​There is a moment in tonight's Gospel that every one of us has lived through in some form. Peter is out on the water. The wind is against the boat. The waves are doing what waves do in the dark — rising, refusing to be reasoned with. Into the middle of that chaos walks a figure the disciples cannot make sense of. Their first instinct is fear: "It is a ghost." Who could blame them? When we're being tossed around, the last thing we expect is for God to come walking toward us across the very thing frightening us.

That is the pattern Scripture hands us today. God's saving presence rarely shows up the way we'd script it.

Think of Elijah on Mount Horeb — How he fled for his life, exhausted,  and convinced he's the last faithful man standing. God tells him to stand on the mountain, for the Lord is about to pass by. A hurricane-force wind tears the mountains apart — the Lord is not in the wind. An earthquake — the Lord is not in the earthquake. Fire — not in the fire. And after all that spectacle, a tiny whispering sound. That is where Elijah finally hears God speak.

God is not absent from the storm, but present before it, through it, and finally in the silence after it, but rarely the way our fear expects him to announce himself. Elijah had to learn to listen past the noise. So does Peter. So do we.

That's the heart of today's Gospel. Peter asks to come to Jesus across the water, and for a few steps, he does it. As long as his eyes are fixed on Christ, the impossible becomes possible beneath his own feet. But once he notices how strong the wind is, he grows frightened, and begins to sink.

I don't think Jesus is scolding Peter when he calls him "you of little faith." He's naming something achingly human — enough faith to step out of the boat, not quite enough to keep walking once the wind picks up. Most of us aren't people of no faith; we're people of little faith, whose trust falters exactly when it's tested hardest. And the good news buried right there is this: the instant Peter cries out, "Lord, save me," Jesus immediately stretches out his hand and catches him. Not after a lecture, but Immediately.

That is who God is toward us. Saint Paul, in the second reading, undergoes something painful — his own people's resistance to the Gospel, a sorrow he calls great and unceasing in his heart. Yet even as he grieves, he cannot deny what belongs to Israel: the adoption, the glory, the covenants — gifts God has never revoked. Paul teaches us, almost by example, that fidelity is God's character before it is ever our achievement.

So how do we come to the complete surrender the Psalm describes — where kindness and truth meet, and we actually let God's fidelity hold us rather than clutching the sides of the boat ourselves? Scripture today gives us three concrete movements.

First, like Elijah, go looking for God in the quiet, not only in the crisis. Surrender is formed in the daily discipline of prayer, in the ordinary silence where we train our ear to recognize God's voice before the storm hits. If we never listen for the whisper, we won't recognize it when the wind is howling.

Second, like Peter, keep your eyes on Christ rather than the size of the wave. Surrender isn't the absence of fear — Peter was still afraid, still sinking — it's the decision to cry out anyway. Complete trust doesn't mean the storm stops. It means we stop believing we have to survive it alone.

Third, like Paul, let God's faithfulness be bigger than our failures. Paul's anguish never turns into despair, because he trusts a covenant he did not write and cannot break by his own frustration. Surrender means resting in a fidelity that does not depend on our performance.

Brothers and sisters, we are all standing in some boat, tossed by wind we didn't choose. Whatever your storm this week — illness, grief, a broken relationship, fear about the future — Christ is already walking toward you across it. He is not waiting for flawless faith. He is waiting for you to cry out. And the moment you do, his hand is already extended.

That is the surrender we're invited to today: not giving up, but reaching out — trusting that the God who was not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, is never farther from us than a whispered prayer, or an outstretched hand.

Peace.

​Deacon Michel

There is a particular kind of exhausting anxiety that comes from feeling like we don't have enough — not enough time, not enough money, not enough strength, not enough of ourselves left to give to the people who need us - our families, jobs, church. If you have ever felt this way, you know something of what the disciples felt on that hillside in today's Gospel.

Jesus has just received word that John the Baptist has been executed by Herod. Matthew tells us that on hearing this, Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself — he needed to grieve. But the crowds would not let him be alone. They followed him on foot, and when he stepped out of the boat, exhausted and mourning, he saw them, and "his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick." Even in his own sorrow, Jesus makes room for the needs of others.

As evening comes, the disciples grow practical, even a little anxious. "This is a deserted place, and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves." It's a reasonable plan. Jesus' answer cuts right through that logic: "There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves." And the disciples, counting what's on hand, come up with five loaves and two fish. Nothing, really, against a crowd of five thousand men, not counting women and children. How many times have we seen an enormity of need  and measured it against what we have and sighed in hopeless insufficiency?

Pay attention, this is the moment that matters most for us. Jesus takes exactly what they have — the small, insufficient thing — looks up to heaven, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples to distribute. And it is enough. More than enough. Twelve baskets left over, one for each tribe of Israel, one for each apostle standing there. God took their scarcity and made it sufficient the moment it was placed in his hands.

This is exactly the invitation Isaiah extends in our first reading, written centuries earlier to a people in exile, a people who had lost everything and had every reason to believe God had abandoned them to their hunger. "All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat.; come without paying and without cost..." Then, through the prophet, God asks "Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?" . Haven't we all, at some point, tried to fill a spiritual emptiness with achievement, distraction, or things that promised satisfaction and delivered none?

And this is where the Gospel and the first reading meet Paul's words to the Romans. Paul isn't writing from comfort — he's writing to a community that is facing real persecution, and he names the list plainly: anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword. These are real experiences to him. And yet he says none of it — nothing in life, nothing in death, nothing in the future, no power on earth or beyond it — "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Paul isn't promising an absence of hardship. He's promising the presence of God within it. That's the same promise made concrete on the hillside: God doesn't remove the scarcity from our hands before he acts. He acts through what we bring him, however small. The disciples' five loaves were never going to feed five thousand people on their own. They didn't need to. They only needed to be placed in Jesus' hands. Your prayer that feels too weak, your patience that feels too thin, your faith that feels too small for the situation in front of you — these are the loaves and fish. Bring them. Don't hold them back because they seem insufficient. Insufficiency in our hands is precisely the condition Christ uses to work abundance.

And here is where this Gospel reaches directly into what we do at this altar every single time we celebrate Mass. Look again at the four verbs Matthew uses: Jesus took the loaves, looked up to heaven, blessed them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples. Take, bless, break, give. These are the same actions, in the same order, that Jesus performs at the Last Supper, and that the priest performs at every Eucharist. This is not a coincidence Matthew leaves for us to notice — it's the whole point. The multiplication of the loaves is not simply a story about Jesus being generous one afternoon on a hillside. It is a preview, a sign pointing forward to the meal that would never run out: the Eucharist.

Today, we gather like the crowd on the hillside: hungry, thirsty, seeking. Christ looks at us in our need and says what we have is enough. When he told the disciples "give them some food yourselves", He was already pointing to the moment now. He gives himself as our spiritual food and soon we will see the Eucharistic actions Take, offer, break and give. Just as there were twelve baskets left over, as a sign that God's abundance always exceeds the need, so too the Eucharist is that same abundance, poured out without limit, meal after meal, forever. Food that will last.

Let us come consoled and encouraged by Paul's words in the second reading that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Peace.

​Deacon Michel

Zechariah 9:9-10 | Psalm 145 | Romans 8:9, 11-13 | Matthew 11:25-30
​We live in a world starved for peace. Not just the absence of conflict, but that deeper rest — from anxiety, from the noise of constant demands, from the exhausting pressure to prove ourselves. This Sunday's readings speak directly into that hunger.

​Zechariah announces a king who comes not on a warhorse but on a donkey, "meek" — and this king will "banish the chariot," "the warrior's bow," and "proclaim peace to the nations." Real peace, Zechariah insists, doesn't arrive through domination. It arrives through humility. That's a hard truth in a culture that still equates peace with winning, with control, with having enough power that nothing can touch us.
Then Matthew gives us Jesus himself, offering the invitation that echoes through every generation of the weary: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest." He doesn't say he'll remove the yoke — he says his yoke is "easy" and his burden "light." That's an important distinction. Following Christ doesn't mean life gets effortless; it means we stop carrying it alone, and we stop carrying the false burdens we've added ourselves — the need to appear perfect, the resentments we won't put down, the fear that we're not enough.
Paul, in Romans, names what this actually requires of us: living "according to the Spirit" rather than "the flesh." Peace isn't passive. It asks something of us — a real turning, day by day, away from what corrodes us from within.
So the question this Sunday leaves us with isn't just "do I want peace?" Nearly everyone does. It's: am I willing to be meek enough to receive it — to stop clutching control, to hand Christ my exhaustion instead of managing it myself, and to let the Spirit reshape what I'm actually chasing? Peace isn't something we manufacture. It's something we're given, if we come to him honestly, burdens and all.

There is a word that runs like a thread through every reading we have just heard — a word so familiar it may have slipped past us. That word is fear.

Jeremiah knows fear. He hears whispers from every side: "Denounce! Let us denounce him!" His so-called friends are watching, waiting for him to stumble. He is not a prophet celebrated in his time; he is a prophet under siege. And yet, in the very middle of that terror, something shifts. He says, "But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion." The fear does not disappear — but it no longer has the last word.

Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, speaks directly to this same fear. He says it three times, as if he knows we need to hear it more than once: "Do not be afraid" (Mt 10:26). "Do not be afraid" (Mt 10:28). "Do not be afraid" (Mt 10:31). Three times. Because fear is stubborn. Fear is persuasive. Fear has a way of drowning out every other voice.

What are we afraid of today? Perhaps not the same things as Jeremiah — most of us will not be thrown into a cistern for speaking the truth. But the fears are real. Fear of standing out in a culture that no longer shares our values. Fear of saying we are Catholic when that identity is mocked or misunderstood. Fear of speaking up for the vulnerable when silence would cost us so much less. Fear of our own inadequacy — the whispered voice that says: who do you think you are? Into those fears, Jesus speaks the same word he spoke to his disciples on the road to their mission: Do not be afraid.

But Jesus does not simply tell us not to be afraid and leave us there. He gives us a reason. And that reason is worth pausing over. "Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (Mt 10:29-31).
A sparrow, in the first century, was the cheapest thing in the market — two for a penny,  Utterly disposable. No one counts sparrows...Except God counts them, and If God's attention and care reaches down to a bird so small that the marketplace barely notices it — how much more does that same attention reach into your life? Into the anxiety you woke up with this morning? Into the grief you are carrying? Into the secret fear that you do not matter? 

The God of the universe has counted the hairs on your head. That is not a poetic imagery — it is a theological declaration: you are known. You are not lost in the crowd. You are not a number. You are seen, named and held. This is the foundation Jesus is laying before he sends his disciples out. He is not saying the road will be easy. He has already told them they will face rejection, that they will be dragged before authorities, that division will come. He is not giving them a prosperity gospel. He is giving them something better: the certain knowledge that they are in the Father's hands. Shouldn't this be enough to walk forward, to speak the truth, to live without being paralyzed by fear? Is it for you?

in the second part of the Gospel, Jesus says "Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father" (Mt 10:32-33).
These words have a way of making us uncomfortable — and they should. They are not spoken to frighten us, but to awaken us to the seriousness of what it means to follow Jesus in the world. To acknowledge Christ is not only a matter of saying the right things in church on Sunday. It is more than exclamations of 'Alleluia' and 'amen'. It is more than parroting Bible verses (hey, the devil quoted scripture, didn't he?) It is a way of living. It means that when the conversation turns and someone demeans the dignity of another human being, we say something. It means that when the pressures of the culture push us toward indifference — toward treating our neighbor as a problem to be managed rather than a person to be loved — we resist.
Paul, in Romans, gives us the theological grounding for this. He draws the great contrast: through one man, Adam, sin entered the world and death through sin. But through one man, Jesus Christ, grace overflows, superabounds, exceeds all expectation: "How much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one person Jesus Christ overflow for the many" (Rom 5:15).

Brothers and sisters, we live in the overflow of that grace. We are not trapped in the story of Adam — of hiding, of fear, of shame. We are living in the story of Christ — of redemption, of resurrection, of a grace that is larger than our sin, more persistent than our failure, more powerful than our fear. 

Jesus also warns :"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna" (Mt 10:28).

This sounds severe on first hearing. But Jesus is making a liberating distinction. He is saying: stop organizing your life around the wrong fears. So much of what drains our spiritual energy is fear of the wrong things — fear of what people think of us, fear of losing status or comfort, fear of the social awkwardness that comes from standing for something countercultural. Jesus says: redirect that energy. The only fear that is ultimately rational is the reverence owed to God.

In the Catholic tradition, we call this the fear of the Lord — and it is not a cowering terror. It is the awe of a creature before the Creator. It is the recognition that God is God and I am not (thank God) — and that this is actually very good news, because God is not only powerful but loving, not only just but merciful.

Brothers and sisters, as we prepare to bring our gifts to this altar, we bring all of that with us — the fears we carry, the shame we hide, the silence we have kept when we should have spoken. And into all of it, Jesus speaks. Not once, but three times, because he knows us well: Do not be afraid. You are known. You are held. Every hair of your head is counted. The grace of God in Jesus Christ overflows every wound, every failure, every moment you let fear have the last word. 

Then go, renewed by this Eucharist and acknowledge him — not in some grand heroic gesture, but in the small, daily, courageous act of living like someone who knows they are loved, and giving freely in return, as we heard last week.

That is enough. That is more than enough. Because the One who counts sparrows counts you too.

Peace.

​Deacon Michel

I believe that there is a moment in every life when we wonder whether anyone actually cares; not just being polite, not whether they are helpful in a general way — but whether anyone loves us all the way down, with full knowledge of who we are. Today’s three readings give us the answer. And the answer is not a principle or a promise written on a wall. The answer is a Person, and he has been searching for you longer than you have been searching for him.

Today we return to Ordinary Time after the great feasts of Easter and Pentecost and Trinity and Corpus Christi. We might be tempted to think that means returning to something lesser. But Ordinary Time is where God meets us in the ordinary — in the crowds, in the streets, in the faces of people who are tired and lost and hungry for something they cannot quite name. And what Jesus does when he meets them is everything.

in the 1st reading, we begin at Mount Sinai. The Israelites have just come through the desert. They have crossed the sea on dry ground. They have been fed with manna they did not plant and water from a rock they did not strike. And now God calls Moses up the mountain and gives him a message for the people — not a list of demands, not a legal code, but first a reminder:
“You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself.” (Exodus 19:4, NABRE)

Yes, God says: remember what I did — I carried you. The image of eagle wings is deeply meaningful.  The eagle is rather unique in that while other birds carry their young in their talons, the eagle carries it's young on it's wings. High and safe above everything. This is the God of the Exodus. He carries us, not a place but a person: “brought you here to myself.”  God carried his people not to a safer location, but to his own heart. 

Brothers and sisters, before you ever found God, he had already been carrying you. In the hard seasons, in the years you did not pray, in the periods of doubt and wandering — underneath were the eagle wings. That is where we begin today. Not with our fidelity to God, but with his fidelity to us.

St. Paul takes this same logic and connects it to Calvary. In the second reading, he writes a truth  that we should etch in our hearts. 

“Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7-8, NABRE)

You might be willing die for someone who is worth it.; a good person, a righteous person — perhaps. But your enemy? The one who has hurt you the most? That is simply not done. That is not how love works — at least not human love. But God’s love does not follow our designs. Christ died for us precisely in our weakness, precisely in our sin, precisely when we had nothing to offer. The cross is not the reward of the righteous. It is the rescue of the lost. We were as Paul says: helpless; unable to save ourselves, to climb out of our own pit. And that is exactly when Christ came. That is when the eagle bore us to himself.

It's sad that sometimes people stay away from the sacraments, stay away from Mass, stay away from God, precisely because they feel unworthy. They think they need to get their life in order first. They think they need to become a better version of themselves before they can come to him. But Paul says: that is exactly backwards. Come in your helplessness. Come in your sinfulness. Come now. Because “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” He is not waiting for you to be worthy. He is waiting for you to come.

And now we reach the Gospel, and we see all of this made flesh. Matthew tells us something very specific about the moment that preceded the calling of the Twelve: 

“At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36, NABRE)

What Jesus felt was not just sympathy, it was heartbreak. Jesus saw people who were troubled and abandoned, beaten up by life and left there. Can you identify with any of that? Jesus looks at them and does not see a problem to be managed. He sees sheep without a shepherd. They are the flock of God, and they are lost. And so he acts. He calls the Twelve. He gives them authority. He sends them out with explicit instructions: go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Drive out demons. And then the line that ties it all together for us 

“Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” (Matthew 10:8, NABRE)

Today’s three readings hold together as a single, unified proclamation:

• God bore us on eagle wings — before we could do anything to deserve it.
• Christ died for us while we were still sinners — love at its most radical.

1. Jesus looked at troubled, abandoned crowds and his heart broke open and he sent people to them.

 
 The Twelve went. They had heard his teaching and witnessed his miracles They have received, without cost. Now they give, without cost.

The same is true for us. We are not sent because we have it all figured out. We are not sent because we are better than the people around us. We are sent because we have been carried, and people who have been carried must carry others. We are sent because we have been found, and people who have been found must now look for the lost.

The harvest is abundant. Jesus said so himself, just a few verses later: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Mt. 9:37-38, NABRE). The need is great. The love is available. What is needed is people willing to go. That's you, that's me.
​
He bore us on eagle wings. He died for us while we were still sinners. He looks at us:  troubled, beaten, and tired — and his heart is moved with pity.
That is the Good News. Now go and give it away.

Peace.

Deacon Michel

On Holy Thursday evening, we enter the Upper Room in shadow. The night is heavy — betrayal is in the air, the cross is hours away. In that charged and sorrowful atmosphere, Jesus takes bread and wine and gives himself to his disciples for the first time under these signs. We receive that gift in near silence, in the dim light of the Triduum. It is a gift wrapped in grief.

Today is different. Today the Church does not look at the Eucharist from inside Holy Thursday's darkness. Today she brings it out into the light of day — in many places, outdoors, in procession, with incense and song and the ringing of bells. Corpus Christi exists precisely because the Church said: this mystery is so great, so overwhelming, so full of joy, that it cannot be held only in one solemn night. It needs its own feast. It needs daylight. It needs a crowd.
Holy Thursday remembers the institution of the Eucharist in the context of the Passion, whereas Corpus Christi celebrates the gift itself — in its fullness, its permanence, its inexhaustible meaning for our lives. It is the same Body and Blood, but today we contemplate it not in grief but in adoration, gratitude, and wonder. The Catechism teaches us: The Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life. (CCC 1324)

To understand what Jesus gives us, Moses in the 1st reading asks us to remember:
"Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments..." (Dt 8:2).

In the desert, God teaches the most important lesson a human being can learn: you do not live by bread alone. "...He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your ancestors" (Dt 8:3).

The manna was real food for real hunger. The Israelites were starving, and God fed them. But the manna was also a sign pointing beyond itself. It told Israel: your deepest hunger is not in your stomach. It is in your soul. And I am the only one who can fill it. Every generation, including ours, has to learn this again. We live in a civilization of extraordinary abundance. We have more food, more comfort, more entertainment than any people in history, and yet we are famished. The loneliness, the anxiety, the restlessness that mark our age are the symptoms of a hunger no food delivery app can cure. 

At the center of this feast is the most audacious claim Jesus ever made, and he makes it with his eyes wide open in today's Gospel. "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" (Jn 6:51).
The crowd hears him. They argue. They are offended. They leave. Jesus does not back down, does not soften it, does not say, "You misunderstood me, it's only a symbol." Instead, he intensifies: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life" (Jn 6:54).

The Catholic Church has always taken Jesus at his word. The Catechism teaches that at every Mass, the bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ — not symbolically, not metaphorically, but really, truly, and substantially. We call this the Real Presence. The substance of the bread and wine is transformed — what theologians call transubstantiation — while the appearances of bread and wine remain. The one who said "I am the resurrection and the life" is the same one who says "This is my body...This is my Blood." 

This is not easy to grasp. It was not easy for the crowds in Capernaum. It is not easy for us. But faith does not require that we fully comprehend before we believe. It requires that we trust the one who is speaking. And what he is speaking is this: I am giving you myself.

Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians, captures something we often miss in all the theological language: "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor 10:16–17).
There are two truths pressed together in these lines.
The first: Holy Communion is a participation — a real sharing in Christ's own life. Not a memorial, not a symbol, but a participation. When we receive, something happens to us. We are brought into union with the very life of God. Saint Augustine heard Christ say to him: "You will not change me into yourself as you do the food of your flesh; instead, you will be changed into me." We are not consuming an object. We are being absorbed into a Person.

The second: We receive not only Christ but one another. "We, though many, are one body." The Eucharist is never purely private. Every time we come to this altar, we are affirming a bond with every other person at this Mass — and with the whole Church across time and space. We cannot say "I love Jesus" while living in contempt or indifference toward our brothers and sisters. We cannot receive the Body of Christ and then refuse to recognize the body of Christ in the poor, the suffering, the marginalized. The Eucharist commits us.
Jesus says: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me" (Jn 6:56–57).

"Remains in me and I in him...", this is the promise. Not just a momentary contact, not just a Sunday transaction, but a mutual indwelling — Christ in us, and we in Christ — that is meant to shape our entire week, our entire life.

That is what we celebrate today. Not just a doctrine to be affirmed, but a life to be lived. Not just a mystery to be adored — though adore it we must — but a food to be eaten, a presence to be carried, a love to be given away.

​On Holy Thursday we received this gift in the shadow of the cross. Today we carry it into the light. 

Take a moment, before you receive today, to let the weight of it land: God is about to enter your body. The same one who made the universe, who spoke light into darkness, who raised the dead comes into you and dwells in your heart. Then at the end of Mass the priest or deacon says: "Go in peace..." It is a sending; nourished, sustained, inhabited by the one who said I am the bread of life — we are sent to feed a world that does not yet know it is hungry for him, we need to become what we receive. 

Peace.

​Deacon Michel