This weekend, we are asked to focus on the mission that Jesus is entrusting to his disciples.

We are now entering the third week of the Easter season. The readings at daily Mass reflect how the disciples of Jesus are processing the meaning as well as the implications of our Lord’s resurrection.

Today’s Gospel is easily divided into two parts: Jesus appearing to the apostles and giving them a mission, and then again with Thomas present. 

No one can prove the Resurrection for us.  There is no adequate scientific explanation.  Yet all we need to make the leap of faith surrounds us — if we are simply willing to listen with our hearts.

There is no doubt that at the heart of the religious experience is salvation:  God’s hope that all be saved coupled with man’s need to live in a way that claims the prize already won. 

Sometimes God works in comforting ways.  While I was Rector-Principal at Cathedral Prep the administration often had to face the dilemma of students needing to be removed for academic reasons.

Once again, we come to the most famous of all of the parables of Our Lord in Saint Luke’s Gospel, that of the Prodigal Son. No less than Charles Dickens declared this as the greatest short story ever written.

The Gospel we proclaim this Sunday offers a simple message, a message that is at both the heart of the liturgical season of Lent and, perhaps even more importantly, the basics of the Gospel: “REPENT!”

As in all things, when we read a passage presented to us in the lectionary from the Holy Gospel, we need to place it into the proper context. If we read this particular passage from the Gospel according to the Evangelist Saint Luke, we might get a bit confused.

The gospel reading presented to us for the First Sunday of Lent is rather familiar to all of us — Our Lord’s temptation in the desert. In fact, in every cycle of the lectionary (recall that the “A” cycle offers us Matthew’s Gospel, the “B” cycle offers us that of Mark, and in the “C” cycle, which we are in this liturgical year, we are reading from the Gospel of Luke), this important event in the life of Jesus the Christ is proclaimed.