Reflections for Ordinary Time

I suspect the early Christians would have found the idea of a feast specifically devoted to the Body and Blood of Christ a little strange. For them the idea of participation in the Body and Blood of the Lord was built into their routine. It was a part of their life, extraordinary and completely routine. […]

Easter is over, and we return to “Ordinary” Time. But not quite. We still have two more big feasts. Next week is the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, and today of the Holy Trinity. It’s like Easter continues to echo or reverberate for another couple of weeks before we get back to

As Christians we believe in God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We also know we have received the Holy Spirit through our baptism. But if we were asked by someone who knew nothing of Christianity – so what does “receiving the Spirit” mean? what happens? – Would we have a good answer? For all

We may struggle a little with the story of the Ascension (Acts 1:1-11). Our first reaction might be to wonder, ok, what actually happened? Jesus disappears up into the sky, then what? This is probably the wrong question to be asking – wrong in the sense that we’re not going to get a useful answer.

Before we get to the main course for today, let’s take a quick side trip.  Last week we heard how Philip really didn’t do very well at understanding what Jesus was telling him, and Jesus, in the nicest way possible, took him to task for not seeing what was in front of him. Today in

Last week we heard how the Pharisees failed to understand Jesus when he talked about being the gate to the sheepfold. We mentioned the similarity to Jesus saying that he was “the Way”. Today we hear directly about the occasion when Jesus used that phrase. In this case he’s talking not to pharisees but to

We’re very used to hearing Jesus compare himself to a shepherd, talking about “his sheep”, and so on. At first we might think today’s reading from John’s gospel (Jn 10:1-10) is another one of these accounts. But it’s actually rather different. In this case Jesus is not casting himself as the shepherd caring for his

Given the importance of the Resurrection and the appearances of Jesus after his death, it’s perhaps surprising how little consistency there is in the various accounts we have of these events. Today we hear Luke’s story of the first meeting that anyone has with the risen Lord (Lk 24:13-35). In his telling the women went

The story of Thomas, “Doubting Thomas” as he is often called, is very familiar (Jn 20:19-31). We hear it every year on this Sunday just after Easter. But after so many years I noticed something I had never seen before. Jesus appears to all the disciples, except Thomas, and breathes on them and they receive

We have traveled through the up and downs of Holy Week, through 40 days of Lent, and if not 40 years in the desert, then some years in a world that may seem strange and alien and disconnected from our inner self. We have traveled to arrive again at the celebration of Easter, of the