A Promise and a Power from the King of Glory!

 

Deacon Dave · A Promise and a Power from the King of Glory!

Homily for Ascension Sunday, June 1, 2025. Acts 1:1-11. Theme: A Promise and a Power from the King of Glory! 

 Today we celebrate the Ascension of the Lord which honors His triumphant return to Heaven. But have you ever noticed that when the Ascension is mentioned in the Creed that we profess every Sunday, it’s combined with Jesus being “seated at the right hand of the Father”? In making this connection, the ancient Creed-writers united these two truths into one sentence about Jesus because both are really just two sides of the same one coin that we call Christ’s glorification. In other words they are saying that upon His return to Heaven, the Savior could now just sit down because His earthly job was over. He had successfully completed the mission for which He was sent into our world. Sin had been forgiven. Death had been conquered. The pathway to Heaven had been reopened to the human race. 

 Through the Passion and Cross Jesus has made atonement to God on behalf of all humanity. And He did so as our perfect representative and spokesman. In other words, He did it in our name and in our place. He did it as one of us! Jesus brought us back into a relationship of "at-one-ness” with God (which is what the word "atonement" means) and so He was welcomed back into Heaven as a Hero and Champion. He was given the seat of honor, so to speak, right there next to God the Father. Upon His return to Heaven Jesus resumed the divine prerogatives that He gave up upon becoming human, but He still remains forever a Man. 

 Many Christians mistakenly think that Jesus' humanity was only for His time on earth. And so they assume that once He was "back home", so to speak, God the Son took off his humanity and remained solely a Divine Being. But this is incorrect. The Risen and Glorious Christ is a 100% human being Who now shares fully in the authority and glory of God Himself, which is what “sitting at the right hand” means in symbolic biblical language! And even more astounding is the truth that each one of us, if we remain faithful to our union with Jesus by Baptism, are destined to share in this same glory of Christ! This means that our potential is something even greater than that of the angels! 

 But let’s get back to planet Earth, where the disciples had been left behind after the Lord ascended into Heaven. Before leaving, Jesus instructed them that it was now their responsibility to carry on His mission in the world. It was now the time for His Church, that is both you and me, to proclaim the Kingdom of God, to spread the Gospel, and so pass on the offer of salvation to future generations. But the Lord didn’t leave us to our own poor resources in this regard! He made a Promise to us and spoke of a Power that would be given to us to make all this possible for us; to make it actually happen. So, what was the Promise and what is Power? 

 First, let’s look at the Promise. Jesus said to the disciples, “…you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:5) To be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” is not the same as to be sacramentally baptized with water, although they are intimately related. While it’s true that we first receive the Spirit in the Sacrament of Baptism, this does not mean that all who do so will fully claim this Promise and live it out by putting their faith into action. But this “putting into action” is precisely what baptism in the Holy Spirit means! It’s like having a supernatural match touched to the fuel of faith that has been placed within us that sets our hearts on fire with love for God and neighbor. This supernatural spark drives us to share the Good News of and about Jesus with others. This is why the Holy Spirit symbolically manifested Himself at Pentecost as flames of fire. 

 Secondly, Jesus speaks about receiving Power. He said, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses…” (Acts 1:8) We all know that power means the ability to do something beyond our natural capabilities. Another word for this spiritual “Power-from-on-high” is Love, which is the outstanding characteristic of the Holy Spirit. He is the love of the Father and the Son personified. Love is His very nature and motivation. We might say that love is the name of His game! This is why the New Testament calls the Spirit “the love of God that is poured out into our hearts” (Romans 5:5) and it is also why St. Paul declares that love is the greatest gift, the greatest power given to us by this same Spirit. This Power of Divine Love enables us to become credible witnesses to Jesus, testifying to Who He is and what He means in our lives. This Power enables us to become and to do so much more than we ever thought we could be or accomplish! Jesus said that it would even enable us to do signs and wonders such as He did when He lived on planet Earth! And we see the truth of this promise being realized in the healings and miracles of the disciples in the Book of Acts as well as in the lives of saints and faith-filled Christians of every era. 

 Jesus kept His Promise and bestowed this Power upon His disciples on the day of Pentecost, a little more than a week after his Ascension. Traditionally, we consider that event to be the first Confirmation in the Church and we will hear all about it at next Sunday’s Pentecost liturgy. But for now the thing to remember is that the Holy Spirit was given to us at Baptism and His Presence was deepened in us at Confirmation. But since most of us received these Sacraments as children, we often tended to take them for granted as we grew up. And so for many of us, the Promise and the Power have remained dormant and inactive within us. But the Good News is that these gifts of God are still there within us just waiting to be unwrapped and used! So, let’s change that! Through today’s liturgy, let’s hear Jesus telling us what He told His disciples about preparing to be baptized in the Holy Spirit! Let’s do our best to spend the coming days between Ascension and Pentecost Sunday praying for the grace to claim this Promise and to experience this Power as if by a New Pentecost in our lives!

The Gift of Divine Indwelling

 

Deacon Dave · The Gift of Divine Indwelling

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025. Gospel of St. John 14:23-29. Theme: The Gift of Divine Indwelling 

 In today’s Gospel we read part of the final conversation that Jesus had with His Apostles at the Last Supper just a short time before He was arrested and began His Passion. The Church always treasured these parting words of Christ because they form what we might call His last will and testament. Knowing that His death was imminent, He took time to prepare the Apostles for the difficulties that lay ahead and to help them face the crisis of faith that He knew would soon be upon them. 

 Now we can imagine that as Jesus looked into the faces of His closest companions His heart was overcome with deep compassion. We can tell this from the tender way He spoke and from all of the assurances that He gave them. He knew that they would soon have to figure out what life was going to be like without Him physically present. He was well aware that fear would grip them and that confusion would engulf them, and so He promised them - and by extension promised us - three things to help navigate through any troubles that may come into our lives. These are the grace of what we call the Divine Indwelling, the advocacy of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of interior peace. Together these three things really form but one packaged gift. 

 In speaking about peace Jesus said, “Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” So, what did he mean by saying, “not as the world gives…” ? Well, first of all, it helps to know that whenever the Bible uses the phrase “the world” it means “a way of thinking and living that is not in harmony with God”. The way “the world” offers peace is by focusing on things outside of ourselves that seem to promise security and happiness. such as wealth and possessions, physical beauty and good health, professional success and social popularity. But these things in and of themselves are transitory, unstable, undependable. Like the flowers of a field they are here today and then gone tomorrow. And most importantly, these things cannot reach deep down inside the human person to deal with the wounds that reside there. They cannot soothe the disturbances within us that cry out for the healing balm of Christ’s peace. If they could, then the power-brokers and celebrities of society would be among the most peace-filled and happiest people on planet Earth! And yet we hear of their broken selves, their revolving-door relationships and their sad tragedies almost daily. 

 But the peace that Jesus offers is unique and unlike any other because it’s something that only God can give us. Its origin is in what we call the Divine Indwelling, which means that the Persons of the Blessed Trinity come to make their dwelling within us by grace. Jesus said this quite clearly in today’s Gospel. And this great and wonderful mystery of God-living-within-us is also taught throughout the New Testament. It's amazing! It means that for us Christians, God is not some impersonal Supreme Being who lives far away from us up in the vast heavens. Nor is He some kind of detached God who looks down at us as we try our best to figure out how to live our lives. Rather, He’s as close as close can possibly be, by making His dwelling place right within us! This is not simply a matter of wishful thinking nor of poetic religious imagery but it’s the truth. By grace we become living temples of God, living shrines of His Divine Presence! Imagine that! Now this doesn’t take away our struggles nor free us from difficulties, but it enables us to go through them with inner serenity and with the confident assurance that all will be well. And this is why it is called the peace that the world cannot give. 

 However, it’s not enough to simply know that the Living God dwells within us. We have to deepen our awareness of this reality which in turn deepens our capacity to receive and benefit from the gift of Christ’s peace. For this reason the saints tell us that personal prayer is so very important and by this they don’t mean just reciting memorized words, which have their place in our spiritual lives, but it's not what they mean. They mean that we need to take time out, time away from our daily schedule, even if it’s just 5 minutes, and spend it in quiet solitude, alone with the God Who dwells within us. This is a time for prayer from the heart, for using our own words or even for praying without words and simply with our thoughts, as we look inside ourselves, so to speak, and get in touch with this Great Mystery dwelling within us. And the saints tell us that from time to time the Lord will bless us by allowing His Divine Presence to be tangibly felt within us so as to boost our faith, increase our hope and deepen our love and keep us going, so to speak. This is a great grace, a supernatural gift that no one and nothing can take away from us as long as, like we just heard Jesus tell us, we strive to be faithful in loving Him by cherishing His word and doing our best to live it in our daily lives. 

 None of us know what lays ahead in the trajectory of our lives. But each one of us can be reasonably sure that we will have to face one crisis or another. However, through it all if we remain faithful to God then He will remain within us. We have Christ’s solemn word about this!. And so we don’t allow our hearts to become troubled over the present nor fearful of the future because we trust that this precious promise of Christ remains as valid and as powerful for us today as it was when He first spoke it to His Apostles two thousand years ago at the Last Supper.

I Heard the Voice of Jesus…

 

Deacon Dave · I Heard the Voice of Jesus…

Homily for Good Shepherd Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter, May 11, 2025. Gospel – John 10:27-30. Theme: I Heard the Voice of Jesus… 

 Today is called “Good Shepherd Sunday”. It gets this name because the Liturgy for this 4th Sunday of the Easter Season invites us to reflect on one of the most beautiful images of Jesus in the Gospels: Christ as the Good Shepherd. In the few short verses that make up today’s Gospel, we are given a message of comfort and are taught some very consoling truths. So let’s go back and ponder them for a moment. 

 It begins with Jesus’ words: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” Think about that image: sheep following the voice of a shepherd. In the ancient world, sheep didn’t follow whistles or herding dogs such as they do today. They followed the shepherd’s voice. They knew his voice and followed its sound for they had learned to trust it for their own well-being. And it was quite common for the shepherd to personalize his care by naming each one of his sheep, the way we name our pets today. Jesus is telling us something deeply personal here: He knows each one of us. Not in some distant, impersonal way, but in an intimate and loving way. He knows us by name. He knows our burdens. He knows our joys and our struggles. And He calls us to follow Him as the beloved sheep of His flock. 

 But following our Good Shepherd isn’t always easy because in our noisy world it can be hard to hear his voice. There are so many other voices competing for our attention—voices of anxiety and fear, voices of greed and materialism, even voices of despair when things look bleak. The voice of Jesus, however, is always there: quiet, steady, loving. We just need to learn to listen and recognize it. Once we do this we can hear Him speaking to us in Scripture and in the silence that accompanies our prayer from the heart. We will hear him speaking deep within us when we receive him in Holy Communion or are quietly before him in adoration of the Eucharist. 

 In our Gospel today, Jesus gave us a promise that should fill our hearts with peace. He said : “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand.” What powerful and hopeful words! In a world where so much can be lost—jobs, health, relationships—Jesus is telling us that there is something no one can take from us and that is our place in His heart. He holds us in His hands, hands that are scarred with love because they were pierced on the Cross for our sake. In other words Jesus is saying, “You are safe with me. No suffering, no failure, no enemy—not even death itself—can take you out of my hand so remain close to me and follow me. This isn’t just a reassurance—it’s a revelation, a divine revelation. Jesus is not just a messenger of God’s love—He is the God of love who became flesh to live among us, to share our experiences, and to die for us. He wants us to know real happiness both in this life and in the next. 

 To truly claim these promises of Christ the Good Shepherd as our own, we need to set aside quality time each day to be with him and listen to His voice. We need to pray in an atmosphere of quiet, of solitude, free from all the noises that will drown Christ out and make his voice more difficult to hear. We need to trust our Shepherd and believe in His promise. When life is difficult, when we feel lost or afraid, when we might be unsure of where the help we need will come from…we have to remember that we are in His hands. This isn’t escapism but reality. We can be assured of his care and protection because we have his word that no one and nothing can take us from Him.

Fake It Til You Make It!

 

Deacon Dave · Fake It Til You Make It!

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, May 1, 2022. Gospel – John 21:1-19. Theme: Fake It Til You Make It! 

 In today’s Gospel we see seven of the apostles trying to process the traumatizing events that happened over the first Easter weekend. Confused and depressed by the Passion of Christ, they try to go back to how they lived their lives before they had been deeply touched and changed by Him. They were probably just trying to forget and defaulted to trying to find comfort and security in what they knew to be “life as normal”, But inside each one of them I think there was a nagging suspicion that things would never, could never, ever be the same again. 

 So often we can be just like them. We have positive religious experiences, moments of uplifting spiritual awareness, which fan our faith in Christ and increase our devotion. But then we also have times of spiritual difficulty or confusion especially when suffering enters our lives and the Lord seems so far away. And like those apostles we try to make sense of it all. We may even wonder if our faith ever really mattered or question if it really made a significant difference in our lives.  And so, like Simon-Peter and his companions, we might be tempted to go back to how we were before Christ changed our hearts and lives. 

 However, also like those Apostles there persists deep down within us a nagging feeling and the recurring thought that things can never ever be the same again. We just can’t let go of Jesus. Even when what is happening within us or around us is troubling, we can’t stop thinking about Him. We’ve been deeply touched and something keeps calling us back. Even in the shadows of doubt we want to reach out for the light of faith and find a way to return to where we were in the happier days of our walk with Jesus. 

 Well, just as Christ knew the spiritual and emotional struggle that was going within the apostles, so he also knows what might be going on within some of us. Moved by His compassionate love, He comes to us just as He came to them and holds out to us a way to move forward, just as He did for them. He offers us a pathway out of our predicament and assures us that joyful hope can again be ours after passing through the challenges of faith. One way to describe this difficult spiritual and emotional journey in traditional religious terms is to say that the Cross always leads to the Resurrection. Another way of saying this comes from the experiences of those in 12-Step Recovery who have made it through the deep dark gloom of suffering and struggles. They tell us to “fake it til you make it”. T

his means that we do what we know ought to be done, even if we don’t feel very much like doing it. We turn to those vital aspects of a healthy spiritual life that will bring us back to where we want to be with Jesus. We can learn what these are from the experiences of the saints. Like us they had ups and downs in their relationship with Christ and they came out on the other side whole and happy. And they all tell us that when our faith falters and our devotion grows cold we need to do our best to reclaim our initial attraction to Jesus. We need to remember - and not run away from -the difference He made to our lives. And in doing so we need to consciously renew our commitment to trust in Him even if we don’t much feel like doing so at the time. We might have to just “fake it til we make it” in doing these things, but we can see from the testimony of their lived experiences that this simple but challenging advice works! 

 We see this dynamic of faith-renewal at work in the interaction between Jesus and Simon-Peter in today’s Gospel. The first thing Jesus does to help Simon is to bring him back to how they were when they first met. You might recall that when Jesus first called him to be a disciple, Simon was having a bad fishing day so Jesus arranged a miraculous catch of fish for him. And He did the exact same thing for him now. He renews within Simon his initial attraction to Jesus after that original miraculous catch of fish and he reignites within him the devotion that compelled him to throw himself at the feet of Christ saying, “Depart from my Lord for I am a sinful man.” (Lk 5:8) The memory of that unforgettable day opened Peter’s eyes, healed his wounded heart, and caused him to jump into the sea to swim as fast as he could to his Risen Lord! 

 After reclaiming this reacquainting experience Peter and Jesus sit around a charcoal fire. This scene should make us recall that the last time they were together near a charcoal fire was during the Passion when Simon denied knowing Jesus three times. He must've been searching for words to apologize for his triple denial but Jesus speaks before Peter has the chance to do so. Christ gives him an opportunity to make amends and allows Simon to express his love three times. He then renews Peter’s office as leader of the Christian community and confirms him in his role as the earthly shepherd of the Church. See how thoughtful, how gentle and tender the mercy of Jesus is! 

 Like Peter and his fishing companions, we too can encounter the Risen Christ who will reach out to us to reaffirm our relationship with Him and reignite our faith. He makes Himself known to us today in many ways, but most especially by His Gospel and Abiding Real Presence in the Eucharist. Through our encounters with Him in Word and Sacrament our faith can be strengthened, our trust in him can be deepened, and our love for him can grow. Yeah, we might need to “fake it til we make it” but Jesus will bless our efforts and our perseverance. He will enable us to see through any foggy confusion in our lives and bring us into the safe harbor of a renewed faith with increased devotion.