Fifth Sunday of Easter

 Lately I’ve been thinking about what’s the right foods to eat and the right exercises to do to stay healthy?

 And then I remembered Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare. A rabbit hops around a lot, does plenty of exercise but lives maybe 10 years. A tortoise does little or no exercise but can survive over a century.

 And then I checked out human longevity. Several high profile bodybuilders have died young.

 On the other hand, KFC founder Harland Sanders lived to be 90. Hennessy's brandy family is going strong for eight generations. So, what does that tell me?

Have a drink in the evening. Take a nap in the afternoon. And when you wake up in the morning, enjoy chicken and waffles!

The word of God in the Book of the Acts describes how Paul is introduced to the Christian community in Jerusalem as a disciple of Jesus

Paul, a highly educated rabbi, had a visionary experience of the living Christ. That experience turned Paul’s life “upside down.” He went from fierce persecutor to great evangelizer.

Thereafter, Paul's one passion in life was to proclaim the good news (the Gospel): Jesus Christ is alive! And because He lives, we live—God abides in us and we abide in God.

Paul describes elsewhere the vision that fired him up: “God gave me the amazing grace to see his plan for us.” At the center was Jesus Christ, whom God raised up and transformed. This living Christ anticipates our own future, what we one day will become.

The letter of John goes to the heart of the matter: the absolute truth is found in Jesus, Son of God; and to believe in Jesus is to love our fellow human beings, to see in them the image of God.

Now one of my favorite images of our global Catholic community is a boat. Imagine! We're on a journey at sea, together, with a map and lots of stormy weather, people slipping overboard, survivors being pulled in, mutinies, course changes.

But a boat needs a captain. Peter, for example, didn't seem to be the ideal captain, yet what his crews managed to do has lasted over two thousand years and today has 1.3 billion+ people, not to mention the 300 million+ orthodox and 800 million+ protestants under the umbrella of “Christianity.”

We might describe the Catholic Church as a community who believe in God as Triune and in Jesus Christ as Son of God and redeemer, and who shape our lives according to that belief; a community which ritually celebrates the Eucharist and recognizes the Petrine Bishop of Rome as the foundation of its unity.

This community lives under a huge tent. And so, like many things in life, the Church muddles through. We continually strive to forgive ourselves and one another; but above all as the prophet Micah said,  we strive to “do the right and love goodness and walk humbly with our God.”

This community of disciples celebrates the awesome presence of the Living Christ. The same Spirit who transformed the disciples in Jerusalem lives within this community, and can fire us up to do wonders for God if we will only let the Spirit do so.  

Pope Francis’s exhortation “Gaudete et Exsultate” – “Rejoice and be glad”– expands on this, pointing to Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount” as our “Christian identity card.”

The Pope reemphasizes that God created us to be happy. And we become happiest when we are true to our deepest selves. God wants all of us to be saints and not settle for anything less, Francis notes. He describes how ordinary activities in daily life are the stuff of holiness, e. g., parenting a child, being a good next-door neighbor, doing our job conscientiously, placing ourselves prayerfully and daily in the presence of God, helping someone in need.

“Gaudete et Exsultate” offers practical advice about our spiritual life: good summer reading. Remember that we shall pass through this world but once: any good therefore that we can do or any kindness that we can show, let us do it today. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Amen.