Amen.

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Bruce's Notes for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week’s Gospel describes Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 (after his Sermon on the Mount). As always with the Gospels, the question for us is not just what Jesus does but what it means for us, his disciples: what we are to believe and what we are to do.

So, we read about Jesus performing another miracle, and we think, “Well, that's wonderful, but that’s because he is the Son of God, with all that power; what does that have to do with me?” If that is all we say, we miss something essential, namely, that we, too, are all called upon to do miracles.

“Who, me?” we say. “I can’t do miracles!” But that is incorrect, and we miss the point. Look at all the little miracles that happen in our parish every day! People extending themselves, often beyond what one might think are their natural limits, just to help others. Think about it: the number of fellow parishioners who reach out to their neighbors in need, bringing them food, communion, companionship. (If you have ever been in the hospital or incapacitated at home and had one of these “miracle workers” visit you, you know what I mean!) The number of parishioners, many well-established senior citizens, who spend long hours, summer and winter, laboring to keep the church and grounds cared for and beautiful, who serve at Mass, who continue their offertory even when they can’t attend church. All those who go that extra mile, just good, caring Christians, who again and again perform the many small miracles that make our parish a special place, a blessed place.

And why do we do all this? Because, like Jesus, our hearts are moved with pity for those in need; our hearts are filled with faith and with love, for our parish family and for our church, which is our spiritual home away from home. And so the little miracles keep coming, keep multiplying. Amen to that!

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Bruce's Notes for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week's gospel passage tells us a familiar, and instructive, story about the importance -- and challenges -- of loving your neighbor as yourself.

The disciples return from their various missions, and Jesus can see that they and he desperately need some rest and recuperation time, but when he takes them away on retreat, they find, instead of solitude and rest, all these people wanting, needing, asking for their help. How many of us have often found ourselves in this situation, torn between our own very real needs and the needs of others? How do we balance these needs? What do we do?

The gospel story says that Jesus’ heart is “moved with pity” for those who have come to him for help. His pity moved his heart! We can picture him: sighing, taking a deep breath, girding up his loins, and, fortified with his pity and God’s help, plunging back into his ministry work.

As it is with Jesus, so with his disciples, ourselves included: This is what we do: we let our own hearts be moved with pity for those who need our help. We take our own deep breath, ask for God’s help, and then continue ministering to the needs of others (while, of course, doing our best to minister to our own needs as well). It is our pity and compassion that are the key. They are what connect us to God, to the Holy Spirit, from which we can draw the necessary strength to do the work. Amen.

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Bruce's Notes for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Last week, I mentioned that Jesus not being honored in his home town demonstrated the importance of putting aside prejudices, all of which are based on experiences in the past, in order to be open to what is happening in the present. This week's gospel has a related message.

When Jesus sends out his disciples, he tells them (us), "Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave." In other words, be here now, to the situation you are in, attending to what is currently needed, not dwelling on the past or future but in the now. “Take nothing for the journey”: just go step by step, being faithful and present and meeting whatever arises.

And if you should find yourself in a “no-win” situation (where, for example, people will not welcome you or listen to you), only then leave that situation, shaking the dust off your feet (shaking that bad situation into the past), so that you can be truly present for what comes towards you next.

Again and again Jesus urges us to live in the present and not worry about the past or the future. That is part of what he teaches us about keeping the faith: be fully in whatever situation you are in, with God’s help doing your very best, focusing only on being the most loving, most helpful person you can be in each and every situation. Leave the past in the past and deal with whatever is in the future only when it actually takes shape in the present.

This approach to life will greatly reduce our fears and regrets and anxieties and so leave us as free as possible to live in and deal with the “now” and so be untroubled, caring, effective disciples of Christ.

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Bruce's Notes for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This week, we read about Jesus returning to his hometown, only to discover that the neighbors he grew up with are offended by his words and deeds, a sharp contrast with the reception he has received in other towns. Jesus says, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.”

Why should a prophet not be honored in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house? I think this has to do with living in the past rather than the present. All of our prejudices, positive or negative, come from the past. We are taught what is right and wrong, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, from the time we are very little. Unconsciously, we form all kinds of judgments and then project those judgments onto the people and situations we meet in the present.

When a prophet goes to a place where people have not known him, those people will likely judge him by the impression he makes on them, by his words and deeds, in that moment. Those people do not have a whole set of memories and opinions and preconceptions about him to influence the way that they hear what he says. In his hometown, the opposite applies. (“Familiarity breeds contempt,” the old expression goes.”)

Our challenge as striving Christians is to try to treat all those we meet as new creations, to see them with new eyes and listen to them with open ears, not clouded and distorted by old prejudices. That is an essential part of really loving our neighbor as ourselves.

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Bruce's Notes for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time

There is probably nothing in our human experience that attracts our attention and our thoughts quite like death. The theme of this week's first reading (from the Book of Wisdom) and gospel passage is one that never fails to affect us deeply, namely faith in the face of death.

These two passages raise vital questions. How do we make sense of God’s role (or lack of role) in death or of Jesus’ triumphs over death? What does it all mean, and what does it mean for us?

The passage from the Book of Wisdom (which was written within a hundred years of Jesus’ time) tells us:
“God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being…. For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”
So we are imperishable. We are eternal. Death has no real power over us if we, with the help of the Holy Spirit, refuse to “belong to his [the devil’s] company”; in other words, refuse to believe in the devil’s lies. For those of us who do refuse, who belong to God’s company (“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”), we will not experience death as do those in the devil’s company. For death has no real meaning for those who believe that Jesus triumphed over death (by being true to God’s infinite Wisdom and Love and not accepting the devil’s lies).

Perhaps no one has written better about the victory of life over death (of Christ over death, of us over death) than poet John Donne almost 400 years ago. (It’s a little poetical in language, but the beginning four lines and the last two lines pretty much say it all):

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

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Bruce's Notes for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time

“We regard no one according to the flesh.” We live our lives so much in the physical: what we look like, how our bodies feel, a world of sight and hearing, of taste and smell and touch, of pain and pleasure. Yet, Paul tells us, in the new age, the age of Christ, we are new creations in Christ. "New things are come."

From now on, Paul teaches, we are to regard ourselves and each other not through the physical but through the spiritual. We are to use not physical sight but Christ sight, inner sight, shared with us by the Holy Spirit. And through that Christ sight, we can see that the truth, the real truth, God's truth, which is that really we all are loved, we all are forgiven, we all are asked only to love God and neighbor in every way possible, and to rejoice always.

Paul's words follow so wonderfully and logically on what we have just experienced at Pentecost and Corpus Christi. The coming of the Holy Spirit. The mystical Body and Blood of Christ. And now: “the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." It is a trumpet that calls us, invites us to reach beyond our individual physical lives to connected lives of glory in Christ.

Let us stride forward confidently, then, and with God's help, live as the new creations we are called to be!

In this week's second reading (2 Corinthians 5:14-17), Paul tells us, "Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh.... whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." What a lot to unpack: a whole new way of looking at body and spirit and at our lives!

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Bruce's Notes for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Here is one of the parables Jesus tells in this week’s gospel:
This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.

There are, of course, several important questions here. Who is the man? What is the seed? What does it all mean? Here is one approach: God has planted in my soul the spirit, the word of God. Night and day this spirit sprouts and grows and yields fruit, we know not how, in the course of our lives. It ripens to fullness and God harvests this ripened word, this ripened spirit. And what is the harvest? Some people see that as death, as God wielding a sickle, ending our earthly lives and bringing us to an accounting.

But I want to suggest another approach. Just as on a farm the seed is planted, ripens, is harvested, and then the process begins again with the new planting of the seed, so it is with our spiritual lives. A seed of spirit, of hope, of love, is planted in us by God’s grace, perhaps by some other person’s act of love or kindness, and that seed grows and ripens until we harvest it, as joy and love -- at which point we are in (at one with) the kingdom of God. This planting-to-harvest process has no set length; it can happen in an instant (as it did with St. Paul, for example), a day, over the course of a lifetime.

For many of us, we go through this cycle again and again. We plant our seeds of love and joy out in the world, (into other people’s “soul-soil,” to coin a phrase), and those seeds grow and become ripe and are harvested, and then those people plant their seeds of love in new people, and so on. We disciples are “soulfarmers,” spreading out all over the world, planting the seed of spirit, the word, love, and joy in others, one by one, working and hoping for the day that the joyful harvest will include everybody.

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Bruce's Notes for Corpus Christi

In the Mass, when the priest elevates the paten and chalice, the bread and wine, you can almost feel people hold their breath. It is so extraordinary, so strange and wonderful! Why is that? It’s not just that we have been taught about consecration and transubstantiation since we were children; it is that in that moment, at the core of our being, there is an awareness that we are in the presence of something deep, mysterious, fundamental, something that can and does transform our very lives.

Throughout his life, his ministry, his death, his resurrection, and beyond. Jesus taught us and showed us the importance and the power of spirit. Just as in the wilderness he rebuked the devil’s physical challenges and temptations with spiritual answers, he demonstrated, again and again, that the spirit can overcome the mere physical. He has helped us disciples see more clearly that we are spiritual beings, not just physical bodies, and he has shown us the extent of the power of God and His Spirit by defeating even physical death. He has helped us see that through following, believing in, and really taking Christ into our own being, we can be and do so much more than just these physical bodies could ever be and do on their own.

This is the new covenant: the physical united with and transformed by spirit to become so much more than we could ever perceive with our physical eyes: transformed into that which redeems and regenerates (breathes new life into) the world. As we focus in our prayer lives on that most holy union, the effect on us grows and multiplies. Our spiritual vision perceives this re-union of spirit and body, of heaven and earth. We hold our breaths in wonder and joy -- while in our hearts we shout “Hallelujah!” And then we go out and let our Christian joy and love help redeem the world some more.

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Bruce's Notes for Holy Trinity Sunday

First we have God the Father, the Creator of this vast, marvelous, incomprehensible Creation, which consists of all that exists, including all that we perceive (and all that we do not yet perceive). For this incomparable gift, our hearts, souls, and minds cry out in love and joy and gratitude.

Second, we have the Son. I think we need to keep trying to our understanding of who Jesus is to us, so that we may love him properly. For example, we know that he is God's only begotten son, but what does that mean? Well, many of us remember that as children, we giggled when we read or heard about all the "begats” in Genesis 5: how Seth begat Enos, and Enos begat Cainan, and Cainan begat Mehalaleel, and so on. “Begat" is just an old-fashioned word for fathering a child with/through a woman... which is what God does with/through Mary. So besides loving Jesus as our savior, our teacher, our friend, our Lord, we can also remember to love him as our brother.

Third, we have the Holy Spirit. And how are we to love Him, the Teacher, the Advocate, the one who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who was sent to us, given to us as the Spirit of Truth, to support and advise and comfort us? Let me suggest that the best way to love the Holy Spirit is to listen to Him (as God told the crowd at Jesus's baptism to do with Jesus). The Holy Spirit calls to us, always. We just need to open our ears and listen, and allow him -- ask him -- to guide us!

As we practice, on a regular basis, loving the Three-in-One, as Three and also as One, with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our minds, we fulfill the first of Jesus's two great commandments. And, of course, this leads us, naturally and inescapably, to his second commandment: to love our neighbor (one another). As Jesus tells us, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

We are asked to love God with all our hearts, our souls, and our minds. So let us explore how we go about understanding and loving God the Holy Trinity.

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Bruce's Notes for Pentecost Sunday

In one of this week’s gospel readings for Pentecost (from John 15 and 16), Jesus tells the disciples (translated directly from the Greek): “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes forth from the Father, he will bear witness concerning me. Also you will bear witness, because you are with me from the beginning… And He will glorify me.”

This Helper, this Advocate, this Holy Spirit: of God, from God, there from the beginning but also given to us and commended to us in a special way by Jesus. The Holy Spirit bears witness about Jesus: about his truth telling, about his compassion, about his ministry and his willingness to offer all his life for the sake of the world he loved. And in bearing that witness, the Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus, gives glory to God.
We, Jesus tells us, are also to bear that witness. We are also to give glory to God. But how are we to do that? Certainly not just by words, but also in what we do, in the lives we lead. And when that gets to feeling hard to do -- “When you’re down and worried and you need a helping hand, and nothing, nothing is going right,” as the old song says -- we have the ever-present Helper, the Holy Spirit, to guide and support us. Whenever we are feeling unsure, worried, afraid, alone, He is always there, the Spirit of truth, always ready to remind us that God made us loved and loving. All we need to do is love and allow ourselves to be loved. That is all we are called to do, our only task: to give and receive love, all our lives...and beyond. That is how we bear witness to Jesus and give glory to God.

Pentecost, the Holy Spirit. What a gift!

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Bruce's Notes for the 7th Sunday of Easter

Jesus gives us more of an explanation when he says to God the Father, “I do not ask that you take them out of the word but that you keep them from the evil one.” Remember that when the evil one tempts Jesus in the desert with promises of power in “the world,” Jesus responds with what is greater than worldly things: God’s word, God’s truth. That is what the evil one does: tempt us and plague us and try to convince us that the physical, spiritless world is all there is all that there is. But as disciples of Christ, as striving Christians, we know better.

Jesus contrasts “the world” with “the truth.” He says, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Caesar -- in any form, whether King or President or Chairman or Supreme Leader -- may be on the coin, may be leader of “the world,” but God is leader of the truth, of what is most powerful, most important, most real. As God says to Job, “‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?...Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” That is real power, God’s power!

And so Jesus, talking about us, his disciples whom he dearly loves, asks God to “consecrate them [us in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them [us] into the world” (Remember that Jesus is the Word of God, sent into the world.) So, then, that is the message for us! That is the mission we are given! We, consecrated in the Truth, in God’s Word, in Jesus, are not of this world, not somehow caught in it and subject to its many vagaries, but rather sent into it to make it more truthful, more loving, more joyful. (“...that they may share my joy completely.”) Step by step, kindness by kindness, we work, with God’s help, to heal the world. Amen.

In this week’s gospel passage (from John 17:11), Jesus, while addressing God the Father, teaches us about Christian discipleship and “the world.” He says, “They [we] do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” If that doesn’t shake up our normal way of thinking, nothing will. Don’t we live in “the world”? Isn’t everything we see around us “the world”? So what can Jesus mean when he says we, as Christians, as disciples of Christ, do not belong to it?

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Bruce's Notes for the 6th Sunday of Easter

If I had to choose one gospel reading to explain to someone the appeal of our Christian faith and practice, I might well pick this week’s gospel reading (John 15:9-17). It is Jesus’s extraordinary, life-altering explanation of Christian love, packed full with power and meaning.
Here is what Jesus tells his disciples (which, remember, always includes us):
1. “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” THAT’S how much Jesus loves us, with the same divine, immeasurable love that God loves him. That’s a lot of love!!
2. “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.” (Just as, Jesus explains, he remains in his Father’s love by keeping His commandments.)
3. “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” So, if we keep Jesus’s commandments, his joy will be in us, and it will not be partial joy but complete joy. (Remember how St. Paul tells us to rejoice always? This explains why rejoicing always is possible: no matter what the outer circumstance, Jesus’s complete, divine joy, in God, in creation -- in everything! -- is always in us and available to us.)
4. “Love one another as I love you.” In other words, completely, without limit. (“Love one another” is so important to Jesus that he commands it twice in this short passage.)
5. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” When Jesus talks about laying down one’s life (psuche in Greek), he means inner (or soul) life. There is no greater love than to offer all we have -- our inner selves, our real, true selves -- to one another as completely and wholeheartedly as we can.
6. “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.” In other words, if we ask God the Father, in Jesus’s name, to help us love one another, God will give that ability, that power, to us.
Picture a world in which, with God’s help, we all go around treating each other in such a loving way. “And I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world!’ ”

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Bruce's Notes for the 5th Sunday of Easter

In this week’s gospel, Jesus says, “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” What do we think Jesus means by that? What does it mean to remain in Jesus? What does it mean to be without him? .

“What Would Jesus Do?” has become a common expression in American popular culture. But I think many of us Christians also find it a really valuable question to consider when trying to make difficult moral/ethical decisions, and I think it does help us explore what Jesus is talking about in this passage. However, the challenge often is: how do we apply the question to any given situation? How do we know what Jesus would do? How do we know how to follow him?

Through reading and studying the gospels, we can gain new insights about Jesus' actions and words and the principles and themes behind them, and that can help tremendously as we try to live good Christian lives. But I think to “remain in” Jesus, to be with him and not “without him,” we need to go further. I think we also need to build into our daily routine times to be really quiet, to let Jesus enter into us and to enter into him, to focus on nothing but his joy (in the Father and in us), and to let that joy and love permeate our being so that following him and imitating him, by sharing his joy and love with others, becomes bit by bit an natural part of ourselves.

We can do this, if we make it a part of our daily practice. We each have a way that works for us. For some of us, it’s saying a particular prayer. For others, it’s focusing on a particular revered image or object. Watching the stream go by, or the clouds. Closing our eyes. Meditating. Whatever it is, we all find ways to let the world fade into the background and let Jesus come to the foreground.

It’s a matter of deciding that we will do this, that being without Jesus is just too painful. When Jesus talks about throwing the unfruitful branches in the fire, we all know what he means. We have all felt the burning pain of feeling lost, without Jesus, without defense against a world that can feel cruel and unfair and just too much to bear. That’s not what we want, and not what Jesus wants for us. He wants us to remain in him and bear much fruit. We just have to do our part to help make that happen.

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Bruce's Notes for the 4th Sunday of Easter

In this week’s gospel, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” Now we know that Jesus calls us to be his disciples, to follow his path, his way. (“I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.”) So, then, Jesus is calling us to be good shepherds, too, imitating him, following his example. We need to understand this calling, since it has great import for us and for how we live our lives as Christians.

First of all, who are my sheep? Jesus tells us that “there will be one flock,” by which he means, of course, everyone, all of humankind. That is his flock, and so, too, that is my flock, and yours. It is simply another way of saying "love your neighbor as yourself." Not some neighbors, but every neighbor, each and every member of humankind: the one flock.

And what do we need to do to be good shepherds? Jesus tells us: “I will lay down my life for the sheep.” He calls you, me, indeed each and every one of us, to lay down our lives for each and every other one. But what does that mean, to lay down my life?

This is easily misunderstood, and can be a source of unnecessary confusion, doubt, and guilt, until we discover that the Greek word for life (psuche) used in this particular gospel passage means soul-life, not physiological life. Jesus is not asking us to physically die for each other. (Though in rare, extreme situations that is what our loving each other with all our hearts, minds, and souls may actually lead us to.) What Jesus is asking is that we lay down (offer) our soul-lives to each other, that we set aside our preoccupation with ourselves and offer our interest, our concern, our compassion, our love, to other people, in fact, to every other person in our human flock. You meet an old friend; you offer your love. You meet a beggar in the street; you offer your love. You meet someone angry, you offer your love. Not just the good sheep, the easy sheep, but all the sheep.

And when we do lay down our life, as Jesus does, “in order to take it up again,” the life we take up again is enriched many times over. Offering love freely to others not only enriches others’ lives, it also greatly enriches our own. Each time, we have a little bit more love, a little richer soul-life, to offer, and take up again, and offer again, in an endless dance of love.

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Bruce's Notes for the 3rd Sunday of Easter

In this weekend’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples (us included) that “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins” will be preached in his name to all the nations. Remember that “repentance” literally means "rethinking," so Jesus is telling us that rethinking, reordering our minds, is the straight gate, the narrow way, to forgiveness of sins.

So what are those sins to be forgiven? Well, what are Jesus’s commandments? There are two: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, to sin is not loving God or loving your neighbor as yourself, in each and every particular moment in our lives. Yes, we have to ask the Holy Spirit to help us know just what loving our neighbor means in any given situation, but remember that “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

However, also remember that when we do forget, when we do slip, when we do sin-- as each of us does so many times in the course of a single day -- we have, as John tells us, “Jesus Christ the righteous one,” who is expiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world. What does that mean?

When we repent (rethink) and open ourselves to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit, then our sins are expiated; they're just gone. We come back into Atonement (at-one-ment) with the love of God in the very moment (in every moment) that we do keep His Commandments, in thought, word, and deed. In that moment the love of God is perfected.

Can life really be this simple, that all we have to do is rethink, love God and love our neighbor (each and every one)? That's it?! Well, if you believe Jesus -- always a good idea, I would suggest! -- yes, that's it! So let us go forth, leading joyful and loving lives, knowing that since He has redeemed the world, we should do the same. Amen

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Bruce's Notes for the 2nd Sunday of Easter

Over the years, the story of “Doubting Thomas” has grown on me. It is really a lovely, instructive tale of how a person can grow in faith and discipleship.

Remember that when Jesus announces that he is going to return to Judea to wake Lazarus, the disciples urge him not to go, since the people there have already tried to stone him once. But Thomas says, “Let us also go and die with him.” What a brave and loyal thing to say! He may have trouble taking things on faith, but he is willing to give up his life in support of Jesus his Lord.

When the disciples tell Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” Thomas expresses his doubt in those famous lines, “Until I see the marks of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Hence the nickname “Doubting Thomas.” But why is Thomas doubting? Why does he not believe?

When Thomas does finally see Jesus, he has not trouble saying, “My Lord and my God.” Pretty strong belief, I would say. And Jesus chides him,”Have you come to believe because you have seen me?” But the other disciples, too, believed only after they had seen Jesus. So what is Jesus chiding Thomas for? What is Jesus’ point?

Jesus is not childing Thomas for doubting the word of the others; he is chiding him for something else. Jesus told them at that last supper that after he was raised up, he would go before them to Galilee. For the other disciples, it was different: Jesus just appeared before them; they didn't have an opportunity to do anything but believe. But Thomas not only doubted their testimony. He didn’t give himself time to pray. He didn’t give himself time to remember what he did know about his Lord, which had led him to be willing to die at his Lord’s side. He didn’t give himself time to be open to the fearsome and wonderful news that his Lord had returned from death to be with them again, just as he had promised.

That is what Jesus means by “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” It is not just Thomas he is addressing but rather all of us. All of us who have not physically seen Jesus -- which is pretty much all of us! -- need to take the time, whenever we can, to pray, to consider, to be open to the Good News that the Holy Spirit is always ready to bring us. That is what strengthens our faith and helps us believe. This is what Jesus has called us to. And, he tells us that if we do that, we are blessed!

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Bruce's Notes for Easter Sunday

Last week, looking at Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, I said that I need to “confront, love, and forgive” my “inner Judas.” (That is the part of me that distrusts the efforts of my true, higher Self because it cannot believe that all we are asked to do is to trust God, love all our neighbors, and be joyfully open to God’s will.)

But because that Judas part does betray me, just when I need encouragement and reassurance the most, I am thrown into a prison of my own making, condemning and ridiculing myself for all my imagined failures and errors in judgment. The pain is excruciating, a kind of inner crucifixion. I struggle on my cross of anguish and self-doubt, getting weaker and weaker...until finally -- finally! -- I let go and give it all up to God, to the Holy Spirit. “It is finished,” I say. I can’t fight any more; it’s all in God’s hands now.

And what happens next? God’s Love comes and finds me, rolls away the stone, raises me from my tomb, makes me whole and new again. God lets me know that He never abandons me, no matter how many times I put myself through this cycle of self betrayal and self torment. And each time it gets just a tiny bit quicker and easier to confront, love, and forgive my inner Judas and return to a state of grace in the kingdom of God (which, of course, in God’s eyes I never left).

So, at this, the start of the Easter season, we see again how Love confronts and overcomes all, even death, transforming us and setting us free to love others and renew the face of the earth. Happy Easter!

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Bruce's Notes for Passion Sunday

As I read and re-read the Passion story in Mark’s gospel, I realize that Jesus’s journey from the supper table at Simon the leper’s through his arrest at the Mount of Olives really reflects my own inner spiritual journey (and struggle), one that I have taken many times in my life.

So, picture me (or yourself, if you prefer): in a moment of peace. I, my higher self, am loving God, loving my neighbor, and rejoicing at God’s goodness. And a part of me (a soft, tender, feeling part) wants to celebrate. But another part (a zealous, rigid, judgmental part) bitterly objects. My higher self understands that we will always have the poor whom we must try to help but that if we do not also tend to and anoint our inner Christ, God’s Love within us, something in us will dry up and be gone. ( “If I give all I have to feed the poor but have not Love, I gain nothing.”)

But my inner Judas loses trust and becomes bitter, finally even hating that higher self that lives to join this “world of woe” with the “kingdom of heaven.” That inner, judgmental zealot at last seeks to destroy the inner Jesus, even though in doing so it will destroy itself. I need to confront, love, and forgive that inner Judas, again and again, in order to become the kind of person, the kind of Christian, that God wants me to be.

Next week, on Easter, we see in John’s gospel how Love confronts and overcomes all, even death, transforming our world and setting us free.

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Bruce's Notes for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

So, this is how the raising of Lazarus plays itself out in my life. Perhaps it applies to yours as well.

I am ill. And the Mary and Martha parts of my nature (the practical-and-loving/head-and-heart parts) reach out to Jesus (my Master who loves me) and ask for help and healing. Jesus gives assurances that this illness will not end in death, and then waits for the right moment to act in the way that will most reveal (to me) the true glory of God. (Notice the similarities to Job, who winds up worshiping and praising the Lord out of the very depths of his suffering.)

But, despite all that my head and heart try to do to pull me out of my soul illness, I grow worse, sicker in my soul, which is becoming darker and colder and empty of life. And slowly but surely I feel myself pulled into the depths of inner darkness, no ray of light able to shine into my dark, cold tomb of doubt and despair and desolation. Inwardly I have died, and the soul stench is palpable to all.

And then, Jesus comes. I hear him call me by name. He is calling me back to life. I stagger out, still tied with my inner burial bands, my soul’s death garments, that have been holding me in bondage: in fear and guilt and all my other dark feelings and thoughts.

When Jesus says, “Untie him and let him go,” in my life story Jesus is telling this to my inner demons (the same way he told the demon to leave the possessed man in the synagogue [in Mark 1:21-28]). And as I emerge from the darkness into the light, I see with new eyes! This is glorious! I see that this life, this real life, with Jesus, will never die, cannot die. I am born again in my belief, and my love and my joy. Jesus has set me free, again!

I know my inner demons will attack again, and yet again, and try to drag me down, but I also know that Jesus will always answer and will never let me die, if I only call out to him, “Master, the one you love is ill.”

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Bruce's Notes for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

“One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.” These words, spoken by the blind man in this week’s gospel, are full of meaning and import; they, and the whole story of the healing of the blind man, can be an ongoing source of inspiration.

This blind man is a wonderful model for us in terms of Christian behavior and spiritual growth. He is modest and honest, and he reacts and behaves appropriately. At first he answers simply, and solely when asked, and he doesn't give his opinion unless called on to do so. It is only after being provoked -- asked by the Pharisees to repeat exactly what he has told them already (as if they still don’t believe him or trust him after all their investigating) -- that he becomes impatient and indignant and begins to challenge and question his questioners (even though they are, remember, the authorities).

And as he engages with these powerful, learned men in the temple (most likely for the first time in his life), we watch him begin to grow into this new person: a man increasingly sure of what he has seen (in more ways than one!) and what he knows. By the end of the story, he has become a believer, a Christian, a disciple! He has truly "seen."

This man has gone from being blind to: 1.seeing physically 2.seeing with his mind 3.seeing with his heart. The Pharisees, by contrast, can see only physically and, to some degree, with their minds. (After all, they are good at learning and disputing points of Jewish law.) But they don’t have the sight that Jesus gives, that he gave the blind man: the ability to see on a deeper level, and so to believe. That is the sight Jesus offers each of us, now and always.

“I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” I love these words from “Amazing Grace” (for me one of the most beautiful and important songs of our Christian faith). As I stay open to Jesus’ teaching and healing, may I come to see on more and more levels.

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Bruce's Notes for the Third Sunday of Lent

In a recent homily, Father Mali reminded us that before we can change the world's evil, we must confront the evil in ourselves. So here is how I look at this week's gospel from that perspective.

Inspired by Jesus’s example, I scrutinize and confront everything I find in the Temple of the Spirit (my body) that gets in the way of the Holy Spirit. (What better time than Lent for a deep and thorough scrutiny?) I lash out, seeking to drive out my selfishness and greed, my carelessness, those corrupt areas in me where I cut corners and treat others, my neighbors -- even the earth itself -- with anything other than love, respect, appreciation, and kindness. It is hard work, but I persist with zeal.

And then, in alarmed and indignant reaction, that part of me that is not born again in the Spirit, the self-centered part that insists that I remain obedient to the “real world” and all its rigid, ”’practical” laws of self interest, demands that I provide a sign, a justification, for what I am doing.

And so I answer with what Jesus has taught me and the Holy Spirit confirms, day by day, moment by moment:
- That while this mortal body will be destroyed, it will be transformed into an immortal body.
- That I, my true Self, cannot die but rather will be raised up.
- That death, “the last enemy,” as Saint Paul calls it, is overthrown.
- And that you and I -- all of us -- are set free the moment we believe.
Amen!

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Bruce's Notes for the Second Sunday of Lent

This week’s Transfiguration gospel, while thrilling and inspiring, also raises some profound questions about our ability -- and inability -- to see.

When Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John, they become so agitated, so terrified that Jesus “hardly knew what to say.” God had to send a cloud to overshadow them and calm and subdue their inner turbulence (as Jesus calmed and subdued the turbulent sea for those same terrified fishermen).

But what is this story really saying about God and us? When we see the real Jesus, the true Self, not just in our inner vision but also in another person -- every other person! -- and in ourselves, it is startling, transfiguring, and terrifying, too. We are so used to walking through life with our eyes clouded over, not by God but by anxiety, worry, fear, prejudice, that to see others as they really are in God’s eyes can be shocking, blinding. If we really let ourselves see the glory that is God and the glory that is the Beloved Son (the true Self), we would be dazzled, and we would be terrified, and maybe, just maybe, we would let ourselves listen to the Beloved Son and see ourselves as transfigured, as the beautiful butterflies God sees in each of us all the time.

And here is a sign of some small progress revealed in the story: when Jesus charges the three disciples not to relate what they have seen, they do obey him -- a big step up from the cured leper who, not heeding Jesus’s command, spread the news all over town. So the disciples’ obedience to Jesus’s charge demonstrates the slow, hardwon progress we all can make through diligence and perseverance: to move, step by step, away from being willful and disobedient to the Holy Spirit to heeding that transfiguring advice a bit more all the time. Small progress but good progress...a pilgrim’s progress.

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Bruce's Notes for the First Sunday of Lent

So, applying a personalized approach to this Sunday’s short but profound gospel story, I come to this:

The Holy Spirit drives me into the desert. But this is a desert in my soul, an inner desert of my own making. Trapped in my inner desert, I am tempted by my lower self, with all its hunger and cleverness. There I am, among all the wild beasts of my lower nature, and the “better angels” of my higher nature minister to me.

Which of us has not been there? Caught in our personal desert, dry and lifeless, where our personal Satan, our personal master of lies, tempts us, tricks us, mocks us, tries to pull us down and make us feel weak and vulnerable, guilty and despondent.

What can we do? Here’s something that works for me. The next time you find yourself trapped in your inner desert, start creating, in your imagination, your own private place: a safe space, a sacred space. Carefully construct it, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. Take your time! Picture building the walls and windows exactly the way you want them to be. Inside your sacred space, arrange everything just the way you need it, for your own comfort, and the comfort of a very honored guest. And then, when your space is all ready, invite that very honored guest in: the Holy Spirit Himself*. Sit together with Him* and talk with Him*. (Even better, maybe let Him* talk and you listen!)

Every time you feel trapped, you can return to that safe space, relax, breathe, and ask the Holy Spirit for help. I notice that as I practice doing that, I can -- a little bit more easily every time -- walk out of my desert and re-enter the world refreshed and renewed. And every time I do that, it feels just the way Jesus proclaims it to be: a time of fulfillment, with the kingdom of God at hand! And when I follow Jesus's call to repent (rethink) and believe in the gospel, that good news becomes my good news, which is that God loves me and wants me to see myself as God sees me: whole and joyful and loving.

*Please note: One language challenge when talking about God is gender. As we know from the Catechism, God has no gender. If it works better for you to invite in the Holy Spirit and talk with and listen to “Her,” no problem!

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Bruce's Notes for the 6th. Sunday of Ordinary Time

In this week’s personalized version of the gospel story, I, Bruce, a “leper” (someone who hates but cannot cure my own unclean condition), beg Jesus to make me clean. Jesus, moved with pity, touches me and says, “I will do it. Be made clean.” And immediately I am made clean. Then Jesus gives me clear instructions about what to do AND not to do. He says, “See that you tell no one anything.” A clear, explicit instruction. And what do I do? I willfully ignore -- disobey -- Jesus’s warning and begin to publicize the whole matter, so broadly, in fact, that it is now impossible for Jesus to go places openly without being mobbed. I have, in effect, made it more difficult for Jesus to carry out His mission.

And what is Jesus’s mission? To set us free from our lower nature, our “sinfulness,” so that our true, higher Self can be freed to love God and others and thereby dwell in peace, harmony, and joy with Jesus in the kingdom. That is a wonderful mission! So why in the world would I do what I (the leper) did?! Why would I disregard Jesus and thereby cause that kind of trouble for everyone, including myself? Because in happily, thoughtlessly going around and telling people about my good fortune (my freedom from the condition that was upsetting me) I have somehow temporarily forgotten my belief in the One and His mission: to really free me, to free everyone. I may have gained the lesser prize but lost the much greater one.

This gospel story is not, then, really a story about healing; it is a story about willfulness, disobedience, loss, and LISTENING. I need, we need, to stop and LISTEN to Jesus, not just to charge ahead with what seems like a good idea to us at the time. We really don’t want to win the small “victories” but in the process lose the greater Victory. We need to keep our eyes, and ears, on the Prize, the real Gift God has prepared for us. Let’s try to be careful and help Jesus fulfill His mission for the world, not carelessly hinder Him.

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Bruce's Notes for the 5th. Sunday of Ordinary Time

In this week’s gospel story, Jesus presents us with a question, a challenge, and a solution.

On leaving the synagogue, Jesus is almost immediately called upon to heal. He heals and heals, hour after hour after hour. Then early the next morning, he goes off by himself to pray. When the others come to find him, he tells them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”

First, a wonderful, challenging question for each of us: for what purpose have I come? Second, the challenge: how do we go about answering such a question? Third, Jesus’s solution: First, he does a hard day's work (in this case, healing), trying to fulfill his true purpose. Then, he gives himself time to pray, by himself, opening himself to God. As a result, his connection to his true purpose is reviewed, renewed, and strengthened. And he continues to do that, day by day, all the way to his death (and beyond).

I think we would do well to follow Jesus’ example. First, work hard and apply yourself to whatever you currently feel called to do. Then, stop to pray and ask the Holy Spirit for His wisdom, listening very carefully, being open to any changes in the call. And then, gird your loins -- yes, women can do that, too! (see Proverbs 31:17) -- and continue to fulfill whatever purpose you are called to. And we would do well to do this day by day, step by step, all the way to our deaths (and beyond!)

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Bruce's Notes for the 4th. Sunday of Ordinary Time

Looking at this week’s gospel, I find it valuable once again to see the story as my own personal experience, as follows:
There is a man with an unclean spirit. (That’s me.) When Jesus comes to me, my unclean spirit (my ego, my fear, my anger, jealousy, envy, pride…) cries out: “What do you have to do with us, Jesus? Have you come to destroy us?” And Jesus commands all of them to be quiet and come out of me, and I cry out...and in that moment I am free!

And in that moment I am free! When I let the Holy Spirit work in me to drive out that unclean spirit, those demons, those areas of “stuckness” that bind me (and all around me); in that holy instant of true freedom I am born again, I am re-baptized and made clean again. I am as God made me and always intended me to be. (And even the people around me notice the difference.)

Same old question: but how do I do that? Same old answer: practice. As often as I can, I call on the Holy Spirit, who helps me see myself, and every other person, through His eyes. His eyes see, not this odd mixture of bad and good that I so often see in myself and others, but see each of us as we really are: whole, innocent, and loved by God.

I work hard at this practice, of calling on the Holy Spirit as many times a day as I can, and it is almost always a boost, a jolt of strength and joy and security, which in turn lets me love my neighbor as I feel loved. My goal: through prayer and grace to learn to command my own unclean spirits so they obey me, the real me, the me God intended me to be, my true Self.

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Bruce's Notes for the 3rd. Sunday of Ordinary Time

So often, we think about Jesus in the past, what he did or said. Or we think about him in the future, about his coming again. But in this week's gospel, Jesus makes it clear that his listeners need to focus on the present.

In Mark 1:15, Jesus says straight out, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel!” Pretty unequivocal: Jesus is telling all who are able to hear that the kingdom is NOW, that NOW is when God’s word is fulfilled, that NOW is the time to repent (rethink, change your mind, start anew). But if he said that then, is he still saying it today?

We forget sometimes that as Christians, we are a people of NOW. Our liturgy is primarily of the moment. From the very beginning of the Mass, we give glory in the present. We ask for (and receive) forgiveness in the present. We praise God in the present. The priest consecrates in the present. Communion happens in the moment. The Mass is not a recreation of an historical event; it is new each and every time, in the present.

So what is “the time of fulfillment,” here and now? What is fulfilled? WE are fulfilled! We are completed. We come to fruition, to ripeness, to fullness, every moment -- every holy instant -- we accept Jesus into our hearts. In that moment there is no past to regret. There is no future to fear. There is only Jesus, with us, in the Kingdom of God. And all we have to do to be there is repent; that is, to change our thinking, to accept God’s great gift to us, the children that He loves. Now. And now. And now.

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Bruce's Notes for the 2nd. Sunday of Ordinary Time

In this week’s gospel, John, describing Peter’s first encounter with Jesus, tells us, “Then they brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said ‘You are Simon son of John; you will be called Cephas.’ “ Wow! With loving authority, Jesus sees -- I mean really sees -- the inner person he is speaking to and gives him a new life.

As I think about Jesus speaking to me like that, a couple of questions come to mind. First, what do I have to do so I can hear Jesus speak to me the way he spoke to Peter? Second, what happens when I do hear him speak?

First, then: what do I have to do to encounter Jesus? Do what Peter did! Peter went to Jesus. (It’s true that he was led there, but he did agree to go.) And so I need to go to Jesus, with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind. That means making space in my day, in my life, whatever it takes, for these encounters. We all have different ways of making that space, but we need to do it, regularly. We need to go to Jesus and let him in.

And second, what happens when I do let him in, and Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, does speak with me? When I am really, really listening, then I feel no guilt, no shame, no regret, no “should do this or should do that.” When I am really listening and paying attention, I feel only loved and newly empowered. Deep joy and strength and praise well up in me, and at that moment I do feel ready to take on this new life that Jesus has for me, this new life of devotion: to loving God and all my fellow human beings/neighbors as much as I can, every time I can.

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Bruce's Notes for the Feast of Baptism of the Lord

Since we have heard it so many times, we think we know the story of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan (as recorded in Mark’s gospel this week). We think the story tells us that as Jesus came up out of the Jordan, a dove descended on him and a voice from heaven proclaimed him the Son of God. And that’s close… but not quite accurate. And the difference, the part we don’t remember accurately, is importance for us and our faith life.

What the gospel actually says is: “On coming out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from the heavens, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’ ” That day at the Jordan only Jesus saw the Holy Spirit (dove) descend and heard the voice from heaven. This was an individual revelation and communication with the Father.

Why is that distinction important? Because Jesus, in the course of his ministry, opens the eyes of one individual person after another (Peter, the Samaritan woman at the well, the blind man, the woman crippled by a spirit...the list goes on and on). He opens the eyes of each: to God’s love, to God’s mercy, to the simple (though often very challenging) commandment to love God and one another.

All this applies to each of us just as much as it did to each individual person in Jesus’ time. Each time we strive to open up and really hear and accept that we are loved, we are forgiven, we are held and cared for by God, something truly remarkable happens: the Holy Spirit descends on us. And each time we strive to love each other, to forgive each other, to hold and care for each other, something else remarkable happens: a voice from God -- one that only each of us can hear -- says, “With you I am well pleased.”

And more good news: this amazing God-given cycle, of baptism with the Holy Spirit, of receiving and giving, giving and receiving, happens over and over and over and over. Now and forever.

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Bruce's Notes for the Epiphany of the Lord

This week, in the third chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul explains that the Spirit has revealed “that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” What does that mean? And why is it important?

First of all, we need to understand that the phrase “the Gentiles'' refers to all people who are not Jewish. So if the Jews and the Gentiles are coheirs and copartners, that means that everybody is a coheir and a copartner, because Jews and Gentiles are all the people there are; there is no one else!

Next, if the Holy Spirit has revealed that we are all members of the same body and all coheirs and copartners in the same promise, then we all are truly brothers and sisters, truly “neighbors.” And if we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, that means we are to love everyone as ourselves: no exceptions, everyone.

But what is this “promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel”? It’s this: that Jesus came to set us free Free from doubt, free from fear, free from anger, and shame...and death. Free to rejoice, knowing that God loves us, always and unconditionally. And free to love everyone in our hearts and to share that love with them, with all our fellow coheirs and copartners, with anyone we meet, with the whole world. Pretty good promise, I’d say.