Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother’s Day! One of my favorite Spanish proverbs is: "An ounce of mother is better than a pound of clergy." The word “mom” is synonymous with sacrificial love in its purest form as given by Jesus in his farewell speech: love one another as I have loved you. Mothers leave their legacy with us. They live in and through us.

On Mother’s Day, let us Christians acknowledge that we have two mothers: our earthly mother and our  heavenly mother, Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Catholic Church proclaims the great nobility of the mother of Jesus, Mary most Holy, and presents her as the supreme model for all mothers. She was born into humble surroundings; she was called by God to be the mother of the Son of God. She affirmed her obedience to the call of God and lived out her vocation throughout her entire life. Mary, the mother of Jesus, our Blessed Mother, is the true model of motherhood. Let us ask her intercession for all our mothers. Happy Mother’s Day!

With the Sixth Sunday of Easter, the Church draws ever closer to the celebration of the great feast of        Pentecost. John’s Gospel for today gives us the teachings of Jesus, not just from the Last Supper discourse in general, but on the Holy Spirit in particular. It picks up from last week's gospel in John 14, but it continues to Jesus's actual promise to send the Holy Spirit and to give the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Those who love Christ become the recipient of the love of the Father and will become the temple of the Holy Spirit. Love is not just words or interior feeling but should manifest in action (14:23-24, 1 John 3:18). The Holy Spirit will serve as an intercessor before God, a source of strength in faith, and a teacher of the truth. He is present and active both in the Church as a community and in her individual members.

When Jesus withdraws the visible presence from this world, he promised the Holy Spirit: to instruct us in   Jesus’ doctrines and illumine our minds to receive deeper knowledge of our Faith; to enable us to defend our Faith powerfully; to guide us in the proper practice of true love towards God and recognizing Jesus in everyone. So, we may celebrate Sunday Worship with much enthusiasm and be able to live the life of charity with those who are in need: the poor, the sick, the homeless, etc., and so to become agents of healing and reconciliation in a broken and divided world.

As I mentioned previously, we are in the Maintenance to Mission process and Eucharistic Revival years. You will receive Bishop James Powers’ pastoral letter by the end of this month. I have formed an Evangelization Team in our cluster, and we meet every week to pray and study different topics of our mission. We were in a workshop on Sunday and reflected on the Mission of the parish and diocese. Holy Spirit guides us in our  mission. One of the paragraphs in the handout caught my eye, which states that “The mission of evangelization is not accomplished by us. The Holy Spirit is the only one that can change lives. The entirety of the Church's mission flows from the grace of God. The Eucharist, which is Christ's true presence among us, is thus referred to as the 'source and the summit' of the Christian life. When giving us the image that He is the vine and we are the branches, Jesus says: 'Without me, you can do nothing' (John 15:5).”

We are Eucharistic people. We gather to celebrate the Mass. The Mission of the Church flows from the     celebration of the Mass. At the end of the Mass, we are sent out to proclaim the Risen Lord and make his name known and loved. Each one of us needs to invite the Holy Spirit and ask him what we need to do to make Jesus' name known and loved. How can I engage in the mission of the Church? The sequence for the Pentecost Sunday liturgy is a prayer of invitation to the Holy Spirit: “Come Holy Spirit, Come! And from your celestial home shed a ray of light divine!”



The second reading from the Acts of the Apostles is Philip’s mission in Samaria. Jesus himself started   crossing the border and teaching them. Philip proclaimed to them Christ and they accepted the Gospel.     Apostles prayed over them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Let us invite the Holy Spirit to guide us in our daily journey and living the baptismal call as missionaries.