The Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, May 26, 2026

Acts 1, 12-14

After Jesus had been taken up to heaven, the Apostles returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they entered the city they went to the upper room where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

The obligatory memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, was ordered by Pope Francis in 2018. Its purpose is to highlight the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the life of the church.

In the First Reading we see the Apostles returning to Jerusalem after the Lord’s Ascension into heaven. The house of Mary, the mother of Mark has essentially become their headquarters — we might say, it became the first church, since Jesus had offered the first Mass there. The upper room where the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin gathered seems to have been a large room, but if 120 people were gathered in it, as Luke says in the Acts of the Apostles, conditions must have been snug.

Now, the naming of the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin proves significant. Luke named the Apostles in his Gospel. His naming them again here shows the continuity of his earliest followers, and especially of those Jesus himself had chosen. Judas Iscariot is not named, of course. But Luke is careful to name the Blessed Virgin and to mention members of the Lord’s family from Nazareth. Luke has shown the eminence of the Virgin in the life of Jesus at the beginning of his Gospel where he recounts the story of the Angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would be the Mother of God’s only-begotten Son, and of her Fiat to God’s holy will. He now places her by name in the midst of the Apostles where they “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer”. We might wonder why, given her importance, Luke does not name her first in his list. He does this in order to emphasize her presence and her role. Naming someone last in ancient times does not have the stigma it does in modern times (“last but not least”). In fact, the last person named qualifies the nature of the group. As Judas, always named last in the lists of the Apostles in the Gospels, shows the very earthly origin of the men whom Jesus chose as his heralds. Fallible, slow to understand, looking for worldly gain when the Lord restored Israel. The Apostles grew in their faith and understanding while Judas chose not to, and so he fell away and became the betrayer. The naming of Mary at the end of the list — in the place of Judas — shows how the Apostles have changed through grace, and through her example and prayers. They brim over with faith as they await the coming of the Holy Spirit, ten days after the Ascension.

The Blessed Virgin, in Luke’s telling, takes a quieter role with the Apostles after the Ascension. She has watched and helped the Apostles grow and now she watches and assists them with her prayers and words of encouragement on the eve of the beginning of their missionary work, fulfilling the Lord’s instruction to go forth to all the nations, teaching his commandments and baptizing them.

She remains with the Church as the best of mothers, continuously assisting the Church in the presence of Almighty God, and welcoming each of her children when they leave the earth behind them.

The Solemnity of Pentecost, Sunday, May 24, 2026

Acts 2, 1–11

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”

The Jewish feast of Pentecost, occurring fifty days after Passover, celebrates the giving of the Law, the Torah, by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.  He then brought the Law to the Hebrews, who were busy worshipping the golden calf they had made.  In his anger at seeing this, Moses smashed the tablets of the Law on the ground and destroyed the idol.  God later gave him new tablets of the Law, which were subsequently kept in the Ark of the Covenant.  It was at this feast that the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles.  They had already received the New Law from the Lord Jesus; now the Holy Spirit enlightens them so that they might fully understand and teach it.  While the Old Law was given to the unfaithful Hebrews, the New Law was given to the faithful adherents of Jesus Christ. 

The descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles was signified in three ways: through the hurricane-force wind that swept through the house where they were praying, the tongues of fire over their heads, and the ability to speak various languages.  We could also discern a fourth sign: the courage to preach the word of God in public, in a place where the Lord Jesus had so recently been condemned and killed.  The wind shows the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of grace, which forgives sin and makes us reborn in Christ.The fire shows the zeal imparted to the Apostles by the Holy Spirit.  It also shows their new ability to speak in other languages:  both the English word “tongue” and the original Greek word have the secondary meaning of “language”.  The gift of languages is not a haphazard one: the Apostles are speaking the languages of those Jews visiting Jerusalem for the feast, for the purpose of preaching the word of God to them.

Almighty God gives us, at our births and in our rebirth through baptism, all the gifts and abilities we have.  All come from him.  All have for their purpose the preaching of the Gospel for the salvation of souls and for his greater glory.  He gives each of us exactly what he wants us to have and to use.  It is for us to understand what these are, to cultivate them, and to use them in whatever way we can, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to do good upon the earth.  In this way, we make a great harvest for him.

Saturday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 23, 2026

John 21, 20-25

Peter turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved, the one who had also reclined upon his chest during the supper and had said, “Master, who is the one who will betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me.” So the word spread among the brothers that that disciple would not die. But Jesus had not told him that he would not die, just “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours?”  It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.

“Peter turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved, the one who had also reclined upon his chest during the supper.”  From ancient times the Church has understood this disciple as John, the son of Zebedee and the brother of James.  This John is mentioned by name in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and is included by the Lord Jesus in a privileged subgroup of the Apostles which consisted of him, his brother James, and Peter.  Jesus took these apart to witness some of his most astounding miracles, such as the raising of the daughter of Jairus from the dead and the Transfiguration.  Jesus also takes them with him apart from the others when he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Mark tells us that Jesus had a nickname for James and John, calling them “the sons of thunder”.  And yet, in the Gospel of John, his never never arises, and the only time we are advised of his existence at all comes when, after the Resurrection, “the sons of Zebedee” go fishing with Peter and four other Apostles.  The Gospel according to John has been held since the days of the early Church to have been written by this John, the Apostle.  We might ask why John does not mention his own name in the Gospel.  But Luke, the author of a Gospel and a fellow missionary with St. Paul, never mentions himself by name even when he is part of the story.  When he writes of actions in which he takes part, he simply writes “we” did this.  He minimizes his part to the point of anonymity.  However, Theophilus, whom Luke addresses as the recipient of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, knows who he is and so does not need Luke to point himself out by name.  And Luke, who is writing about the Apostles, does not make the story about him.  John seems to act in the same way.  The people for whom he was writing his Gospel originally knew very well who he was, and John is so unwilling to move the spotlight off Jesus that he mentions himself only as a witness to the truth about the Lord’s life and identity.  Because he wants his readers to know that Jesus could be touched, heard, and seen, he allows himself, without using his name, to tell that he had touched, heard, and seen him.  And this is what the true disciple does: “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3, 30).  The disciple lets Jesus so shine forth from his words and actions that he himself disappears into him and the Lord alone is visible.  This is a work of grace.

“Lord, what about him?” John must have written his Gospel before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  We might say that he wrote it after the martyrdom of the first bishop of Jerusalem, James the son of Alphaeus in 62 A.D. because the conversation John records between Jesus and Peter seems to deal with the question of whether the end of the world will come before the death of the last Apostle.  James the son of Alphaeus and John would have been the last Apostles left in Jerusalem and perhaps in both Judea and Galilee.  The other Apostles had already been martyred (Peter and Paul died in Rome around the time James died in .Jerusalem) or gone far abroad so that of the Twelve, only John was left.  John answered their question with the words of Jesus: “What if I want him to remain until I come?”  That is, the Lord does not say that the world would end before the last Apostle died, but neither did he say that it would: “You follow me.”  The disciple of the Lord should be aware that the world will end and he should prepare for it, but not be obsessed by the fact.  He should concentrate on following the Lord and doing his will on each day of life the Lord gives him.

“It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.”  It was fashionable for nineteenth and twentieth century scholars to sniff at these words and declare that they prove John the Apostle did not write the Gospel because of the “we know” and “his testimony”.  These same scholars allege that the Gospels, as we now have them, are the result of intensive editorial work by communities of believers in the generation or two after the Apostles.  Yet, it does not seem to them that an editor could have added this to the Gospel John had written.  In fact, the person to whom John dictated his Gospel could have added these words.  This seems likely since the Gospels, once they were written, were quickly copied and recopied.  If this gloss had appeared only in a later copy, it would not have been found in earlier ones.  But the earliest copies we have contain it.  And the stamp of the Holy See affirms that these words are divinely inspired and canonical just as are all the other words in the Gospel.

“There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”  This is a most marvelous way to end this Gospel and the collection of the four Gospels.  It opens up for us the broad horizon of the life of the Lord and his tireless campaign to bring eternal life to the people of this world.  When we read the Gospels, not only should we pay attention to all that they tell us of the Lord, but all that, out of necessity, they do not tell us: the story of how Mary Magdalene’s seven demons were cast out, and what the Lord said and did in Chorazin and Bethany, for instance.  So many powerful words, so many astounding works.  Of all that the Gospels could tell us, we have only that which is strictly necessary for us.  All else that we would like to know, we must wait for until it is revealed to us on the last day.

Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter,, May 21, 2026

John 17, 20-26

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying: “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”

The lectionary continues with St. John’s account of the Lord’s prayer for unity after the Last Supper.  “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.”  The Lord does not say, Who will believe in my philosophy or religious teachings, but Who will believe in me.  Faith includes belief that the Lord’s teachings are true, but this belief is based on our belief in him.  Faith is, firstly, a relationship between persons, in this case it is our supernatural relationship with Jesus: we believe in him because we love him, and we love him “because God first loved us” (1 John 4, 19).  Our response to his love is enabled by the Holy Spirit.  “So that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.”  The Church, then, is the sign of the fact that the Father sent the Son into the world.  The Church exists because Christ himself founded it and sustains it.  It could not have grown after the Death of Jesus unless he had risen and then sent the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles.  It could not have spread throughout the world except for the Lord’s working through it.  It could not have held on to its unchanging doctrine unless through divine protection.  “And that you loved them even as you loved me.”  The Creator loves his lowly sinful creatures as he loves his own divine Son, excelling in every perfection.  This is a stupendous statement, and a revelation, since no human mind could have come upon this truth through reason alone.  God’s love for us is almost madness.  “They are your gift to me.”  The Son loves us for ourselves and also for the sake of the Father who gave us to him.  You and I are gifts given by the Almighty Father to his Son.

“I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”  This is a most majestic passage.  The Son loves us and wants us earnestly to be in heaven with him so that they may see his glory — they may have eternal happiness in his glory, which comes from the love the Father had for him from before all time.  Before the creation of the universe, for uncounted ages, the Father loved the Son with his whole being, and the Son returned this love in full.  “Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me.”  The world does not know, that is, does not acknowledge his authority.  It takes a lot of work to be an atheist because the atheist is constantly bumping into clear evidence of God’s existence and love for people.  Most atheists know God exists and fight against him by telling themselves over and over that he does not exist.

“I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”  To know the name of God is to know him.  For the Israelites, a person’s identity was known from his ancestors and from the meaning of his name.  Names were not mere labels as they are today but expressions of identity.  God, having no ancestors, is known only through his name, but his name cannot be spoken or written.  Only the high priest was allowed to speak his name, and that was done only once a year.  God’s name, then, is unknowable, and so he is beyond our comprehension.  But we can know about him from what the Lord Jesus says, and what the Holy Spirit says through the Apostles.  St. John tells us the meaning of God’s name in human language when he tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4, 16).  If we read the Lord’s Prayer to his Father straight through, we see that this is what he is saying about his Father, that he is Love itself.  This love the Lord wishes us to experience to the fullest degree so that we can glorify him in our sharing it with others.

Wednesday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 20, 2026

John 17, 11-19

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one. When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

The idea of separation and unity first came into the world by God’s calling the Hebrews to be his holy people in the days of the Exodus, giving them the Law and making with them a covenant which made them distinct from their neighbors and unified in their worship of and belonging to God.  This distinction was marked not only by their behavior but even physically, through circumcision of the males.  This unity and separation was foreshadowed by the creation of the man and woman as members of one another and the separate creation of the human race from that of the animals and plants.  It is also foreshadowed in the choice of God to save Noah and his family in the Ark while the wicked perished in the flood.

The unity among themselves and separation from all other peoples of the Jews itself signifies that of the Apostles, and then of the Holy Church.  The Lord Jesus prays for the Father to bestow and protect this unity: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.”  To be one as the Divine Persons of the Trinity are one goes far beyond the unity that existed among the Jews: it is a binding on the level of existence that can be achieved solely through supernatural means.  There is also separation from all other peoples in that, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”  This separation from the world is accomplished through the defection of those who at one time belonged to this unity and through the rejection of those who do not desire it: “the world hated them.”

This separation does not, at this time, mean removal from the world.  Just as the Israelites dwelt among the pagan nations of their day, so those who belong to each other in Christ dwell among the unbelievers in the world, not conquering them by force as the Israelites did to the Canaanites but with love so that they might come to know the very Source of love, Almighty God, and have a place in our unity: “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”

“And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”  The Greek word translated here as “consecrate” might be better translated as “sanctify”.  But since Jesus is God, it seems that he could not make himself more holy, more sanctified.  The Lord’s meaning is that he gives his holiness a new purpose, our holiness, our sanctification.  He has begun this work through his taking on our flesh, our human nature, and he will fully enact this work in us through his coming Passion, Death, and Resurrection, by which grace comes into the world, won for us by the sufferings of our Savior.  

Tuesday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 19, 2026

John 17, 1-11

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.  I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”

We are living within a culture that prizes an individuality in which the needs or aspirations of the individual come before those of the community, and because this idea has become so pervasive, even written into our laws and constitutions, we may think that not only has the idea always existed, but that there is no alternative to it.  Yet, this is not so.  For much of human history, a human person was seen as part of an organic collective.  For instance, the people living in the ancient Near East, such as the Israelites, understood that a given human person’s ancestors and descendants were contained in him such that this was understood as his identity.  With only shadowy notions of an afterlife, the emphasis in living on after one’s death was in living in one’s children and their children.  The ancients understood from this that a person could be held responsible for his ancestors’ actions.  We see this in the Gospels on an occasion when Jesus confronted the scribes and Pharisees: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the just, and say: If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of them that killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers” (Matthew 23, 29-32).  It also helps us to understand the terrible cry of the people at the time of the Passion, “His Blood be upon us and upon our children” (Matthew 27, 25).

Here, Jesus prays for the unity of his followers with him and, through him, with each other.  This doctrine builds on the then current idea of solidarity with one’s ancestors and descendants to include people to whom one is not related at all, and this unity is not a physical one but one of grace.  St. Paul famously explains, speaking of the human body, “And if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it: or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ and members of it” (1 Corinthians 12, 27).  The human body itself is a figure for the reality of the Body of Christ.

We have set before us two very different ways of thinking: that of the supremacy of the individual, and that of unity.  Another way to put it is the idea of autonomy and the idea of solidarity.  A lady I knew some years ago and who has since died, once became angry at a sermon in which it was asserted that we Christians need to be helped by one another in order to be saved.  She asserted back that she did not need anyone’s help, but that she could save herself.  Not long afterwards, she was struck by cancer and she learned the truth the hard way.  The ideas of individuality and autonomy are rooted in nothing more than pride.  The individualist shouts to the world, “I am an island!  Everyone is an island!”  Even though with a little reflection on human experience, we know that this is clearly not true.

Our Lord prays for our unity in him, and the Holy Spirit makes it so.  We who are members of the Lord’s Body must help one another get to heaven, subduing our pride and adopting the humility of a good servant.  

Monday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 18, 2026

John 16, 29-33

The disciples said to Jesus, “Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of speech. Now we realize that you know everything and that you do not need to have anyone question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you believe now? Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone. But I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”

“Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of speech.”  It is not easy to discern to what exactly the disciples here responding.  If we read back a bit to their last point of confusion, we have only to see only verses earlier that they did not understand what Jesus meant when he said he was leaving them for a while and that he was going to the Father.  In the verses leading up to the first verse of today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord uses the figure of a woman in labor to help them understand what he meant, and he promises that the prayers of the Apostles would be answered.  And then the Apostles say, “Now you are talking plainly, etc.”  But the fact they do not understand that he is talking to them about his imminent Passion and Death is proven by the lack of alarm in their speech.  It is to them merely as if Jesus has unraveled one of his riddles or parables.  In this case, the Apostles seem to think that the Lord meant, by his talking about leaving them and going to the Father, that he was going off somewhere alone to pray. “Because of this we believe that you came from God.”  They believe that Jesus came from God on account of his devotion to prayer.  It is not a confession of faith that he is the Son of God.

“Do you believe now?”  The Lord knows how far from perfect is their knowledge of him and their belief in him.  He knew that they would flee from the scene of his arrest: “Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone.”  If they truly believed he was the divine Son of God, they would not flee, but because they believed he was only a man, they did.  If he was only a man, his arrest by the Jewish authorities would mean that he could not bring about a new kingdom of Israel and there was no need to support or fight for him (though Peter, just before the arrest, does resist and cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave).  The Apostles saw and heard so much and yet they did not grasp the Lord’s divinity.  The Evangelists emphasize this rather than downplay it in order to show how it is through grace that we believe that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, that he is true God and true man.  This is why we can debate with someone all day long and bring forth the most persuasive proofs, but unless we are praying for the other person, our attempts to convince him of the truth will fail.

“You will leave me alone.”  The Lord suffered terribly from the hatred of the Pharisees and the tortured of the Romans, but his abandonment by his Apostles hurt him very deeply.

“But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.”  The Lord Jesus speaks here of the intimate and eternal union he has with the Father.  

“I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”  The Lord consoles the Apostles beforehand for their grief and remorse at having abandoned — and even denied — him.  “In the world you will have trouble”, pertains, first, to the time between their abandonment of him and the announcement of the Resurrection.  They will suffer.  But they are to take courage and to be of good hope because even now, he has “conquered” the world.  That is, he foresees his conquest of sin and death, and their defeat is so near st hand that it seems to have already taken place.  His words also pertain to their life after Pentecost when they will endure much in order to spread the Gospel.  Through his conquest of the world he invites them to share in his victory.  We can understand this as encouraging us, who, at times, struggle to do the will of God in our lives and to obey his commandments.  By his victory over sin and death he has opened the gates of heaven for us.  Our longing for heaven and the Lord’s sweet company are enough to carry us through the hardest of times.