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.

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.

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.

"Ah...a Catholic". 

I was invited to a colleague's home to have dinner with his family, rather than eat alone at the hotel I was staying at. At his invitation to bless the meal i began by signing myself, simultaneously saying "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...". I guess he say a quizzical  expression from me and signed himself as I had done and said "only Catholics do that". That memory, from more than 40 years ago, came flooding my mind as I prepared for Mass, the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity 2026. 

What was it like in that upper room? It is Pentecost, a Jewish feast of 50 days that started as a harvest feast but took on later significance of the covenant given to Noah after the flood, and the covenant given to Moses at Sinai. But is now 50 days since they experienced Jesus' Resurrection, but just 10 days ago Jesus ascended, they saw him taken up to the clouds , and he said to them, "wait in Jerusalem". And here they are, hiding, waiting and praying...

To understand what is happening today, we have to understand where Jesus came from.​
And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. Jn 1:14

The Ascension is the completion of that arc. It is the return journey. 

There is a restlessness in the Church during these days between Easter and Pentecost. We are a people who have heard the great news — He is risen! — and yet we are still waiting, still longing, still incomplete. The disciples knew this feeling intimately. Jesus had been crucified, buried, and raised — and now He was preparing to leave them again. And they were afraid.
Into that fear, He speaks some of the most consoling words in all of Scripture: 

"I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you."

"Do not let your hearts be troubled."
Jesus says this to his disciples on the night before he dies. They are scared. They don't understand where he is going. Thomas blurts out what they're all thinking: "Lord, we don't know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

 The 4th Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday and the imagery of shepherd and sheep is pervasive in today's Scriptures and I want to focus in particular  on knowing the Shepherds voice.