A Jesuit Adventure

  My dear friends today we celebrate the Solemnity of The Most Holy Trinity and the readings today help us to better understand this mystery. In the first reading taken from the book of Deuteronomy, we have an extract from the speech of Moses exhorting the Israelites to obey Yahweh. Moses invites the Israelites to reflect on their experiences of hearing Yahweh speaking out of a fire and being rescued from Egypt to emphasize Israel's unique experiences and special status. The people in those areas worshipped other pagan deities, however, those deities were believed to operate out of self-interest, attacking other nations merely to expand their territory, not for the interest of their worshippers. But Yahweh is different. He is the only true God; there are no others. He invaded Egypt, the superpower of the day, demanding His people be set free from their slavery to worship Him, and humbling Egypt when Pharaoh refused, and bringing Israel out to Himself to be a special people. Moses ...

  The Venerable Fulton J. Sheen once said about the Church, "Even though we are God's chosen people, we often behave more like God's frozen people--frozen in our prayer life, frozen in the way we relate with one another, frozen in the way we celebrate our Faith." My dear friends today we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost also called Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost marks the end and the goal of the Easter season.  The Paschal mystery i.e. the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Jesus -- culminates in the sending of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. The feast also celebrates the beginning of the Church through the apostolic preaching of St. Peter, which resulted in the conversion of 3000 Jews to the Christian Faith therefore we won't be wrong to term it as the birthday of the Church. Today’s first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles must be interpreted in light of last Sunday's reading of the Ascension ...

  My dear friends today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord. The first reading is the opening passage of the Acts of the Apostles, which is the second part of a two-part work- The gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. To grasp today's text therefore it is essential to read it in tandem with the last part of the Gospel of Luke. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke aimed to show how the work of Jesus continued in the early church and to help his community understand their role in salvation history. It was especially important for the Gentile Christians to understand that God’s plan was still unfolding in the life of the church. The reading today begins where the Gospel of Luke ends – with Jesus’ death, resurrection and post-resurrection appearances which gave the disciples a completely new understanding of the Scriptures (Luke 24:25-27, 45). The Old Testament had not only predicted the Messiah and his suffering, but it also predicted t...