A power struggle at the top of the U.S. National Rifle Association ‘pert near turned its annual convention into a Gunfight at the O.K. Corral last weekend.

Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 12 (Year C) Acts 13:14, 43-52; Psalm 100; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30

New ideas nearly always provoke controversy, resistance and even violence. This applies in all areas of human activity, but nowhere is it more prevalent than in religion.

A friend was reflecting on a remark she’d made that morning to someone, which she didn’t feel good about. “Sometimes I think about things after I say them,” she mused, “and wonder why I did.”

We are witnessing a collapse of religious freedom in Canada. Anyone who doubts it is naïve or completely uniformed. There may be some who simply cannot believe this is happening in a modern democracy. But it is.

There’s a line in Pope Francis’ recent Apostolic Exhortation to young people Christus Vivit that jumps out at me. When he writes that “digital media can expose people to the risk of addiction, isolation and gradual loss of contact with concrete reality,” he is speaking to my own millennial heart.

It is rare to laugh out loud when listening to a news item, but recently this is exactly what happened.

Healing was not the invitation I was expecting when I showed up at church several weeks ago. 

A week before celebrating the Resurrection, we had the resurrection of Resurrection.

Belief in the bodily resurrection from the dead of the crucified Christ is the core of Christian faith. St. Paul stated the point succinctly: “If Christ had not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).

Indeed, the importance of the Resurrection goes further than that. The empty tomb reveals that the Resurrection is not a testimony to the immortality of the soul or to a “spiritual” rising in which Christ’s spirit lives in His followers while His body decays in the ground. As well, the rational grounds for belief in the Resurrection are evidence that faith is not blind or irrational.

Alleluia, alleluia give thanks to the risen Lord Alleluia, alleluia give praise to His name.

The music had barely faded from our Easter liturgy when I walked into the hospital room of a woman I had been asked to visit but had never met.