Paulist Evangelization Ministries

05/29/2026

GOD IS REVEALED AS TRINITY TO US, INVITING US TO EVER-DEEPER RELATIONSHIP . . . A short reflection:

The experience of flying has lost almost all of its excitement. Flying now feels like a burden, beginning with the airport. Going through security seems more onerous; everything at an airport of overpriced. But some beautiful moments still remain. I vividly remember a family with children waiting for their grandparents. As soon as they saw grandma and grandpa they were jumping up and down; as soon as they could, they ran to hug and hold them. It was like something was being connected that had been broken.

Although it’s harder to see in modern America with our strong emphasis on independence and personal resilience, connectedness is still highly prized. Once the cellphones are put away, once the TV gets turned off, people can simply enjoy each other and recognize the bonds that connect them. These bonds, in fact, define us much more than our independence.

Our feast today challenges us to look at our image of God from the point of view of connectedness. We naturally gravitate toward an image of God as some oversized being managing everything from heaven all by himself. But the feast of the Holy Trinity, and Jesus’ experience of his Father and the Spirit, teach us that connection and relationship are at the very heart of God. God is not the lonely manager in the sky but the infinite field of personal love, of relationship, from which everything comes and towards which everything is moving.

We hear this particularly in the words of Jesus who defines himself in terms of the Father: not only has he come to reveal the extent of God’s love, he has come to share that love with all the world. God’s one desire is to fill every heart with complete love and bring every person to that fullness we call salvation; Jesus came to both reveal this and help make it happen.

Only one thing can frustrate this will of God—our own refusal to put love at the center of our lives—love, not as we see it in TV and movies where it is often self-absorbed and self-centered; but love as cherishing the other as much as we cherish ourselves and as much as we see God cherishing every life. Our ego, our insecurity, our envy, and our selfishness is the one thing that can frustrate God’s desire for the world.

We come to church, and we celebrate the Mass, precisely to demonstrate the connectedness that is the life of God and that God has shared with us. Even as the Holy Spirit binds us together as a beloved people, so we share in the one life of Jesus communicated in the gift of his body and blood.

When we see, we understand that life is not something that stands by itself. We understand, instead, that true life is life lived in God with and for all the others with whom I am connected.

05/28/2026

JOIN OUR PRESENTATION ON POPE LEO'S NEW ENCYCLICAL ON JUNE 16 AT 2 pm.
REGISTER HERE:

A review of the key themes of "Magnifica Humanitas" and what that means for sharing the Gospel.

05/24/2026

Come, Holy Spirit!

Mass for Pentecost Sunday:

05/22/2026

THE CLIMAX OF EASTER IS PENTECOST, THE COMING OF THE SPIRIT WHO GIVES US A SHARE IN JESUS' RISEN LIFE.

At this time of year, it’s almost impossible to walk around New York without seeing young people decked out in their graduation gowns. I’m sure this is true in many big cities. While I try to guess what the school is from the color of the gown, the young people have something very different on their minds. They have achieved something, usually at a significant personal and economic price. Their families and friends are beaming. But what lies ahead for them?

This is not all that different from the first reading, from Acts 2, which recounts the traditional story of Pentecost. The disciples of Jesus have developed a routine since his resurrection, but this day is different. Wind, fire, earthquake-like shaking: aren’t these the way the bible usually expresses the presence of God?

But what lies ahead? Jesus sent the disciples out to do his work before he was crucified; and he told them, after his resurrection, that he was going to send them out. Now it’s like God is lighting a fire under the disciples to get them out of their routine and onto the mission that he placed before them.

In telling this story, Luke indicates what the future would be. He emphasizes the message of the Gospel that the apostles spoke, and how that message was heard by very different people. “We are all from different countries,” they say, “yet we can hear and understand them in our own language.” Luke is telling how the Gospel works: as it is proclaimed, more and more people throughout the world can hear it.

So this passage is compressing the early history of the church in its few sentences. Graduates don’t know their future; the disciples also were not sure. But now they know that they have the power to bring Good News to every person, every culture, and every nation. Such an idea might have intimidated them until the Spirit of God showed them how they possessed power to communicate the Good News after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

Don’t be intimidated. The Spirit has come down upon us. Each one of us has different gifts which the Spirit wants to use to accomplish God’s purpose. And however it seems, no gift is too small to touch the heart of another person and help that person understand God’s saving power in his or her life.

Easter began with baptism gowns. It continued with children dressed for first Communion, and youth dressed for Confirmation. But as for graduates, the gown represent potential, the potential that every baptized person has to invite others into the Kingdom. That’s what lies in store for us, and it’s a privilege to have an expansive mission like this.

05/15/2026

JESUS ASCENDS TO HEAVEN. WHAT'S NEXT? THE SUSPENSE GROWS. A short reflection:

I have looked into the eyes of many young couples who have celebrated their love in the sacrament of matrimony. I see them all dressed up and well groomed, beaming as they leave the Church. I imagine they have the same question that I do, but in a way more urgent manner: “What’s next?” I think. “What’s next,” they must be thinking. They have the honeymoon, thank you cards to write, housing to secure. But they have opened a new chapter and it must seem both an exciting and a frightening question: What comes next?

We ask this question of ourselves at turning points in our lives. We work and strive to attain something, and this consumes all our energy; but once we have attained what we worked for, what’s next?

The first reading presents the early Christians after Jesus ascended into heaven as a peace-filled and expectant community. It doesn’t present how unsettling it must have been to see their Resurrected Lord ascend into heaven. The Scriptures do talk about Jesus going away and Jesus sending an “advocate” to his followers. But what does all that mean? The followers of Jesus do not know what it means because they haven’t experienced it yet.

The Gospel echoes the same theme as well. Jesus says that his “hour” has come. His ministry has reached a fullness. He anticipates the suffering he would undergo; but, even more, he anticipates the state of glory that awaits him. The glory that Jesus expects does not come from people applauding him. Rather it comes from the sense that his whole life has been one of intimate unity with the Father in the Holy Spirit. What’s next in Jesus’ life is an intensified experience that has been his all along: “I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.”

The work that Jesus accomplished was to reveal the infinite love of God through the encounters he had with others, especially those who were uncertain, broken, or sinful. And this is exactly what Jesus bequeaths to his followers. They would experience his glory by revealing the love that Jesus revealed, the infinite love of God, in the ministry they would undertake. In a sense they didn’t have to know how that would happen; they had to know that it was all a part of the Word that Jesus spoke, revealed, and was.

In our own spiritual lives, we can get the feeling that things have paused. We have had insights and experiences that confirm our faith. Now what? But things never pause with God. The love he has poured out in Jesus and the Spirit point us to the same future: not only celebrating what we have received but, even more, sharing that Good News with those around us. What’s next is our living Jesus life and ministry in our own daily lives.

Our “hour” has also come!

05/08/2026

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS CHRIST'S GREATEST EASTER GIFT. How do we experience the Spirit's presence today? A short reflection:

A priest once told me a story I’ll never forget. He was speaking about a young person who was very active in his parish, taking part in the youth group, volunteering to help in a nursing home, and serving on the altar. A friend of this youth invited him to a retreat sponsored by a local group of Evangelical Christians. When he came back from that retreat, he said to the priest: “Father, last weekend at that retreat was the first time I gave my life to Jesus.” The priest looked at the youth and said, “What did you think you were doing at Confirmation?”

I remember this story because it showed two truths about our faith life. One truth is that we can go through many external events and activities but not realize the relational reality behind them. In other words, it’s easy to “go through the motions.” The second truth is that we have never exhausted our faith; there is always more it wants to show us if we open our hearts.

We are surprised at the first reading today when Philip goes to Samaria and finds a group of Christians. They have only been baptized; they did not know about the gifts of the Holy Spirit which Philip had to show them. “How could they be missing something so essential?” we ask ourselves. Yet how many of us have received one or another sacrament and still have not realized it’s power in our lives?

Look at what Jesus tells his disciples in the Gospel about the Holy Spirit, the greatest of Jesus’ Easter gifts to us. Because he is going to the Father, Jesus will work in the lives of his disciples through the Holy Spirit. Jesus says that the Spirit remains with us. And because the Spirit remains with us, the Spirit will continue to bring from our hearts new experiences of our faith, new realizations of God’s love, and new capacities to share that love with others.

Easter means that God is never finished with us. The gift of the Holy Spirit is so deep and rich in our lives, there is always more that God is revealing to us as we seek to serve Jesus. It’s all too easy to think that our faith is something cut and dried, something we just go through.

Jesus is saying that he rose from the dead, and sends his Spirit, so that our faith will never be something we just go through. Rather, our faith will be an unending invitation to deeper experiences of God as a Trinity of love, and deeper awareness of the power of Resurrection in all our Catholic lives.

05/01/2026

BELIEVERS ARE CHOSEN BY GOD FOR LIFE IN JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. SUNDAY'S SCRIPTURES CHALLENGE US TO A GREATER FULLNESS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. A short reflection:

I am fooled for a few seconds. I go to the mailbox and find a fancy piece of mail. I look at the front and my eye catches the words inscribed in big red letters: “You have been chosen. . .“ Of course, it’s an ad, trying to get me to buy something or get another credit card. But the idea of “being chosen” seems flattering at first. We can remember how we felt as kids when we were chosen to be on a softball team, or when one of our friends had a party for just a few chosen people: I’m special!

Our scriptures this weekend tell us that we, as followers of Jesus, have all been chosen. “You are a chosen race,” we hear in the second reading. The idea goes back to ancient Israel and how the Jews understood themselves as having been chosen by God for a special relationship. In the first reading, we find eight people chosen to be become the first deacons in the early Church. “They are special,” we say. God chose people for a special purpose.

But aren’t we celebrating a whole season of Easter, of being chosen, and the joy of people being baptized into Christ. I still see pictures of these people on social media: they are drenched and beaming like they have never beamed before. Because we understand every baptism as a sacrament that reveals how God has chosen someone to be transformed by God’s grace. God has made every person who is washed in the water of Jesus into a chosen person.

This may sound counterintuitive to many Catholics and Christians. They have come to think of their clergy, deacons, and nuns as special people. Compared to them, most of us do not feel particularly chosen. We just do the simple religious practices that we do: reading the Bible, spending time in prayer, saying the rosary, going to Church, maybe helping someone in trouble. We haven’t been ordained, have we?

In some basic way, we have all been ordained by the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. The Spirit of God has anointed us, chosen us, empowered us to accomplish God’s will in the world in which we live. And God’s will is simple: that the Kingdom of God be built and expanded until all of humankind is transformed. The Scriptures today are asking what our attitude is toward being chosen by God: are we living as disciples with enthusiasm or reluctantly? Are we living to build God’s Kingdom?

If we read further in the Book of Acts, we will find that these men, who basically have been chosen to help feed certain converts, actually did much more than that. They had a crucial role in bringing the faith to groups of people. Stephen, in fact, gives his life in testimony to his faith as a martyr. So being chosen is like being in a relationship: we never know everything that’s going to be asked of us. Yet love helps us do it. Love helps us live it.

We are part of the chosen race of believers who have come to know God’s love and life in God’s covenant. We should be flattered! But we should also feel invited to live our faith more completely each day, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of the world’s salvation.