Claire Smith

Scripture:

Acts 11:1-18
John 10:1-10

Reflection:

“But a second time a voice from heaven answered, ‘What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.’ This happened three times, and then everything was drawn up again into the sky”

Every time I read this passage from the Acts of the Apostles, I am reminded of a series of annual performance appraisals that I had during my career at a large industrial manufacturing company.  I had worked for a fellow who was conducting the reviews for many years.  Suddenly, one year after giving me good feedback on almost every aspect of the past year’s performance, he paused and added a comment that caught me completely off guard.  He told me, “You do not listen very well.”  I was stunned.  With thirty years of career experience and as many annual performance reviews, no one had ever told me that I was not a good listener.  I was bewildered, confused and actually a bit frustrated in trying to figure out what that meant.  We chatted about the issue on and off for a while as I tried to figure it out.  But as in today’s first reading, the same comment was made in three successive review periods. 

Over the years after my retirement from the same corporation, when reflecting back on my career, I only remember bits and pieces of the many appraisals that I had.  However, the statement that was made about my listening deficiency resonated with me continuously and I am convinced that it changed my life. 

Yesterday was Good Shepherd Sunday.  In today’s gospel with the same theme Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd who knows his sheep and calls them by name.  The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice.  “The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.”

Now in the twilight of my years, I question myself about how well I am listening to God’s voice.  Those performance appraisals so many years ago resonate with me every day.  How do I hear God’s voice speaking to me?  Do I hear him in my prayer life?  Do I hear him through family and friends who converse about their own daily joys and struggles?  Do I hear him through the poor and the homeless and the needy and the migrants?  Do I hear him through the awareness of those caught up in human trafficking?  Do I hear him through our Passionist family?  Do I hear him in our daily scripture readings?  Do I hear him through the miracles that he works in our lives every day.  Do I hear him with a wandering mind when I am falling asleep at night?  Do I follow the shepherd’s voice as an obedient sheep even if it brings me to the foot of the cross through my own daily struggles?  Am I really listening?

I wonder if Jesus sat with me today for my annual review, would he still tell me that, “You do not listen very well”?  Dear Lord, as my Good Shepherd, I recognize your voice and that you give me innumerable opportunities to listen to it.  Please help me always to be a good listener.

May the Passion of Jesus Christ be always in our hearts!

Bill Berger has had a lifelong relationship with the Passionist Family.  Bill and his wife, Linda, are currently leaders of the Community of Passionist Partners (CPPs) in Houston, Texas.

Good Shepherd Sunday

Scripture:

Acts 13:14, 43-52
Revelation 7:9, 14b-17
John 10:27-30

Reflection:

“Habemus papam!” The Cardinal Deacon proclaimed to the world on May 8, 2025.

About an hour later, the new pope, Leo XIV, stepped out onto the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, looking out to the throng gathered at St. Peter’s Square. The first American pope.

On this day, Good Shepherd Sunday, perhaps it might be just as appropriate to declare: “Habemus pastorem,” We have a shepherd. On this day, we hear Jesus share the beautiful parable of the Good Shepherd with its many consoling truths and promise for all God’s children.

“I am the good shepherd,” Jesus said. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Pope Francis reflected on this passage with these words: “Being a shepherd is not merely a job, but a true and proper way of life, 24 hours a day. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, does not just do something for us, but he gives his life for us.

From his balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo XIV saw not only the cheering crowd gathered below, he also saw an ancient imposing monument in the middle of the square — the Obelisk. This Obelisk originally stood in Nero’s Circus. Many Christians were executed in this circus. Christian tradition holds that the Obelisk was the last thing Peter saw before he died crucified upside down.

At every age of the Church, the figure of the pope stands as the spiritual father, a visible source of unity, and the shepherd appointed by Christ to guide his flock. The Obelisk stands before the pope as a mute reminder that like Peter, he too must lay down his life for the flock.

In our time, Pope Leo XIV, the vicar of Christ and successor to Peter, is our Good Shepherd.

Habemus pastorem.

Deacon Manuel Valencia is on the staff at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

Acts 9:31-42
John 6:60-69

Reflection:

Recently, my son Carl and I got into a late-night conversation about faith. Several years ago, their parish priest was charged with abusing boys. Carl had the horrific task of asking their 7-year-old son whether he was a victim. He wasn’t, but others were. Carl was so incensed over the cover-ups facilitating this behavior that he swore off Catholicism. Then, seeing rampant hypocrisy in religions that exclude people, shun the poor, tolerate and even facilitate injustice, yet proclaim they do it in the name of God, he swore off all organized religion. In fact, he now wonders whether God even exists.

I shared that, for me, God is not a set of doctrines or dogmas, but a real lived experience of presence, for me personally, but also permeating creation. I know with all my being that God not only exists but is here with me and for me, the source of my life, the font of love, and the sustaining power of all that is. Could I believe otherwise? No. Like the disciples, my heart says, “Lord, to whom would I go?”

Carl couldn’t comprehend my certainty without concrete, tangible proof he could touch or see, asserting that believing in something you can’t prove is worthless because anybody could invent any belief they want. He perceives institutional religions doing just that, deciding who and what God is, then controlling adherents by requiring them to believe their version. He wanted proof that my experience of God is not a figment of my imagination, and he doesn’t care that the same experience has been described from the time of antiquity. It could all be dust in the wind.   

I hear this same attitude among so many younger people.  Like Carl, they’re sincerely searching, and something deep within them wants to believe, to know, to connect with something greater and deeper than themselves. But their trust has been shaken, and surrender to God becomes a very risky proposition. (Actually, surrender to God is indeed a vulnerable and risky proposition; it could even lead to the Cross. But that’s another column!)

Our conversation that night ended without resolution for now. We’ll revisit it, and in the meantime, I pray that God use and expand the opening cracks in Carl’s shielded heart, and those in the many others desperate for the Good News. Perhaps part of our mandate this Easter season is to facilitate that crack-opening. I know I can’t make Carl, or anyone believe, even by my best explanations. All I can do is be a continuous witness, faithful source of encouragement, and facilitator of God’s loving power and grace. Then I trust the rest to the Spirit, who works on a divine timeline, not my own.

There are so many hungry hearts in our world. May our prayers, our words, and the example of our lives help God to feed them.

Amy Florian is a teacher and consultant working in Chicago.  For many years she has partnered with the Passionists.  Visit Amy’s website: http://www.corgenius.com/.

Scripture:

Acts 9:1-20
John 6:52-59

Reflection:

Daring to Enter the Conversation

As Jesus concludes speaking of Himself as the Bread of Life, John notes that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

In Houston, Texas, the Rothko Chapel – dimly lit and quiet, with paintings by Rothko on the walls – is an inviting space where you can be enfolded in silence for reflection and prayer.

At the University of Texas at Austin, a building that offers space, explicitly described as not a chapel or religious space by artist Ellsworth Kelly, fills with color as the sun comes in through stained glass windows during the day and glows at night from within. It is a joyful place where mystery can be encountered in light.

A final and fourth space is spoken of by Edith Stein, St. Benedicta of the Cross, who would die in the Auschwitz concentration camp with her sister Rosa and many others of ‘her people’. She says that, of her own volition, as a young Jewish woman, she stopped praying. She brilliantly moved through school, served in a field hospital during WWI and graduated summa cum laude with her doctorate in 1917. During that time, she went to Frankfurt Cathedral and saw a woman with a shopping basket go in and kneel for a brief prayer. “This was something entirely new to me. In the synagogue and Protestant churches I had visited, people simply went to services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot.”

Edith would become a Catholic and a Carmelite religious. How such a simple act of faith and prayer by a woman, stopping by a church to pray, so profoundly influenced her. It is something she never forgot!

Today, Jesus speaks to Saul of Tarsus. What a surprising gift that changes his life for the better. Unimaginable. In the spaces of a synagogue, a chapel and a simply sacred space, God speaks to the hearts of people who seek, and knock and ask.

But Edith was sensitive to a woman whose prayer was an ‘intimate conversation’. In that church the Eucharist was celebrated, reserved in reverence and for the ministry to the sick. It was a place of meeting with Jesus the Bread of life, the one who promises us that we will not go hungry or thirsty.

The Holy Spirit is at work guiding the Church along its path following Christ; taking our offering of bread and wine along with ourselves to the Father, giving us the Body and Blood of Jesus as our spiritual food; and yesterday blessing and surprising us with our new Pope, Leo XIV. No space is so empty that our God cannot fill it, or our hearts with the surprise of overflowing love. Not all continued to walk with Jesus; they found his words hard. Let us listen to the one who is here to share himself with us. Let us notice those in empty places. God is there. But especially may we see those who come into the church on shopping day for a brief visit. Like them let us enter the conversation.

Fr. William Murphy, CP, is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Jamaica, New York.

Scripture:

Acts 8:26-40
John 6:44-51

Reflection:

It is one of those amazing Spring mornings when the sunlight glistening off the dew on the grass and the budding tree branches waving in the warm morning breeze that swells the heart and makes us want to cry out with joy for our creation.  “Let all the earth cry out to God with Joy”.  Psalm 66

1970.  Second week of boot camp. We were given a brief break in our intense training schedule to attend Sunday mass at the base chapel.   I sat in the pew glancing around at two hundred or so recruits, all of us in our newly buzzed haircuts and still new uniforms, looking like identical green pickle men.  Father Lieutenant Colonel Somebody finished reading the gospel and began his sermon with words that stuck with me all these years:  

 “‘There are no atheists in foxholes,’ so, I presume that’s why most of you are here.”   It was funny but so very true. Circumstances, either by choice or the draft, had driven us to seek the comfort of our faith in God’s love.   Jesus speaks about our being drawn by God to a belief in Him.  It is through God’s influences that we are able to grasp Truth, which is God.  

These influences can be as subtle as quiet moments of contemplation of the night sky, realizing that there must be something greater than ourselves; an uncreated Creator.  Or an influence might be a circumstance that beats us completely down, like the death of a loved one, a sudden serious illness, or perhaps just the accumulated challenges of daily life.  In these moments of reflection or dark times of pain and sorrow, we are drawn by God to instinctively seek to understand His plan and our place in it,  

Jesus tells us that no one can approach God the Father except through Him.  But we are drawn by God to seek our Redeemer.  Pride can make us believe not only that we don’t need God, but even cause doubt as to His existence.  Mankind has become so sophisticated and knowledgeable that we no longer need the “crutch” of religion, faith, or God.  

Despite the vain blindness caused by Intellectualism which shrouds from us our true place in Existence, we are drawn to Truth through all our circumstances called Life.  The longing to know and be reunited with our Creator is part of who we are as a species created in His image and likeness.   We humbly seek our Redeemer and through Him come to know Truth, which is God. 

Ray Alonzo is the father of three children, grandfather of two, and husband to Jan for over 45 years. He is a USN Vietnam Veteran, and a 1969 graduate of Mother of Good Counsel Passionist Prep Seminary. Ray currently serves on the Passionist Alumni Council.

Scripture:

Acts 8:1b-8
John 6:35-40

Reflection:

Everything that the Father gives me will come to me,
and I will not reject anyone who comes to me,
because I came down from heaven not to do my own will
but the will of the one who sent me. -John 6:37-38

“What you do speaks so loudly, that I can’t hear what you are telling me.” (my mom, via Ralph Waldo Emerson) or actions speak louder than words. I think what I miss most about those family and friends who are no longer here with me is what they did, especially the things they did that inspired and taught me about living. My sister Marianne taught me how to ride a horse and many other things. My dad taught me to get up with the sun each morning, thank God for the gift of a new day and then go to work. Roger taught me the importance of learning from my mistakes and changing my ways to get different results.

What could I do differently today to make our world a better place? Is there something I can do to have a minus electric bill next month; to live in a world of “we” rather than a world of “me”; to see my neighbor as more important than any particular material good; to make important decisions based upon consensus rather than edict; to build a bridge rather than a wall; to make life affordable for all people? 

God help me do something with the time you give me today. Help me see where I need to change. Thank you for all the great gifts of people, plants and animals you give me to share my day with and to show me your way.

Dan O’Donnell is a Passionist Partner and a longtime friend of the Passionists.  He lives in Chicago, Illinois. 

Scripture:

Acts 7:51-8:1a
John 6:30-35

Reflection:

Decades ago, on cool May mornings with the smell of honeysuckle in the air, my grandmother and I walked a mile on a narrow rural road in Indiana to attend Mass at her parish. That small brick church still sits atop a steep hill circumscribed by the graves of generations of the faithful, including my immigrant ancestors, and now my grandmother.

At Mass we sat close. She carried a deep reverence for the space and the ritual. Her bread, the Eucharist, no doubt sustained her during illnesses, the Great Depression, two world wars, family crises, and her inner wrestling matches with the Devil.

The impressions left by these special moments in church with her has given me a deep reverence for the Mass. The food that nourishes our life with Christ is found, among other places, in the “source and summit” of our  faith: the Eucharistic celebration.

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells us He is the bread that gives life to the world. Belief in Him is transformative, just like a nutritious, balance diet can transform a sick, malnourished body.

We live in difficult times. Giving in to the noises and demands of a media-saturated world swirling around us can make us feel inadequate, confused, off-centered, and starving for meaning. We easily can succumb to the belief that strength will save us, that performance will make us valuable, and that “the idol of individualism,” in the words of Capuchin Franciscan Roberto Pasolini, “must be worshiped.”

The Bread of Christ counters each of these myths. Jesus teaches that moments of passivity and defeat is where we find fulfillment. When we surrender our lives to Christ, we learn that great accomplishments, power, prestige, and autonomy will never fulfill our unrelenting, deep hunger for meaning.

Meaning is found in experiencing the grace, whether in the Eucharist or in other encounters with Christ, to transform our limitations into opportunities for connecting with others in loving, forgiving relationships. This leads us to be as bold as Stephen in speaking truth to people who, as Stephen found out, might be “infuriated” and “grind their teeth” at us.

Fr. Roberto says, “The cross is the only possible direction of our lives. When pain, fatigue, loneliness, or fear lay us bare, we are all tempted to shut down, to stiffen up, to feign self-sufficiency. During these moments the truest love becomes possible, when one does not impose oneself, but allows oneself to be helped . . . We need to abandon all pride, but also the illusion that we can save ourselves with our own strength.”

These are bold, counter-cultural words. Speaking them aloud and letting ourselves be transformed by them will lead to unknown ends.

We need the Bread of Christ to fuel us for the disappointments and temptations of daily living. Praying over His words, attending to our community liturgies, living humbly, spending time with the crucified of today . . . the elderly, sick, poor, mentally ill, addicted, frightened, dishearten, confused, wayward, arrogant, and shallow . . . is where we find Christ, our Bread of Life, as much as my grandmother and I found Him in that little country church so many years ago.

Jim Wayne is a member of St Agnes Catholic Community in Louisville, Kentucky, a Passionist parish. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives for 28 years, is the author of the award winning novel, The Unfinished Man, and is a clinical social worker.

Scripture:

Acts 6:8-15
John 6:22-29

Reflection:

Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great wonders and signs among the people.   –Acts 6:8

Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.   -John 6:26

In both of our readings today, signs and wonders are mentioned. In the reading from Acts, Steven is brought before the Sanhedrin, and even though, “his face was like the face of an angel,” they were infuriated by his teachings. No matter that he had done and was continuing to do great wonders and signs, he didn’t fit into their way of seeing the world. They had no way to fit him into their hierarchical religious system and consequently he was martyred. They were unable to accept the wonders and signs as coming from God as they set themselves up as the gatekeepers of all that was holy.

In the reading from John’s gospel we have a scene right after the feeding of 5000 from just a few loaves and fishes. But once again the wonders and signs are missed. The crowd follows Jesus in hopes of another handout, not because they recognize the words of God flowing from him.

But I sometimes wonder if we’re not much different today. It’s easy for us to look to God to make drastic changes in our lives or world. We often pray with great specificity of how we want God to accomplish the signs and wonders in our lives. And if they don’t occur the way we wish we accuse God of being distant or not listening.

But what if the great signs and wonders all around us every day. Do you remember when we arise in the morning from our first breath we have the opportunity to breathe God into our lives. Do our hearts filled with true gratitude when we pray before a meal? Do we listen for the words of God not only from the pulpit but from the loving people in our lives?

This Easter season, my prayer for myself and for all of us is that we slow down and recognize the signs and wonders that fill our lives. And pray in great gratitude to our Lord for these gifts.

Talib Huff is a retired teacher and a member of the retreat team at Christ the King Passionist Retreat Center in Citrus Heights, California. You may contact him at [email protected].