6th Sunday of Easter

Our readings for the 6th Sunday of Easter are:

1. Acts 8: 5-8, 14-17
2. Psalms 66: 1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
3. 1 Peter 3: 15-18
4. John 14: 15-21

• Great joy
• When have you felt a tangible joy?
• What caused that?
• Why did that event, revelation, feeling bring you joy?
• How long did that joy last?
• How did it change you?
• Do you think that joy came from God?
• Why do you think that He gave that to you?

• My God is better than your god
• Monotheism was an aberration at one time.  Sensible people believed that the world was thick with gods, large and small, each with specific roles and functions.  To assert that there is just one God would bring the question: "what makes you think that your God is so much better?"
• How would you answer that question if the one asking was incredibly wealthy, or famous, or much loved, all without any religion, no worship in their lives?
• Do you think that your argument would be very persuasive?
• Why is that?

• Canned response
• Religious apologetics attempts to provide reasoned response to questions on matters of faith.  Through the centuries, Christians have struggled to provide good arguments to support our beliefs.
• When all is said and done, just what is the relationship between the intellect and faith?
• What does it take to have strong faith?
• What is a person of strong faith really capable of?
• What are you doing to build your own faith?

• Spirit of Truth
• In the 2003 Jim Carey movie Bruce Almighty, Jim Carey's character get's to take on God's responsibilities for a small stretch of lower Manhattan so that he get's to know what God deals with day in, day out.
• If there was one quality of God that you could have for the asking, what would that be?
• How would that change your life?
• Why would you want that?

• Preparation for Reconciliation

1. What/who brings me the most joy?
2. What does my faith have to offer anyone else?
3. How important to me is my faith?
4. What blessing do I wish from God?

God Gave me Empathy

I was praying one day.

Exhausted from all of the demands on my time and energy.

Trying to decide what to do with the slowly emerging certainty,

That there was more need in the world around me

Than I could ever fill.

I could have prayed that God take some of the burden away.

Or that He give me more help to get it done.

Or more wisdom that I could discern where to plunge, and where withdraw.

Or even that God would somehow take care of some of this Himself.

Instead, I asked that He make me more like Himself.

Crazy thing to pray.

And I'm no saint, but I should have known better than to ask something open-ended like that.

God has a funny way of answering prayers without borders.

But I asked, and waited.

And God surprised me with empathy.

I went to the battered woman's shelter.

Their lives were still the products of bad decisions, and worse coping mechanisms.

Their children just as unruly, and plentiful.

But now, when I looked in their eyes, 

I saw the desperation, and yet the sense that maybe they were not going to drown,

The hope that the love and consideration that they received here,

Was not just some fairy tale, or silly aberration,

But a living, breathing, enfleshed sign

That God's love was everywhere.

And that they were worthy of that love, no matter what people told them.

I helped a friend with a Mass at the juvenile detention center

And those kids, those children of God were still criminals,

But I saw the awful conviction that so many felt,

That they had been abandoned, and their end was certain, 

Just a matter of time.  And I wondered how to tell them otherwise.

Everywhere I looked, God gazed back at me

Through the eyes of His children.

Not accusing me, or asking for more help than I could give.

What God needed from me was tenderness

Toward others and toward myself.

Not so that I could be some superstar.

Solve every evil that I chance upon.

Or heal every heart that crossed my path.

But to get past the fear of inadequacy.

And let His empathy be my discernment.

Peace isn't the absence of stress.

It isn't even the absence of doubt.

Peace is the certainty that we're not alone in this.

That we're part of something far greater and more durable

Than any tragedy that we'll ever encounter.

Shalom!