Easter Sunday

Easter Morning Mass, Year C

Peace be with you on this, our celebration of The Mass for Easter Morning and on behalf of Good Shepherd Catholic Church, I’d like to wish all of you a Happy and Holy Easter. In my short time as a Permanent Deacon this particular holy weekend has become an even more rewarding spiritual experience because this is the time we welcome our newest adult Catholics into full Communion with our Church family. Last night at the Easter Vigil Mass I assisted Father as he baptized one adult woman and then confirmed her and four others. And then all five received Eucharist for the first time in their lives. There is something especially spiritual about handing the cup to an adult in our current culture and watching her cry as I said, “the Blood of Christ.” An old door closed for those five women last night and a completely new one opened – opened to graces and Sacramental gifts many of us “cradle Catholics” sometimes take for granted. Their excitement in receiving those spiritual gifts for the very first time should really touch and thrill all of us. In fact, I often tell “old time Catholics” who feel their faith lives are becoming a little stale, to consider joining the RCIA Team for at least one season and maybe even consider sponsoring one of the candidates. The experience can be totally spiritually invigorating.

So, here we are this morning, celebrating the Easter Mass. The Mass where we formally step from the Lenten Season into the Easter Season, where we move from the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus to his Resurrection. The image of the crucified Jesus was taken down from above our altar and replaced with the image of the resurrected Jesus.

I’m not sure how many of you were here at our Stations of the Cross service Good Friday afternoon? As I moved around the Church from Station to Station myself however, from Jesus’ trial to his burial, I looked up at an empty Cross hanging above the altar, representing a physically absent Jesus lying in the tomb. And I was struck by an awesome feeling of God’s great love for what must be his greatest creation made in his own image and likeness,,,, humanity,,,, us.

I’m thankful that when we take down the image of the crucified Jesus here at Good Shepherd we don’t put it away in a closest somewhere until next Lent however, we display it prominently in the narthex, that common meeting space we pass through, before we enter the sacred space of this sanctuary. There can be no greater image that better describes that most quoted and translated verse in the entire Bible, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,” than that image of Jesus Christ Crucified. And if a crucified Jesus expresses God’s great love for humanity, what can we say this image of a risen Jesus expresses? My friends, this image of a resurrected Jesus Christ tells us clearly, physical death is not the end and it anticipates an eternity beyond description. Because of his great love for us demonstrated in the crucifixion, the resurrection prefigures God’s plan and promise for us all – in eternity.

In context of the Prologue from John’s Great Gospel these two images of the crucified Jesus and the resurrected Jesus can be said to encompass the entire Biblical message from Genesis to Revelation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, validates both God’s love and God’s plan for us all in eternity.

As we gaze at this image of a resurrected Jesus above the altar and think about the image of the crucified Jesus out in the narthex and realize what they represent in reality, we should discern three important supernatural facts. First, this world is not it; it is not all there is. The most frightening feature of a purely physical and secular world is death. Everything comes into being and then everything ends. Whether we’re talking about a mountain, an entire universe, or a single person; in a purely physical sense, everything comes to an end. Jesus’ resurrection proves that God has planned something much greater than we can ever imagine however. Death is not the final reality. In fact, we can almost think of our physical lives and physical deaths as time in the womb before our rebirth into the eternal presence of God.

The second supernatural fact we should all glean from Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection is this; those who rule or exercise power through fear of violence, pain, and death should know their day is done. The martyrs down through history are proof of this. Those very first Christians who embraced the Gospel message preached by the Apostles knew Caesar’s real power over them had ended. Many bravely died in the name of Jesus Christ because they knew Paradise awaited them forever and ever.

And finally we must all know with confidence, Jesus opened the path of salvation to everyone. As we gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus, know that he went all of the way down into the lowest human condition possible. He not only suffered physical pain by his passion and crucifixion, he suffered psychological pain when he was abandoned, betrayed, and denied, and as he cried, “God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” he must have even felt spiritual pain. Remember this however, the one who hung upon that terrible cross was not just a man; he was God as well. Therefore, God, as only God can, has taken upon himself all of the pain and sin that bedevils the human condition: physical, psychological, and spiritual. God, as only God can, goes into the darkest places that we inhabit. This means that sin, pain, and death do not have the final word! This means that sin and death have been enveloped into the divine mercy of God. And this implies, finally, that sin has been dealt with. Once we understand and accept that God’s love is more powerful than sin and suffering, we have lost, at least in principle, the motivation to sin.

So, as we go out today look up at the risen Jesus image and know that it represents God’s plan and God’s promise for us all and as we pass out into the narthex turn and look at the crucified Jesus image and know it represents God’s love for us all and that defines the reason for God’s divine plan.

Again, have a Happy and Holy Easter from all of us here at Good Shepherd.

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Paul T. Keil, 18-19 July 2026 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Season A Peace be with you and welcome to our celebration of the Mass for the 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time. OK, some of you may remember I’ve said before, in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 comprise the whole Sermon on the Mount, but did you know Chapter 13, where we are today, is often called the Sermon of the Parables. In this single chapter Matthew strings together seven separate parables from Jesus. Today we just heard numbers two, three, and four. Last weekend we heard the first one with the Parable of the Sower and what happens to the seeds scattered in different places. Next weekend you’ll hear the final three parables from Chapter 13 so, be sure to come back. So, what is Jesus saying in these readings. Last week we heard the parable about seeds as an allegory for Jesus’s words falling on a path and being eaten by birds, falling on rocky ground and withering with no roots, falling into thorns and being choked by life’s anxieties, and falling on fertile soil to bear fruit. Today we have Jesus giving us another parable about planting seeds and again, just like last week, Jesus’ disciples ask him to explain the parable. And since He stops to explain both parables about planting, he just might be trying to emphasize something important here for his disciples, and for us. One thing is clear in these parables however, God’s Kingdom will always coexist in this physical world with forces opposing it, like the wheat and the weeds growing together. Now many religious people struggle with this condition. Some see it as predestination. A weed in the wheat field or a seed in the rocks must represent people predestined to go to hell. That’s what it literally says, right? Still others ask in frustration; this is God we’re talking about, why does God’s Kingdom have to struggle with opposing forces at all? Why doesn’t God just get rid of the evil? Well, our old friend, St Thomas Aquinas wrote quite a bit about good and evil coexisting in our fallen world. He said sometimes the two are so tightly interwoven that you couldn’t have certain types of good without certain types of evil. For example, he said simply, “there would be no virtue of the martyr without the cruelty of the tyrant.” Friends, God delights in our freedom, our intelligence, and our cooperation when we freely make the decision to accept God’s love. Without free will we cannot choose to love. Jesus’ explanation of the wheat and weed parable certainly helps when he says; “The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels” and in the next verse he says; “The Son of Man will send his angels.” There is a very important take-away here every single Christian should remember. Eternal judgment belongs to God alone, not to anyone else – period. This is a consistent message Jesus gives us in all four Gospels but unfortunately, there are those who sometimes forget this simple divine fact about humanity’s relationship with the unlimited creator of the universe. We may perceive an individual as being bad or even intrinsically evil but judgment for their immortal souls belongs exclusively to God. I always like an old adage that goes like this, “if I ever get to heaven, I may be surprised by who I see there, and they may be even more surprised to see me.” I’ll admit, over the years for a long time, as I’ve meditated on this parable about weeds and wheat or last week’s parable about seeds, especially the ones falling into thorns choked by worldly anxiety, there was something always bothering me. You see, if we’re not careful both parables can make life, heaven, and hell sound kind of random or worse yet, they can make God’s love sound like it is exclusively reserved for preselected people. I know now however, there is nothing further from the truth. If you’ve lived life for a while and think back to times when you were say maybe,,, struggling in school, or first dating, or trying to make ends meet while raising a family, or competing for promotions at work, or trying to buy that first house, you realize there may have been times when your life wasn’t very spiritually fruitful. In fact, I now realize there were times in my own past when thoughts of God, salvation, or prayer were nowhere in my daily routine. I even wonder; was there a period in my life when I was one of those weeds or a seed in the thorns? Thankfully, with reflection on the whole of Scripture, guidance from the Church, and maybe some help from the Holy Spirit I realize now these parables are not “either / or” propositions. God doesn’t intentionally create some people as weeds and some people as wheat nor does God throw souls into the wind to randomly fall in the thorns, or on stony ground, or in fertile soil. If you’re not careful, you can come to those conclusions, however. You can read the Bible too narrowly and pick out verses here and there that help support your personal image of what you want God to be. Those tend to be the same people who like to do God’s judgment work for him. Here’s the thing; some of us here today may have actually spent some time as those ugly weeds but at some point, with God’s help, we decided to change and now we’re wheat growing in that good old fertile soil. My sisters and brothers, sin must never be viewed as a permanent state. Like we heard from the Book of Wisdom today, “you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” This is the greatest gift of our Christian faith; God loves us all so much, even great sinners, God is always ready to forgive. So, here’s a challenge and homework for us all today. Most of us know people out there from all age groups, but especially some of our youth, who may be temporarily living life like the weeds in our parable today or maybe tangled in those thorns of life’s tribulations. First and foremost, we must be confident, sin is not a permanent state of life, second, we don’t judge, third, pray for them no matter how nasty they may seem. And finally, if we’re really, really brave, we offer them a hand to pull them up and out of the weeds, rocks, or thorns into God’s fertile soil.