Fifth Sunday of Easter

There is a story of a small boy who left his house with Twinkies and juice boxes after telling his mother that he is going to find God. He sits on a bench at a local park next to a homeless woman and offers her a Twinkie and some juice.  After eating, talking and enjoying each other they both leave.  When his mother asks, ‘Did you find God?’ he responds, ‘Yes, and God is a woman!’ When the woman joins her friends, she says, ‘I met God in the park today – and God is a little boy!’ Both, the boy and the woman, manifested God where they were, and the way they related to each other. ‘Where I am you also may be’ and ‘Whoever believes in me will do the work that I do.’

Today’s readings express resurrection hope and invite us to participate with God in co-creating courageous and generous communities. We are called to accept the joyful and messy work of belonging to communities and connect, according to the heart of Jesus, imaginatively and relationally with tenderness, forgiveness, strength and protection rather than with patriarchal such as aggression, domination, control, and condemnation. Psalm 23 offers words of comfort and courage in times of uncertainty, sorrow and loss. The Psalm and Gospel remind us that we never walk alone amid the uncertainties of our future and the changes in our lives and our world. There is a way forward when feeling helpless, concerned, powerless and fearful.

Third Sunday of Easter

‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road…...’ These burning hearts take us further into God’s world.

When Jesus approaches the disciples along the road, ‘their eyes were kept from recognizing him.’ Jesus still ‘meets people where they are’ - whether in locked in a room for fear or walking along the road in grief and despair. One disciple was called Cleopas. It has been suggested that the other was a woman because was not named, but scripture scholar and former archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, said in a talk in Melbourne, that it certainly was not a woman because Jesus never referred to a woman as having little faith!