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The feast of Pentecost is part of our Judeo-Christian heritage.  It was a Jewish festival long before it was celebrated as a Christian feast.  For our Jewish ancestors in faith, Pentecost was called the Festival of Weeks.  It was a week (7 days) of weeks (7 days) plus one day, totaling 50 days.  In the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) Pentecost was celebrated 50 days after the great Feast of Passover.  It was a festival celebrating the first harvest of grain.  With the harvest in mind, you ...

I’ve had the good fortune to make two pilgrimages to the Holy Land. My advice, first to myself and then to those traveling with me, was the same both times– honor the event not so much the place. For example, we will never know, with absolute certainty, the exact spot where Jesus was born. That’s not important. What’s important is the event, the inbreaking of God into our world in human flesh. It makes no difference whether Jesus was born ...

The first reading throughout the entire Easter Season, if you haven’t already figured it out, is always taken from a book in the Bible called the Acts of the Apostles. They are stories, not always flattering, about how the Church began, survived, and thrived in the absence of Jesus’ physical presence. In order for the Church to get out of the first century, I just have to believe there was and is a Holy Spirit, and that Spirit must have ...

When I read and ponder these gospel stories, Jesus always comes across as the model, the archetype, the goal to which I strive.  I believe he is the potential within me, that I never quite reach, and he is also the encouragement within me to keep striving.  Jesus is the complete human being calling me and every human being to be fully human as he was.  In that sense, I can say he is the universal Christ.

On the flip side of the coin, ...

I love this line from today’s gospel, “The sheep follow him because they know his voice.”  The assumption is that if the sheep recognize the shepherd’s voice, they will follow him.  And if they follow him, he will lead them to green pastures where they will find life in abundance.  “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.”  The whole thing starts with recognition—sheep recognizing the shepherd’s voice.  The post-resurrection stories we’ve heard so far during the Easter Season, are all stories where ...