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 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.