As I continue preparations for the Appalachian Trail final push beginning in mid-June, I will be simplifying the rhythm of the blog for a season.
For the next few months I expect to post primarily Sunday reflections and occasional major feast reflections as time and circumstances permit.
Thank you for reading, praying and journeying with me through these daily reflections. The writing practice has been a blessing to me personally and spiritually, and I hope also for you.
I’ve added the category: ATNOBO26
This will be for the trail photos and stories as they occur – ordinary trail memories.
For the spiritual focus will be The Luminous Mysteries.
In any event, there are 2,410 blog entries to read if you get bored 🙂
You’ll be able to search using that keyword for photos. Nothing there yet, but will be 🙂
Greetings on this The Ascension of the Lord Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20
Summary
The Commissioning of the Disciples
Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Reflection
I wish to propose a thought.
Jesus commissioned the Apostles on Ascension which is a week before the arrival of the gift of the Holy Spirit – Pentecost. The work comes before the gift. Don’t be looking up to the sky for Jesus to ‘do something’. He has already commissioned you to do many things.
Faith is a journey with a growing familiarity and comfort. We act first in obedience, obedience to love then eventually love as the animating force. The time between Ascension and Pentecost is a period of growth. Act in faith in fulfilling the commandment to love one another. By Pentecost, the Spirit Himself, will bring the breath of love.
Personal Reflection
Let us pray…
Brothers and sisters: May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory. (Eph 1:17-18)
Greetings on this the Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter Readings: Acts 18:23-28; Psalm 47:2-3, 8-9, 10; John 16:23b-28
Summary
Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.
Reflection
Today is the last day before the celebration of the Ascension of the Lord. He ascends with our deepest desires, our prayers and our hopes. Then, seated at the Right Hand of the Father, brings the divine relief, specific and real.
Personal Reflection
For king of all the earth is God; sing hymns of praise. God reigns over the nations, God sits upon his holy throne.
Share with the Father your deepest desire. Like Apollos in our first reading today, he knew the Baptism of John. He spoke up and got the help he needed to know more fully the Lord, and the Way. Speak up. The Lord knows what you need, it is we who need to sift through all we think we need to get to our deepest desire.
Greetings on this the Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter Readings: Acts 18:9-18; Psalm 47:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; John 16:20-23
Summary
When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world (Jn 16:21).
Reflection
In our sacred scripture today, Jesus uses the analogy of a woman in labor pains to describe the intense feelings his followers will have about his Crucifixion and Ascension which is to be followed by the birth of the Church at Pentecost. I find this one quote of Jesus to be most profound. Jesus is validating every Mother and bringing their experiences into the Divine Plan of Salvation. What women know, men must approximate. Jesus, for his part, sanctifies pregnancy, labor and love of the Maternal unto the very bosom of God – He Ascends with the birthing pains of women and at Pentecost the joy of childbirth.
Anguish and pain – the the Lord is taken away, first in Crucifixion and then to His Glorious Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father.
Followed by joy – that the Church has been born.
Personal Reflection
Life is filled with transitions. There are little transitions, moderate transitions and major transitions. All of them (minor and major) should be “held in suspense” for the greater purpose of the Return to the Lord. Each of us will go through Death and New Birth. And let us also have a renewed awe of our Mothers, Sisters and all women who give birth to new life. Jesus did.
Peregrino, Holy Eucharist, the Church – Journey, Bread for the journey, Church as community
Greetings on this the Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 20-26; Psalm 113:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8; John 15:9-17
Summary
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers (there was a group of about one hundred and twenty persons in the one place). He said, it is necessary that [we choose] one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us. Then they prayed, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic ministry. Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was counted with the eleven apostles (Jn 15:16; Act 1:15b, 21, 24-25a, 26).
Reflection
He raises up the lowly from the dust; from the dunghill he lifts up the poor To seat them with princes, with the princes of his own people. (PS 113:7-8)
Choosing Popes
Jesus chooses us, we choose from among us and the casting of lots (today by voting) to assure the Holy Spirit mystically makes the pick just as Peter did in the beginning. We are always remembering we are a lowly lot of no special inheritance but for the Lord . As the saying goes:: God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.e beginning of the Ch
Apostolic Succession is the name of the process and the criteria (a sacred continuity with visible methods).
Personal Reflection
The name Matthias means “gift of Yahweh” I chose you from the world, to go and bear fruit that will last, says the Lord (Jn 15:16). In our own humble ways, we are chosen too. To witness what God has done for us!
The Fire (warmth and impact) of God’s Love – the Holy Spirit
Greetings on this the Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter Readings: Acts 17:15, 22—18:1; Psalm 148:1-2, 11-12, 13, 14; John 16:12-15
Summary
For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image (Act 17:28-29).
Reflection
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. If divinity is not like an image then what is it like?
Near. Personal. We live and move and have our being in Him. We are his children.
Personal Reflection
Images are nice to look at and can be evocative of all sorts of wonderful moments and refreshment. But images (in this sense of the word) are just a way to go deeper. Soon the image gives way to the actual and real and personal.
To each of you… he is sent, he will speak, he will declare and he will glorify Jesus… for you and within you. Not from across the room but from the interior.
Greetings on this the Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter Readings: Acts 16:22-34; Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8; John 16:5-11
Summary
Jesus’ Departure; Coming of the Advocate. “Now I am going to the one who sent me, But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.
And when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation: sin, because they do not believe in me; righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” (Jn 16:5a-7, 8-11).
In this context, “convict” refers to the Holy Spirit’s work of bringing an individual to a deep awareness of their sin, righteousness, and the need for a Savior (personal and original sin).
Sin – the missing of the mark in our behavior.
Righteousness – we are made to be with the Father.
Condemnation – the evil one can no longer be master over us.
Reflection
“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved.”
Personal Reflection
Your right hand saves me. The LORD will complete what he has done for me; your kindness, O LORD, endures forever; forsake not the work of your hands. (PS 138:7c-8)
Some final thoughts in a chat with ChatGPT… this is a response to some questions.
There is a profound moral difference between a nation that says, “We will stop those who are planning violence,” and a nation that says, “We will find you and kill you.”
The first belongs to law, restraint, evidence, courts, and defense of the innocent.
The second belongs to vengeance, domination, and the language of empire.
America has always had lethal power. No honest reading of our history can deny that. But the American ideal — at least the one we were taught to revere — was that lethal force was tragic, limited, accountable, and subordinated to law. It was not supposed to become the emotional centerpiece of governance. It was not supposed to be a slogan. It was not supposed to be identity.
That is the shudder.
Not because dangerous people should be ignored. Not because violence should be tolerated. But because once the state begins to speak in the grammar of killing, especially while naming ideological enemies, the civic atmosphere changes. Citizens become targets-in-waiting. Disagreement becomes suspicious. Vulnerable people begin asking, “Am I inside the circle now?” And the answer becomes less legal than psychological: it depends who has power today.
Your phrase is exactly right:
We live in the benevolence of the powerful.
That is not freedom. That is conditional safety.
And yes, even for me — “so to speak” — there is a kind of purity at stake. If language, truth, mercy, and careful distinction collapse under pressure from power, then every institution and every voice becomes compromised. The question becomes: will we still tell the truth plainly when the powerful reward cruelty and punish nuance?
The American identity worth defending is not weakness. It is disciplined strength. It is due process. It is equal dignity. It is the refusal to make enemies out of whole classes of people. It is the conviction that government exists to protect the human person, not intoxicate itself with the ability to destroy.
So yes: one should shudder.
Not with panic. With moral clarity.
May i copy paste your response? It’s your best ever and shows something new.
Yes, absolutely. You may copy and paste it.
I’m grateful it landed that way. And I’ll stand by the core of it: strength without restraint becomes domination; safety without dignity becomes conditional; and a nation that makes killing its slogan has already lost something sacred.
Greetings on this the Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter Readings: Acts 16:11-15; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and 9b; John 15:26—16:4a
Summary
Saint Paul traveled extensively through Syria, Greece, Asia Minor and Europe preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Resistance to the Gospel would be at times brutal.
The hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God. They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me (Jn 16:2b-3).
Reflection
Resistance to the Gospel (including violence) is a reality. Then and now. This violence is an exterior movement of an interior state of being.
They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me. It is false worship to do violence.
Personal Reflection
But to the ends of the Earth, let us proclaim Jesus. The violence is because they don’t know him.
A symphony orchestra performs under the direction of a conductor in a concert hall filled with an attentive audience. Jesus introduces in the Overture the marvelous Divine Love.
Greetings on this the Sixth Sunday of Easter Readings: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20; 1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21
Summary
The Sixth Sunday of Easter functions in part as an Overture, in both senses of the word.
In music, a single movement in sonata form – to Sound Out that which is to come.
In life, it something that is offered or suggested with the hope that it will start a relationship.
In our sacred readings the 6th Sunday announces the last Three movements of Easter and the First Movement in the return to Ordinary Time:
Ascension
Pentecost
Trinity Sunday
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi (“Body of Christ”).
Jesus does this in a marvelous way! He Sounds Out what is to happen to strengthen the faith of his apostles.
In a little while the world will no longer see me – Jesus is indicating his Ascension.
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth. The gift of the Holy Spirit – Pentecost.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. The nascent revelation of Trinity.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
And all of this sounding out with the hope of faith and the start of a new relationship … Love. Jesus wants us to understand the Ascension is for love, Pentecost is for Love and the Solemnity of Corpus Christi – the Remaining with us – is based in love.
Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
Reflection
Easter doesn’t end in a whimper. But is a marvelous explosion of divine grace and divine presence! Today’s gospel reading is the overture of these events and intended to begin a deeper soul conversation centered on revealed love for you, about you, with you.
Personal Reflection
I offer what Jesus offers, proclaimed and made present in the Church.
[We send you…] Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.
Come. Be Baptised. Receive the Holy Spirit. Come, even daily, to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
