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The Lord's feeling for the crowds and the action he takes speak to what health and holiness is. We believe health and holiness are when everything works as it is designed to do. Sickness and sin are inhibitors of the Creator’s design. We should just recognise that sickness and sin are used by God to make himself known to us: a sudden cure or a quick turn reveal the hand of God. But apart from that, there remain those times when we must contend with sickness and sin. Then, we put ourselves into the hands of a physician, whether medical or spiritual, and look for restoration. So, health and holiness are when we are untroubled, when we live harmoniously in ourselves and with our neighbour. Bernini's Salvator Mundi. Image by Livioandronico2013: Licence. So, the sight of so many in Israel contending with sickness or sin or both is evidence of the divine plan not being fulfilled. They evidence those people as not yet free. And the Lord felt for them. He was eviscerated for them, even gutted. And because he was gutted for the sick and sinful, the Lord acted. But, at this point in the Gospel he is not yet risen from the dead, and so in his humanity can only be in one place at one time. Therefore, he commits his authority to the Twelve in just two areas: curing disease and exorcisms, and so also sin. The Twelve do not need authority to calm storms or curse victories or multiply bread and fish to remove the inhibitors to the Creator’s design. But they do need authority to act on and enact the Lord's compassion for the sick and sinners. He was gutted for them, and the Twelve act for him. Similarly, the Twelve are sent just to Israel. This is not yet the ministry of reconciliation and evangelization. They do not go to monotheist Samaritans, nor yet are they in front of polytheists. That mission will come after the resurrection, when the Lord in full possession of his authority sends them out to all the world. The Twelve therefore are emissaries of divine compassion. For now, they deal just with sickness and sin in Israel. The field of mission will be opened up once they have learned how to work for the one whom we know will rise from the dead. We are shown in this episode how compassion and authority work together. On one hand, compassion without authority is just nice sentiment, well-placed feeling in worse experience, positive vibes, and a failure to act. On the other hand, authority without compassion is unmoved by suffering, indifferent to circumstances, aloof, and also a failure to act. Jesus’ compassion and authority come together in a most wonderful way. His compassion and authority have already been at work for some time by now. And now, by committing to them authority to cast out devils and to cure sickness, he extends his compassion through the Twelve, so that all will know that there is a God in Israel, that he is God with us. Our task is to grow in compassion and to grow in recognising the full extent of our authority. It was important to the revelation of the Kingdom that just Twelve received authority to enact the Lord's compassion. That power over the natural order is given, but more rarely. But it remains important for the spread of the Kingdom now revealed that every one of the Lord's disciples does all that they can. They do nothing more than they can, and nothing less than that. To grow in compassion, we need to dedicate time to others. We need to dedicate time to the Lord in prayer and time to the Lord in his people. And over that time, we’ll soon see what he does. Remember, authority without compassion is aloof and a failure to act. We can remedy that aloofness by being with others. To grow in recognising our authority, we must use our faith to see how the Lord won the victory for us. He defeated death, our enemy, so we are uninhibited to approach his heaven. His victory means nothing stands in the way of our resurrection except what we put back. So, we must recognise what the Lord has done for us, and what inhibitors our neighbour is up against that we can remove. Remember, compassion without authority is just positive vibes and a failure to act. We can remedy that vain positivity by drawing on the Lord’s gifts to us. May the Lord grant us wisdom and insight to see as he sees and to act as he acts. May he remind us of our baptismal authority to live for him in every way: all this, so that all will know that Jesus is God with us. To whom be the glory for ever. Amen. Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria.

In order to realise the importance of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist one could appeal to the rather in depth theology of the Church. However the full power of what we celebrate at the altars in our Churches comes from the experience of the saints and those holy men and women who realised the true mystery and power of Christ’s abiding presence in his Body and Blood. One of these holy ones was Cardinal Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, the heroic former archbishop of Saigon who was imprisoned by the communist forces in Vietnam for 13 years, including nine in solitary confinement. It was in solitary confinement that he remarkably was able to celebrate Mass right under the nose of his captors. Cardinal Van Thuan’s priestly vocation was discovered as a young boy participating in the various activities of the Eucharistic Crusade movement in his hometown of Hue, Vietnam. Later, as a seminarian, priest, seminary professor, rector and bishop, his Eucharistic faith and piety grew. But it was during his years of imprisonment that he gave an extraordinary testimony to the power of the Mass, the reality of the Lord’s presence, and the gift of Eucharistic adoration. When he was arrested in 1975, one of his greatest concerns was, “Will I be able to celebrate the Eucharist?” The day after his arrest, his captors permitted him to write his family for necessities. He asked for the obvious, like clothes and toiletries, but then added, “Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomachache,” confident that they would understand the code: the raw materials for the celebration of Mass, which he needed to fill his greatest hunger. When they sent the materials, they put wine in a medicine bottle marked “Medicine for Stomach-aches.” They also sent hosts hidden in a flashlight. Each day during his years of isolation, around 3pm, the time at which Jesus died on the cross, he would celebrate Mass from memory, putting three drops of wine and a drop of water on the palm of his hand together with some crumbs of the hosts. His hand became an altar. His cell became a cathedral. “These were the most beautiful Masses of my life!” he said with great devotion each time he would recount the story. It was during those Masses that he joined his sufferings to Christ’s on Calvary. He would extend his hands in the form of the cross so as better to become one with the Crucified Jesus. As he lapped up the precious blood consecrated in his hand, he would ask for the grace with Jesus to drink the bitter chalice and to unite himself to Christ’s shedding of blood. When he was moved to a re-education camp, he was in a crowded room with 50 other prisoners. He would wait until lights were extinguished at 9:30pm and then would bow over his bed to celebrate Mass. Then he would distribute tiny pieces of the hosts to Catholics present under a mosquito net. He would also wrap some tiny consecrated particles in aluminum from cigarette packs to preserve the Blessed Sacrament, so that he and the other prisoners could have the Lord with them always and adore him. One tiny cigarette-paper tabernacle he would keep in his shirt pocket. Others he would pass to faithful Catholic prisoners, who, during indoctrination sessions, would surreptitiously distribute them to Catholics in other groups. At night, in each of the locations, prisoners would take turns for adoration. These narratives of Eucharistic piety put us to shame. How deep is our faith in Christ’s Presence among us? It would seem that when something so central to our faith life is taken away it becomes all the more important, this is what Cardinal Van Thuan experienced. May we not take our Eucharistic Lord’s presence for granted, but rather let us be aware of his abiding presence in our tabernacles that enables us to speak to our God regularly and without hindrance. Let us speak to him and love him in this sacrament always. Fr Mannes Tellis, OP is the Parish Priest of Prospect-North Adelaide, South Australia.

Believing in God is a risky affair. Pick the wrong God, and it's over. Israel alone enjoys the certainty of revelation: the true God made himself known to them. We know that many of our Old Testament heroes and heroines spoke with God. Moses, for example, saw the Burning Bush and was given the tablets of God’s perfect law. This revelation by God gives us far superior knowledge of him than we can arrive at by ourselves. When it comes to believing in God, we take up what Israel has long known about him by revelation. Taking up God's revelation to Israel for ourselves entails responsibilities: we must serve him well. In this, Moses’ response is exemplary: he falls to his knees, and asks for forgiveness and adoption, mercy and love. What angers God more than anything else is idolatry. Introducing a false god brings on the divine love of a betrayed spouse or a disavowed parent. For their idolatries, the Israelites suffered humiliation and exile, famine and death. So, talk of there being a Son of God is perilous. Israel’s monotheism will not tolerate such a human intrusion into divine faith. God's anger is sure to follow for those who say there is a Son of God and for those who allow that talk to go on. And then we are reassured: no one who believes in the Son of God will be condemned, but all who refuse to believe are condemned already, because they have refused to believe in God's only Son. To prove this claim of his, the Son of God puts his life on the line: he dies on the cross. And being restored to life in the glory of the resurrection, he becomes for us the source of all-truth. If the one who rose from the dead is untrue, nothing is true. And because he speaks truly, the Son of God is teaching us well and for our good. This is grace, the prevailing condition of divine favour towards us. We do not live in fear of getting God wrong, but in loving reverence towards him who wants to be known. The Father answered Moses’ prayer for forgiveness and adoption in the most wonderful way. He sent his Son from heaven to earth to take flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit. When blood and water flowed from his side as he lay dead on the cross, there was mercy in endless supply and rich grace to adopt many children through baptism. By this great Easter act, we know God as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So, we put our faith not in our own power to deduce God's essence for ourselves (because then we would come up with the least bad option). But rather we put our faith in God, who shows himself on Calvary as the God of mercy and love, all so that we would know him and love him, and one day join him in heaven. It is a mistake, then, to think of faith as just an intellectual action or process. If we say faith is only in the mind, that would be like saying marriage is only when she says Yes to the ring-bearing boy. Faith is sharing our mortal life with the eternal God. We who believe in him live through him, with him, and in him. And from this, we have to ask ourselves: how would believers live? Given that we accept what God has told us about himself, how do we then live in him? Those who trust others share their experiences, do favours for each other, invite each other. And those who believe in God do likewise: they pray to him, do works in his name, and above all worship him, which means coming to Sunday Mass every week to have our faith nourished. Even if some part of us is riddled with questions, we must still reach out in trust towards God in mercy and love. I assure you, there is an answer for every question if we ask in faith. We are now on our way towards the altar, from which we shall receive the sacred body of Christ. This is the high price that was paid so that we would know in the Holy Spirit that the Son of God speaks truth about his Father. The Son of God is about to become one with us, so that the Father will recognise his beloved Son in us through the Holy Spirit. May we always receive the Son of God in living faith and so obtain the mercy and love Moses sought long ago, and so have hope of arriving at our final destination: the heaven of the blessed Trinity. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria

You may have seen a movie in which a woman is in childbirth. Not much is shown, but we hear things: the mother groaning and gasping in labour, midwives offering encouragement, sounds of bystanders anxious, worried, apprehensive. And then there is one sound that resolves all the tension and brings it to a happy ending: the cry of the newborn baby. If the baby is crying, then the baby is breathing, and has thus made the absolutely essential first step to adjusting to life outside the womb. Our birthday is not the day we being to live, for we have already been alive for nine months since our conception. Our birthday is the day we begin to breathe. This observation can help us to understand why we celebrate Pentecost as the birthday of the Church, and not as the anniversary day of it founding. The Church was in existence long before Pentecost, right from the days when Peter and Andrew left their nets to follow Jesus, but it was in an embryonic state. Throughout his public ministry, Jesus enables this Church to develop and achieve a more recognisable form: he chooses the twelve, he sends the disciples out to preach and to heal, he gives the keys to Peter, he instructs them about correction, forgiveness and leadership, he institutes the sacraments of Eucharist and baptism. But the Church as a whole is not yet received the Holy Spirit. As the child in the womb is totally dependent upon the breathing of the mother, so the disciples were reliant upon the Holy Spirit as it rested not on them, but on Jesus. It is Jesus, filled with the Spirit, alive in the Spirit, who is the source of their life and power. And like the child, who does not begin to breathe until physically separated from the mother, so also the Church does not breathe the Holy Spirit until Christ has separated himself from her by his ascension. As Luke describes it, the Spirit fills the house, symbolizing the Church as the home that shelters and cares for all the believers, and each of the believers is filled, as symbolized by the tongues of fire resting on the head of each of them. Like human beings, fires need to breathe. The fire of love that warms our hearts and brightens our faces with joy is only kept alive through the breath of the Spirit. We can understand the relationship between the house being filled and all the disciples being filled if we reflect upon the role of Mary. Mary is mentioned in the previous chapter of Acts as present with the other disciples as they prayed in the house. Mary is also present in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, in which the Holy Spirit is at work in her so that she can give birth to the one who is pre-eminently filled with the Holy Spirit. In a parallel way, the Church, symbolized by the house, is filled with the Holy Spirit so that she can give birth to Christian, other christs, filled with the Spirit, as at the end of this episode the Church, through the ministry of the apostles, baptizes three thousand new disciples, and the Holy Spirit comes upon each of them. What does it mean to breathe the Holy Spirit? In today’s Gospel Jesus breathes on his disciples, inviting them to breathe as he breathes. It is the breath of the risen One, of the One who lives for ever, and at the same time it is the breath of forgiveness, the breath that brings peace and reconciliation. For us to breathe the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit that raised him to eternal life and which raise us to, is to breathe forgiveness. To harbour resentment, to hold grudges, to refuse to forgive, is to breathe something that is not of Jesus, to inhale poisonous fumes and noxious gases and acrid smoke; it chokes our life and causes peace to wither. It is only in this peace and forgiveness that the disciples of Jesus can live in one house or, as Paul tells the Corinthians in the second reading, live together as members of the one body of Christ, not envious of the gifts of others, but rejoicing in the way that the Holy Spirit enriches the whole body through gifts given to each member. For the Spirit that Jesus breathes over his disciples on Easter Sunday evening is the same Spirit that Jesus “handed over” on the Cross on Good Friday. It is the Spirit that glorifies the Son in the glory of the Father through the act of perfect love. For greater love has no one than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. It is the same Spirit that at each Mass we invoke on the bread and the wine, so that they may become the living and life-giving body and blood of Christ, bringing all the disciples together into one body, one Church. As we drink from the chalice may we be intoxicated by the Spirit that it breathes forth. For the disciples, too, were intoxicated by the Holy Spirit that Pentecost Sunday as they spoke the wonders of God. And just as the cry of the innocent baby transcends all languages to touch the hearts of all who hear, so may the Holy Spirit inspire in us words and deeds of love that all people can understand, to unite our divided world in the praise of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP is the Catholic Chaplain of Monash University and a theology lecturer in Catholic Theological College, Melbourne.

Today’s feast marks a watershed moment in the history of salvation. It marks an end and a beginning. It is like a hinge on which turns God’s plan of salvation for humanity. We see this in the readings. In the Gospel, we heard the last words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, just before his Ascension. And in the First Reading, we heard the first words of the Acts of the Apostles, and the last words of Jesus as he ascended. So, the Ascension is like a hinge which connects the ministry of Jesus on earth, recounted in the Gospels, to his continuing ministry through his disciples, in the Acts of the Apostles. The image of a hinge is an interesting one, since it describes how two things can be joined together, connected. But perhaps there is a better image. After all, today’s feast is called the “Ascension,” and, as Paul says in his Letter to the Ephesians, if he “ascended,” that must mean he “descended.” Perhaps we can find a vertical image, rather than a horizontal one. In fact, we do find a very apt image for this all the way back in Genesis, the very first book of the Bible. In chapter 28, we read that Jacob, the son of Isaac, had a dream, “And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!” A ladder, in a sense, by its nature, is in two places at once. It joins together, and provides passage, between a lower and a higher place. Jacob’s ladder is a portal, if you like, between heaven and earth, whereby holy things, represented here as angels, enter into the world from heaven, and by which holy things, perhaps holy people, enter heaven from earth. Jacob calls this place where the ladder is found the “House of God” (Bethel)”, and the “Gate of Heaven”. Like many images and stories in the Old Testament, this is interesting, but quite mysterious. What, or rather who, could this ladder be? We find the answer, as always, in the New Testament, in this case, in the Gospel of John. If you remember, in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, Nathanael meets Jesus for the first time, and Jesus makes clear that he already knew Nathanael when he saw him under the fig tree. Nathanael is astounded at this. He says, “You are the Son of God, the King of Israel!” Jesus says to him, “You will see greater things than these. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." We see, then, that the Son of man is the ladder—Jesus is the ladder between heaven and earth. He is also the Gate of Heaven, as he says himself in John’s Gospel, “I am the gate”. He is the gate through whom the sheep, who hear his voice, enter into eternal life. He is also the House of God, Bethel—he contains in himself the fullness of divinity, in a human body, and everyone who is found in him, who dwells in him, God dwells in that person, and that person in God. He is the one who came down from heaven, who joined heaven to earth. The eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, divine Person of the Holy Trinity, Son of God, descended from heaven, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. He became one of us, became as we are. Today, we celebrate the entrance of that man, as a human being, as one of us, into heaven, to sit at the right hand of God. By this act he has joined earth to heaven, and heaven to earth, and established an unbreakable link between the two, which is himself, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Now, the salient question is: How do we climb this ladder? Well, this is perhaps where the limitations of this particular image appear. We don’t climb the ladder; rather, we are incorporated into the ladder, into Christ, an incorporation which takes place at Baptism. And so, like Christ, we are already present in heaven and citizens of heaven, as members of his Body. We do, however, need to remain in him, to be found in him, especially at death. If we are a citizen of heaven in this life, then so will we be in the next life. To do this, we need to follow his commandments, which is the same thing as to live as he did. But, to live like Jesus … How can we poor, weak humans do this? The answer to that question lies in next week’s solemnity, Pentecost, when Jesus gives his Spirit to us, his Body, so that we can live like him, and carry out his mission in the world. Jesus only began his mission during his earthly life—he continues it through his Church by clothing her with power from on high. In anticipation of the celebration of Pentecost, today we turn to the way that Jesus renews and strengthens the baptismal bond between us and him, which is in the Eucharist. This, if you like, is the foot of the ladder, which remains on earth and connects us to heaven. When we look up at the Eucharist during the elevation, we look up from this veil of tears, where Christ remains with us, to our destiny, which is in heaven. When we receive him today, let us ask him to give us a foretaste of heaven, to renew the grace of our Baptism within us, so that we remain in him, until that day when we go to our true home, as citizens, already, of heaven. Fr Matthew Boland, OP is the Master of Students, assigned to St Dominic's Priory, Melbourne.

Jesus is going away. In today’s Gospel, he is going towards his death on the Cross. In the liturgical year, he is ascending back to heaven to take his seat at the Father’s right hand. Jesus says that he is going to send his disciples the Holy Spirit so as not to leave them orphans. But the Holy Spirit is not given instead of Jesus, a substitute to make up for his absence. Jesus himself will return to his disciples through the gift of the Holy Spirit. His disciples will know Jesus and continue to see him because they are transformed by the Holy Spirit into images of Jesus. We may even say that the Holy Spirit makes them, makes us, into Christs. Because the Holy Spirit enables us to love Christ, and to love Christ with the love of friendship, and a friend, as Aristotle says, is a second self. This is what Jesus means when he speaks of being in us and us in him. This is why he makes love a matter of obeying his commandments, not because love leads to a kind of slavery, but because friendship leads us to make our friend’s good will our own. But as with any other friendship, it is not enough to put forth beautiful rhetoric about it. We need to grow in this friendship in the real world and live it through our actions. Peter, in his letter, speaks about reverencing the Lord Christ in our hearts, and having an answer for those who demand a reason for the hope we have. But first of all, we need to work at making Christ dwell in our hearts, grow in our own hope until people can see it in what we do. The first way we do it, the way we grow in any friendship, is to devote our time and to get to know God in study and prayer. The two of these go with each other. We need to learn about the Christ we worship. We need to read and pray with the Bible through which he speaks to us, learn the teachings of the Church, and become familiar with Jesus as our friend in the Eucharist, and through our personal prayer. This is not just something we do once, or something we can relax in having attained, at least not on this earth. Often the first demand for an account of our hope in Christ is made by our own hearts. Unless we are growing in our friendship with Christ, unless we are growing in our hope, we are going backwards. But friendship involves not just watching and getting to know our friends as spectators. It involves doing things for them and with them. Having become familiar with Christ, we constantly need to make Jesus’ will, his love, our own by prayer, and by listening to what the Church asks of us. And when we know it, we need to put it into action, sharing in our words and our works God’s love for everyone we meet. In this way, we invite others into the friendship we have ourselves entered, beginning with the people immediately around us, the people we live with and meet every day. We can go further: if we genuinely believe that friendship with Christ is the most profound thing in our life, that Christ himself desires the whole world to enter into that friendship, it cannot be a private personal relationship. We have an obligation to invite others into that friendship. Unless our friendship with Christ is shared with others, it is in danger of becoming cold and dying. Of course, this will involve sharing Jesus’ Cross to which he is heading as he speaks the words of today’s Gospel. It will involve accepting suffering, often undeserved. It will involve sharing the slander and rejection to which Jesus himself is subject. But to the extent that we actually do this, Jesus has not left us. We can see him and know him, because we are living in him, and he in and through us. Fr Robert Krishna, OP teaches Biblical Studies at Holy Name of Mary Seminary, Honiara, Solomon Islands and is currently assigned to St Laurence's Priory, North Adelaide, South Australia.

We are often told to ‘be true to ourselves.’ It can be found in the carefully curated images on social media that pose the question: “What version of myself do I want others to see?” It can be the common lived expression of “I just need to be true to myself.” Or it can be manifested in the ‘drop everything and reinvent your life’ narrative. Even in the “You do you”. These statements are portrayed as attractive. They sound freeing as opportunities of maturity, ownership, and authenticity. However the question arises: which self? The one I was ten years ago? The one I am today? The one I will be tomorrow? If I must build my own truth, then I must constantly rebuild my life—and that is a burden. It is not surprising that many people are exhausted by it. If everything depends on my way, then I must constantly decide the direction of my life. If everything depends on my truth, then I must constantly justify what I believe. If everything depends on my life, then I must constantly hold it together. Certainly, a heavy burden. Into that world, Christ speaks—not with a suggestion, but with a claim: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” This is not a way among many, nor one truth among others, nor a path that might suit some. Christ speaks in the singular. This is precisely where this Gospel becomes difficult and where it becomes liberating. Thomas asks a very practical question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” He is thinking of a path—something mapped out, something you can follow step by step. Jesus, however, does not give him directions. He gives him Himself. “I am the Way.” In other words, the Christian life is not first about finding the right path. It is about following a person. The modern instinct is to say: I will choose my way. I will determine my direction. But Christ says: You will not find the way by looking within yourself. You will find it by walking with Me. That requires something difficult: it requires letting go of control. But it also removes a burden. You do not have to invent your life. You are called to follow. Jesus’ second phrase, ‘I am the truth’ brings us to something even more confronting. We live in a time where people speak of “my truth.” Truth becomes something personal, something shaped by experience, something that can shift. But in the Gospel of John, truth is not something we create. Truth is something—Someone—who is revealed. When Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father,” Jesus answers almost with a kind of sorrow: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me?” To see Christ is to see the Father. To hear Christ is to hear the Father. Truth is not an idea detached from life. It is not simply a set of teachings. It is God made visible in Christ. So the question is not: ‘What do I think is true?’ It becomes: ‘Am I willing to receive the truth as it is given in the person of Jesus?’ That can be unsettling. Because it means I do not stand above reality, judging it. But it is also freeing. Because I am no longer trapped in my own shifting interpretations. Often we speak of “living my life”—as though life were something we possess, something we shape entirely on our own terms. But in the Gospel, life is not something we generate. It is something we receive. The life that Christ speaks of is not just biological existence. It is not simply a full or successful life. It is participation in the very life of God. This life comes in a way that seems almost paradoxical. It comes not through grasping, but through surrender; not through self-assertion, but through abiding in Christ; not through securing everything for myself, but through entrusting myself to Him. This is why the saints speak of losing their life in order to find it. The life Christ gives is greater than the one we try to construct. The contrast is clear for us to see. The world says: Find your way. Speak your truth. Live your life. Christ says: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. That is I don’t have to invent the way, nor construct the truth, nor secure my life. This is the invitation into communion with God that grants us freedom. At the beginning of this Gospel, Jesus says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It is grounded in this reality: that the One who calls us is Himself the Way to the Father, the Truth who reveals the Father, and the Life who shares the Father’s own being. So perhaps the most important question is not whether we understand these words. It is whether we are willing to let them reorder our lives. The statements by Jesus about himself become a type of examination of conscience: Do I still insist on my way rather than follow Him? Do I cling to my truth rather than receiving His? Do I seek to control my life rather than entrusting it to Him? This where the Gospel becomes real, because Christ does not simply offer guidance; He offers Himself. As St. Peter recounts to us in the second reading that Christ is the keystone: “The Lord is the living stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him.” Fr Anthony Walsh, OP is the Master of Novices, assigned to St Laurence's Priory, North Adelaide, South Australia.

We need a God who doesn’t need us. Our needs are big and simple: from God we need life and we need our mortality to be dealt with. If we have a God who needs us, he will be too weak to satisfy those needs. How could we follow someone who is looking to us for his needs, we who live just until our mortality gets the better of us. No, we need a God who doesn’t need us. The Lord warns us that whatever, whoever is not himself will steal, kill, and destroy us. That doesn’t have to happen all at once. A thief who steals something from our home every day until there’s nothing left is no less a thief than the one who takes everything in one hit. Think of other religions and philosophies of life, and how they meet our needs. They do not bestow life. They do not overcome our mortality. And so, bit by bit, they rob their adherents of life. They need us to bring life to them, without which they do not exist. Their genius lies in being able to change the way we feel without changing us at our most fundamental level. Bit by bit, if we belong to them, we are stolen away, killed off, and destroyed. But we have Christ and he has us. He needs nothing from us, but rather gives us everything. He is the Word through whom all things were made. Christ is the rising Son of God whose day is dawning in us even now. He gives over the life we need, rather than grabbing it out of our hands. Christ conquered our mortality and grants a share in that victory to all who ally themselves to him. Bit by bit, we are coming alive in Christ. The final resurrection is indeed coming for those who belong to him. If we repent of our sins, put our faith in him, and do good, we shall rise as Christ has risen. But the final resurrection isn’t the only way we rise. We also rise under grace, when we become more and more the best version of ourselves. The evidence for this will be a comparison you make with yourself as you were a decade ago. Similarly, please God, you will be an even greater person in a decade from now. And so, we are inching towards Christ’s eternity even now, by his work in us, by his work on us. This Good Shepherd Sunday, we shall be praying for priests, more priests, and better priests. We have such need of men made strong by Christ, who will pass on heaven’s gifts during their ministry. For we are to rise up to greater heights while we yet live and take into our mortal bodies the living Christ, who alone meets our needs. He who does not need us yet wants us, and calls priests to be ardent and gentle pastors after his own heart. To whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. Alleluia. Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria.

One of the many perverse events of the French Revolution was its regular public executions, at which crowds would gather to watch and cheer. A famous exception was the execution of the sixteen Carmelite sisters of Compiegne, when the crowd reportedly watched in silence. They seemed to realise that something truly horrific was happening, as they watched the sisters praying, singing, and kissing the statue of Our Lady, before they went up the scaffold to the guillotine. It is not quite the same story at the crucifixion of Jesus. Rather than watching in silence, we are told that the crowd and the passersby were shouting at him and mocking him as he died. But the aftermath was different. After the darkness that came over the land, after the earthquake, after seeing the blood and water that came from the side of Jesus, and having heard the forgiving and comforting words that he spoke, the centurion and those with him declared, “this was truly the son of God.” Then the crowds returned home in a state of sorrow, beating their breasts with – we can guess – shame, remorse, and horror. That is in the background of the passage that is today’s first reading, Peter’s sermon to the crowd on the day of Pentecost. Among the crowd, it seems, are those who were complicit in the death of Jesus. When Peter accuses them – “You killed him” – it is possible that he means you as a people. But far more likely is that standing in front of him are people who were directly complicit in the death of Jesus: “This man … you took and had crucified by men outside the Law.” The next time he addresses the crowd, after the healing of the man lame from birth, he acknowledges that they did not know what they were doing: “I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.” And, he could have added, I know many of you were horrified afterwards at everything that took place. With these accusations, Peter prepares the ground for a critical religious and moral question: what do you do when you've done something really awful? What do you do when you are carrying the kind of guilt that makes you beat your breast in shame? If today’s first reading went for a little longer, we would have heard the people ask almost exactly this. They are, we are told, “cut to the heart”, and say to Peter and the apostles, “What do we do?” The first word Peter says to them in response is – “Repent.” What is involved in that? First it means looking at what it is you have done, and seeing it rightly; that is, not seeing it as laudable, nor morally neutral, nor something to be explained away or excused. It means seeing the action as the evil action that it is, turning away from it with sorrow, and turning towards God with a humbled and contrite heart. That’s a long version of “repent”. But putting things right will always start there, and in placing that at the forefront of his message, Peter is following the tradition of John the Baptist and Jesus before him, both of whom began their preaching ministries with the message of repentance. Peter delivers his message as a sermon. Over the rest of Eastertide we will often hear sermons and excerpts of sermons from the Acts of the Apostles, first from Peter, and later from Paul. Without fail they ground their explanations of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the context of Old Testament prophecy. Again, they are following the example of Jesus, who in our Gospel reading for today explains the scriptures to a depressed but receptive pair of disciples. The disciples’ reflection, “did not our hearts burn within us”, is something that many disciples since have experienced. It can be exhilarating to hear someone who knows the scriptures well, to explain how the Old Testament foreshadows the life and deeds of Jesus. And even though we are very unlikely to experience this in every Mass, every Mass still engages both head and heart. We begin with the collective act of repentance that is the Penitential Rite. In the Liturgy of the Word, we listen to the scriptures proclaimed and explained. Our response to the readings is words of gratitude and praise. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, a joyful act of thanksgiving to God, like today’s disciples we recognise Jesus in the breaking of the bread – “Behold, the Lamb of God.” We end the Mass with those familiar words of gratitude, “Thanks be to God.” What Jesus did for these disciples on the road to Emmaus was not a one-off. He continues to guide, to accompany, to teach, and to make himself present for us in the breaking of the bread. Fr James Baxter, OP is the Parish Priest of Broadway, Glebe, and Pyrmont, New South Wales.

In these first weeks of Easter we see the paschal candle in all its glory. Taller than it will be as the year goes by, during Eastertide it is lit at all Masses, and until Pentecost it is always placed in a prominent place near the altar or ambo. Go up close to the candle and you will see the sign of the cross either carved into it or painted onto it. You will see the calendar year, and the Greek alpha and the omega, showing that Christ is the beginning and end of all history. You will also see five little sticks that are filled with incense. Those sticks were placed there a week ago at the Easter Vigil, just before the candle was lit. The priest placed the five sticks into the candle in the shape of a cross, saying, “By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ the Lord guard us and protect us.” His holy and glorious wounds. When we think deeply over the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, why he did what he did and appeared how he appeared, eventually we arrive at the question of why Jesus had any wounds at all after his resurrection. It would surely have been more fitting to his complete victory over evil for his body to be perfected, with all wounds totally healed. Instead, he is still carrying the scars of the awful torture of the crucifixion. Why? He doesn’t tell us, but one reason is surely to show his disciples, and Thomas in particular, that it is really him. Thomas needs some persuading. He is the one who says he must put his finger and hand into the holes that the spear and nails made. Only then will he believe. It can seem such a reasonable and even prudent stance to take. It isn’t. Break the stance down, and what Thomas does is demand that Jesus accommodate himself to the conditions for belief that Thomas himself has created. It’s an amazing demand, but for us a very helpful one. Thomas’ exchange with the other disciples reveals something about the nature of belief. To believe is not just an act of the intellect, but it is an act of the intellect at the command of the will. I can choose to believe or not to believe. In a negative way, Thomas’ words are the best possible demonstration of this: “I refuse to believe.” That is an act of the will, with more than a trace of stubbornness behind it. The extraordinary thing is that Jesus goes along with this. He meets Thomas at the conditions for faith that Thomas has created. It is the sight of his wounds that breaks this stubbornness down. ( Homily continued below image ) The wounds, though, are much more than proof that the risen Jesus is the same man who died on the cross. That prayer at the Easter vigil calls them “his holy and glorious wounds”. They are not part of the imperfection of Jesus that he needs healing from. Quite the opposite. The suffering of Jesus revealed the perfection of his love and obedience, and the wounds are signs of this. That is why St Bede famously says the wounds of Christ are like trophies, because they are signs of his glory. And far from being wounds that are in need of healing, they themselves heal. On Good Friday we heard in the first reading the prophecy from Isaiah about the suffering servant: “Ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried … through his wounds we are healed” (Is 53:4-5). Years after the resurrection, that is what St Peter will say about Jesus: “He himself bore our sins … by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Pet 2:24) When Peter and the other disciples see the risen Jesus doing things like making a fire, cooking breakfast, eating bread and fish, and generally doing very physical and ordinary things, it is to show them that he is not a ghost – he is a fully alive human being. But when they also see him still bearing his wounds, they can see before them all the glory of the paschal mystery – the passion, the death, and the resurrection of Christ. And every time we look at the paschal candle over the weeks ahead and notice those little sticks of incense, we can see them as the little trophies that they are – the signs of Christ’s glory. Fr James Baxter, OP is the Parish Priest of Broadway, Glebe, and Pyrmont, New South Wales.

What does Resurrection mean? At this moment in our world there is, no doubt, the feeling that death and destruction are more apparent than the focus of the religious festivity we celebrate at Easter. What does resurrection mean then in the face of war, death, destruction, the cost-of-living crisis, and the spectre of our country possibly running out of fuel? The response to the historic problem of human suffering and disappointment can take only two paths. The first is that of the Existentialist. The Existentialist paradigm posits that reality is meaningless and the only way to untangle this web is to will one’s way out of it. A recent commentator framed this project, devised by the nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in these words: Nietzsche’s own solution to meaninglessness is that if even prior to the deformations produced by Christianity man would rather “will nothingness than not will”, ...the will to power in its original disposition is also in some profound way the will to meaning.(Michael Casey, Meaninglessness: The Solutions of Nietzsche, Freud and Rorty, North Melbourne, Freedom Press, 2001, p.23) To escape the horror and reality of suffering one is faced either with constructing a way out of suffering, a DIY meaning, like that proposed by Nietzsche, or embracing it head on, not denying it, but realising that in fact suffering does have meaning and does indeed allow for a sharing in the very life of God. Unlike the approach of Nietzsche who, rather optimistically seeks only a human way out of the suffering of this world based on the triumph of the will, it is Our Lord Jesus Christ however who provides an alternative to the dismay of human suffering. This response is found in the gritty reality of suffering in Christ’s own body. It is this Christ who is paradoxically both God and man, simultaneously Life entering death, that engages in this wonderful conflict, the conflict of death wrestling with life, with suffering wrestling with a meaning. The net result of the Christ project being that death is in fact turned inside out, and thus, the last enemies of man, suffering and death, strangely become the gateway to unending life. This new life of Jesus is qualified by an important distinction however, namely, that the eternal life Christ offers is not an interminable ‘this’ life but an eternal unalloyed joy of the ‘other’. The ‘other’ is God’s own life, God’s own time. This reality cannot be totally comprehended this side of heaven but suffering and the disillusionment of this world do indeed contribute to the essence of this new existence offered in Christ. Once again, the paradox of Christianity presents itself in that, perhaps, we may only be able to relish more acutely heavenly glory because of the wounds of this world, the war, the death, the cost of living, the tiredness, all the vicissitudes of this life. How can one know the true meaning of victory if one hasn’t experienced the depth of despair found in defeat? Today is our Victory day. The events of the Passion provide the dramatic and necessary backdrop to the Resurrection. We note that without Christ’s wounds, which persist even in his glorified body, there would be no evidence of Resurrection’s price. Christ’s wounds then act as an eternal reminder that Resurrection is costly, Resurrection demands a striving, Resurrection is not a prize automatically imputed to us but comes at that price, the price of the sadness and difficulty of this life. Thus, the wounds of Christ in his Resurrected body hold that, despite the previously enumerated woes, there is hope, there is joy, there is peace, but not without those difficulties that are a part of human life. By his wounds then we are healed. Resurrection means there is hope beyond despair. Fr Mannes Tellis, OP is the Parish Priest of Prospect-North Adelaide, South Australia.

This evening, the Solemn Vigil of the Sunday of the Most Holy Resurrection of the Lord, we are at the very centre, the very heart of the faith, the prayer, and the life of the Church, the assembly of all those who by faith are incorporated into Christ. Easter Sunday is the feast of feasts. The first Christian communities had only one annual feast, Easter Sunday, which was echoed in all of the other Sundays of the year – each Sunday is first and foremost a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. The other feasts and seasons grew up around Easter Sunday, Lent before and Eastertide afterwards. All of these other liturgical observances either look forward to Easter Sunday or look back to it. The liturgical calendar is like a giant set of concentric circles, with Easter Sunday at the centre. It is a bit like the solar system – with all of the planets and moons and asteroid belts and so on rotating around the life-giving and light-shedding sun of Easter Sunday. What Sunday is to the week, Easter Sunday is to the entire year of praise and worship. For us as the people who seek to know, to love and to follow the Lord Jesus and have come to worship God, His Father and ours, here in this church of St Dominic at East Camberwell, there is no earthly place more sacred than this space right here and there is no earthly time more sacred than this time right now. The resurrection of our beloved Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, is the turning point of all time and all space. It is the great pivot of the entire sweep of history and the cosmos. The new and glorious life of the risen Christ is the focal point and the summit of the whole of existence. It was for the sake of the resurrection of the sacred humanity of His Son in time and space that almighty God created the universe of time and space in the first place. Christ is the logos, the plan, the reason, the wisdom through which all things exist. God created time, matter and space so that there could be a resurrection, which depends on time, matter and space. There is no more important time than the time that we are liturgically remembering just now. As we sang earlier in the evening in the Exsultet, the great hymn in praise of the resurrection, “O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and the hour when Christ rose from the underworld.” Our liturgy tonight, whatever imperfections it might have, is a foretaste of the life that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven. In heaven we will be gathered with the vast company of all the angels and saints around God the Father to worship him and to sing the praises of His Son the Christ who, for our sake, was made man, was put to death and was raised to a radiant, shining, triumphant new life, never to die again. That is what we will be doing in heaven and that is what we are doing here in this place and now at this time. Tonight’s liturgy breaks down the barriers between heaven and earth and reminds us that while the life of heaven comes to its perfection and fullness beyond the grave, it is a life which begins and grows here on earth. For us heaven has already begun thanks to the rising of Christ. Easter places great emphasis on baptism. After these words of mine, we will renew our baptismal promises and we will be splashed with the freshly blessed Easter water as a reminder of our own baptism, as a reminder that the life of Christ, which is the life of heaven, has already begun in us. As the followers of our risen Lord, it is our baptismal vocation to allow God to bring to perfection the saving work he has begun in us. We do that by striving to think and act in accordance with the mind of Christ – to live in the light of His example, and, above all, to share the troubles, the burdens and difficulties of those around us in the spirit of the compassion of Christ who died and rose again for us. In heaven now the cross is only a memory, but if we are serious about following the way of Christ, then our daily lives will be frequently lived under the sign of the cross – but this is only a temporary situation. Our hope for our eternal future is held under the sign of the resurrection – and that is what ultimately counts because not the cross but the resurrection is, please God, the final goal and destiny for each one of us. Through union with Christ in His obedience to God and His compassion for others may we come to rise with him in whom we find joy, peace, happiness and delight without end. AMEN. Fr Christopher Dowd, OP is is a lecturer in Church History at Catholic Theological College of the University of Divinity, and is assigned to St Dominic's Priory, Melbourne.