Every month, Connections offers stories, images, reflections and meditations relating to the themes of each Sunday’s readings.  Material comes from the evening news and the every day, from the stage and screen, from the music world and the marketplace – all designed to help homilists “connect” the world of Monday through Saturday with the Gospel proclaimed on Sunday.

To give you an idea of what Connections is all about, we’ve assembled the following sampling of stories, meditations and 'connecting' reflections from recent issues of Connections:

Fifth Sunday of Lent [April 6, 2025]
Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion [April 13, 2025]
Easter [April 19-20, 2025]
Second Sunday of Easter [April 27, 2025]

Third Sunday of Easter [May 4, 2025]
Fourth Sunday of Easter [May 11, 2025]
Fifth Sunday of Easter [May 18, 2025]
Sixth Sunday of Easter [May 25, 2025]
Ascension of the Lord [May 29 or June 1, 2025]
Seventh Sunday of Easter [June 1, 2025]

Please note that, in every issue of Connections, we offer TWO stories/meditations for each Sunday’s Gospel.

After reviewing this “electronic sampler,” if you’d like information on subscribing – or receiving the next complete issue of Connections – CLICK HERE for subscription information and an order form.

Enjoy!         

Fifth Sunday of Lent [C]

“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
John 8: 1-11

Caught in the act

She was caught.  Her marriage disintegrated and now she was on her own to raise her two little boys.  There’s little support or understanding from her family.  They loved their son-in-law —why couldn’t they have worked things out?  If they only knew — but she keeps that to herself.  Her focus is now on creating a loving and safe home for her two little ones.  She was caught in the very act of seeking a better life for herself and her two boys.

He was caught.  It all began when he blew out his knee playing soccer.  He was given a prescription for the pain — and before long he was hooked.  The opioid has taken control of his life; he’s losing everything and everyone important to him.  He was caught in the act of trying to manage his addiction alone.

So many of us are “caught in the act”:

She was caught in the act of maintaining her dignity while the other kids at school made fun of her dress, her name, her accent . . .

He was caught in the act of refusing to go along with a sales pitch that he knew was a fraud . . .

They were caught in the act of being human beings with souls in the face of the bigotry and self-
righteousness of their “accusers . . . ”

And every day, they’re threatened with some kind of “stoning.”

People get caught in situations beyond their control, trapped in circumstances they struggle to deal with, cornered because they lack the maturity or experience to cope.  The “scribes and Pharisees” around them are quick to condemn them — but Jesus challenges them to drop their “stones” and find within themselves the empathy and humility to recognize the grace that liberated them from their own fears and failings to become signs of that same grace for those “caught” in fear and despair.  Jesus asks both the woman’s accusers and the woman herself to reach out beyond their resentments and anger to lift one another up when they stumble; he also asks them to look within their own hearts to confront the sins and evil that are part of every life and find within themselves the compassion and love of God that leads to true and lasting joy, healing and life.  We can’t take on the evil of the world until we confront the evil in our own hearts; we can’t lift up the fallen until we realize that we, too, are fallen; we can’t raise others to health and hope until we seek our own healing. 

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion [C]

The [criminal] said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  [Jesus] replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise . . . ”
Luke 22: 14 – 23: 56

Encounters along the road to Calvary

In Luke’s Gospel, several characters encounter Jesus on the road to “the place called the Skull.”

The journey starts with Peter, the fisherman who was the first to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.  Peter is ready to take up the sword against Judas and the guard who come to arrest Jesus.  Peter follows Jesus as far as the high priest’s courtyard, only to deny even knowing Jesus when he is confronted – by a young maid.  May we hear the cock crow when we betray someone, when our actions are not up to our words, when our good intentions only go so far.

The governor Pilate hears the case against Jesus.  Pilate is a Roman functionary, in constant fear of angering his Roman superiors.  He knows that Jesus is being framed by the Jewish leadership.  It’s a grave injustice and Pilate knows it.  But defending Jesus is not the politically savvy thing to do here.  May we find the courage that Pilate lacks to confront injustice by doing what is right and merciful regardless of the consequences.

Pilate’s guards then beat and abuse Jesus.  Bullies exist in every place and time — thugs who have the tacit permission to inflict the cruelty that their bosses quietly sanction.  May we call out the bullies we encounter and come to the defense of their victims — and may we be humble and self-aware enough to realize when we are the “bully.”

Poor Simon was coming home from the fields when soldiers pressed him into service to help the stumbling Jesus carry the crossbeam.  You have to wonder:  Did the Cyrenian balk at helping Jesus?  Did he feel any pity for the condemned Jesus?  May we be ready to help one another bear our crosses of illness, poverty, and grief that are unexpectedly laid on our shoulders.

As Jesus carries his cross through the streets of the city, he meets a group of women who are horrified at what is happening to Jesus.  Perhaps they heard him teach; maybe he cured one of their loved ones.  They can’t fathom why this is happening, but they’ve seen this before: a good man caught up with the ugly politics of Jerusalem.  May we possess the compassion and mercy of the women of Jerusalem for the broken, the suffering and the abused in our own cities and towns.

Jesus is crucified between two criminals.  One of them sees beyond his own tragic plight to recognize the injustice of Jesus’ death and the promise of God’s vindication.  In the shadow of the cross, the “good thief” comes to grips with the failings of his life and, in his encounter with Jesus, is promised Paradise.  May we realize in the shadow of the cross our own need for forgiveness and embrace the hope that forgiveness is ours.

And after Jesus “breathes his last,” Joseph, the council member who refused to go along with this travesty, steps forward to ask for Jesus’ body and arranges for a proper if hurried burial  May we possess a faith that compels us to act with Joseph’s quiet integrity to step forward for the sake of justice and decency.

And the women in Jesus’ company watch and wait . . .

In each of these figures, we can see ourselves.  In their role in Jesus’ passion, we realize the extent of our faith and the depth of our belief – and we understand the reality of God’s love in his Christ given up for us.  In the events of Holy Week, God transforms the cruel and unjust death of his Son into the ultimate vindication of good over evil, of light over darkness, of life over death.  Let our prayer this week be that God will give us the grace to overcome Pilate’s cowardice to embrace the integrity of Joseph of Arimathea, making Christ’s body our own; that we may seek not to melt into the crowd of onlookers but to become Simons of Cyrene, helping Jesus take up his cross, or one of the women of Jerusalem who offers Jesus a rag to wipe his face, a sip of water, the support of their tears; that we may possess the courage that Jesus’ disciples lack and the undeterred compassion of the women who come early in the morning to complete the burial of Christ.  May we see ourselves in the shadows and movements of this Holy Week as we struggle to walk the way of the Crucified in the Gethsemanes and Golgothas of our own time and place. 

Easter:  The Resurrection of the Lord  [C]

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.  Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.  “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but he has been raised up.”
Luke 24: 1-12

“Let him easter in us”

On December 8, 1875, the German ship the Deutschland sank in the North Sea, off the English coast.  Among the 157 passengers who perished were five Franciscan sisters traveling to Missouri to take up new teaching missions.  The young nuns sacrificed their own lives so that others might be rescued.  According to one account, the sisters remained below deck as the ship sank.  As the water rose around them, they clasped hands and were heard praying, “O Christ, O Christ, come quickly!”

The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was profoundly moved by the story and wrote a poem about the tragedy, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, which he dedicated to the five Franciscans.  He saw in their deaths a parallel to the suffering of Christ.  Hopkins concludes the poem with this line:

“Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us . . . ”

As used here, the word “easter” is a nautical term.  It means steering a craft toward the east, into the light.

“Let him easter in us.”

Easter as a verb — not just the name of this great festival we begin today, not just the mystery of God’s unfathomable redemptive love that the Gospel can barely articulate, but Easter as something we think, something we feel, something we do. 

“Let him easter in us” that we may live our lives in the light of his compassion and peace, his justice and forgiveness.

“Let him easter in us” that we may be a humble servant like him, a healer like him, a teacher like him, a footwasher like him.

“Let him easter in us” that we may bear our crosses for one another as he bore his cross for us.

“Let him easter in us” that we may, at the end of our voyage, “easter” in him.

Throughout the forty days of Lent we have been steering our lives toward the light, trying to shake the darkness, the doubts, the burdens of living, the heaviness of hearts.  May Easter become a verb in our lives — a way of living, a way of loving, a way of seeing and hearing and understanding.  Let us not just celebrate this Easter day but let us “do” Easter every day.  Let us not just mark this milestone of the life of the Gospel Jesus, but let this day mark our lives with the compassion, humility and joy of the Risen One.  Let us “easter” every moment of our lives in the light of Christ.   

Second Sunday of Easter [C]

Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
John 20: 19-31

The community of the “bruised”

In her book Broken Body, Healing Spirit, Episcopal minister and spiritual director Mary C. Earle writes on what dealing with serious illness can teach us about living a life of meaningful faith.

Mary Earle tells the story of Alice.  Alice’s illness required weekly blood tests for some months, and she began to dread them.  Her veins were hard to find and she encountered the moment of “just a little stick” with great trepidation.  Inevitably the technician would miss the vein, and things would go from bad to worse.

“One day, her arm blue and purple from her latest test, Alice visited a friend who was in cancer treatment.  He rolled up his sleeve to show her his own purpled arm.  At that moment, Alice realized she was part of a community, a hidden community of those who have difficulty with blood tests.  That small moment made a big difference in her life.  Her arm and her friend’s arm bore something that looked like tribal markings.  They bore the signs, in their flesh, of the ongoing wounding that allowed them to continue living.

“Alice discovered that other people’s experiences with blood tests could help her with her own.  A nurse told her that getting nervous increased her adrenalin, which made the veins shrink even more.  The realization that her very blood vessels were shrinking from being poked helped Alice see the humorous side of the situation.  Her own anxiety was one of the problems, and she could do something to control that . . .

“Alice needed the blood tests to maintain some degree of health, and she began to see those tests, and the wounding they caused, as a form of healing, a necessary part of her own participation in the process of living with her illness.  She also began to speak up, to tell the technicians that she had especially small veins that a well-practiced technician would handle easily.  She saw herself as a partner with Christ in the process of healing that these tests brought about.”

In our bruises and broken pieces, in our gashes and nail marks, we are joined to one another as the community of peace that Jesus forms on Easter night.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus appears to his disciples and shows them his hands and his side; later he invites the doubting Thomas to touch the marks made by the nails and the gash from the soldier’s lance.  Easter neither denies the effects of Good Friday nor erases the wounds of crucifixion — but Easter is God’s compassion moving us beyond crucifixion to healing and wholeness.  We all have scars from our own Good Fridays that remain despite our own resurrections — and in recognizing and accepting those scars, we discover our belonging to one another in community with Christ — and Alice.   Our “nail marks” remind us that all pain and grief, all ridicule and suffering, are transformed into healing and peace in the love of God we experience from others and that we extend them. 

Third Sunday of Easter [C]

Peter was distressed that Jesus had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and said to Jesus, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
John 21: 1-19

The road back from infidelity

Marriages fall apart for many different reasons, but one of the most common and challenging to overcome is the discovery that one partner has cheated on the other. 

It can be a fatal blow to most marriages — but not always.  Marriage counselors and therapists are finding that more and more couples are choosing to remain together, that couples who choose to work through issues of trust often end up with a stronger, more loving and mutually understanding relationship than they had previously. 

Many spouses care deeply for the well-being of their partners even while lying to them, and just as many of those betrayed continue to love the ones who lied to them.  They find a way to stay together.  Betrayal cuts to the bone, but the wound can be healed.  

Writing in The New York Times [January 23, 2018], health columnist Jane E. Brody recounts the experience of a friend who found herself in that position when she discovered her husband’s affair.

“At first I wanted to kick him out, but I realized that I didn’t want to get divorced.  My mother did that and she ended up raising three children alone.  I didn’t want a repeat of my childhood.  I wanted my son, who was then two years old, to have a father in his life.  But I also knew that if we were going to stay together, we had to go to couples counseling.”

About a dozen sessions later, the woman came away from the experience with life-changing insights:

“I know I’m not perfect.  I was very focused on taking care of my son, and my husband wasn’t getting from me whatever he needed.  Everybody should be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.  We learned how to talk to each other and really listen.  I love him and respect him, I’m so happy we didn’t split apart.  He’s a wonderful father, a stimulating partner, and while our marriage isn’t perfect — whose is? — we are supportive and nurturing of each other.  Working through the affair made us stronger.”

It’s hard work: to forgive and to seek forgiveness, to restore trust and rebuild a shattered relationship, to recognize the brokenness that led to estrangement and to commit together to mending the cracks.  But Jesus gives us a model of such reconciliation in today’s Easter Gospel.  Jesus’ lifting up of Peter’s love and commitment transforms Peter’s utter failure into understanding and wisdom that enables Peter to take on his role in the post-Resurrection story.   It is the same movement from brokenness to healing, from betrayal to trust that couples in crisis undertake to stay together.  The Easter Christ calls Peter and his brothers and now all of us to take on his work of reconciliation: to possess — despite our doubts and disappointments — the heart of the Risen Jesus to forgive and seek forgiveness, to be the means of enabling God’s mercy to be realized in our own families, neighborhoods and communities.    

Fourth Sunday of Easter [C]

“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me . . .
no one can take them out of the Father's hand.”
John 10: 27-30

“Final Exam”

When Pauline Chen began medical school twenty years ago, she dreamed of saving lives.  What she did not count on was how much death would be a part of her work.  She chronicles her wrestling with medicine’s profound paradox in her recent book, Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality.

When a patient is dying in the intensive care unit, the protocol is always the same:  Doors and curtains are closed around the patient and family, monitors are turned off — and physicians make themselves scarce.  But one death during her internship dramatically changed Doctor Chen’s thinking.  Early one morning, a patient’s heart began to fail after his long battle with colon cancer.  Doctor Chen called the family and the attending surgeon.  The dying man’s wife arrived first.  Doctor Chen took her to her husband’s room and quietly slipped out, as protocol dictated.  But when the attending arrived, he took the woman’s hand and quietly explained what was happening.  She began to sob.  But then, contrary to the norm, the doctor closed the curtains around the three of them. 

Doctor Chen remembers:

“I peeked in.  Inside, the woman was still sobbing, but she was standing with her hand in her husband’s.  The surgeon stood next to her and whispered something; the woman nodded and her sobs subsided.  Her shoulders relaxed and her breathing became more regular.  The surgeon whispered again, pointing to the monitors and to the patient’s chest and then gently putting his hand on the patient’s arm.  He was, I thought, explaining how life leaves the body — the last contractions of the heart, the irregular breaths, the final comfort of her presence . . . Thirty minutes passed before the surgeon stepped out.  Soon after, the patient’s wife appeared; her husband had died.  She thanked us, smiled weakly, and walked out of the ICU.”

What the attending surgeon did that morning had a profound effect on Doctor Chen.  She stopped slipping away from her dying patients but stayed with them and their families, answering questions, explaining what was happening, offering comfort and consolation.

“From that moment on,” Doctor Chen writes, “I would believe that I could do something more than cure.”

Christ the Good Shepherd calls us to listen consciously, deliberately, wisely for his voice in the depths of our hearts, to listen for his voice in the love and joy, the pain and anguish, the cries for mercy and justice of those around us; Christ the Son of God assures us that we are always safe and accepted in the loving embrace of his Father.  In turn, to be disciples of Christ is to be the voice of Christ and the embrace of God for one another, in the compassion, peace and forgiveness we work for and offer in the Spirit of the Risen One.  

Fifth Sunday of Easter [C]

“I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13: 31-33a, 34-35

“One cup!  One cup?”

Michael Curry is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States.  His father was an Episcopal priest, as well.  In his book, Love Is the Way, Bishop Curry tells the story of what brought his father to the ministry — his mother.

Curry’s father was raised Baptist, while his mother was an Episcopalian.  One Sunday, when they were dating, she invited him to her church.  They were among the few Black worshippers in church that day.

“My father was amazed, but dubious, when it came time for Communion,” Bishop Curry writes.  “The priest welcomed everyone to receive the body and blood of Christ — and from a single communal chalice!  Again, this was the 1940s.  Jim Crow was alive and well.  It was the North, but segregation and separation of the races was still the law of the land . . . And my father saw one cup which everyone was to drink.  One cup!  One cup?

“My father hung back, as my mother went forward.  He wondered if the priest would really offer the common cup.  And if he did, would others continue to drink from the same cup?  He held his breath as my mother sipped.  As the cup was passed, the next person did drink.   And the next.  And the next.  When he told the story, he would always say, ‘Any church in which Blacks and Whites drink from the same cup knows something about the Gospel that I want to be a part of.’  And so my mother led my father down a path that he probably would never have taken for himself — love in action.”

In the sharing of the one cup of the Risen Jesus, Bishop Curry’s father discovers the love of his life and the beginning of a vocation.  He experienced the church actually being the Church that Jesus envisioned: a community of all God’s daughters and sons gathered around his table, breaking the bread, sharing the one cup, washing one another’s feet in service and care.  Our identity as disciples of Christ is centered in such persistent and constant love; our faithfulness in imitating the compassion and forgiveness of the Risen One is lived in our openness of heart and spirit to love selflessly, completely and unconditionally, as God has loved us in Christ.    

Sixth Sunday of Easter [C]

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our dwelling with him.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
John 14: 23-29

The peace of terry cloth

The bathrobe.

There is no more comfortable and comforting garment in our closets.  When it comes to bathrobes, the bigger, the thicker, the warmer — the better.

The bathrobe keeps us gentle.  It is possible to sulk in a bathrobe, but not to rage.  Trying to be serious or authoritative in a bathrobe would be a joke, commanding neither respect nor fear — when we feel the need to right a wrong or take decisive action against some ne’er-do-well, the first thing we do is get dressed before we have at it.  Bad-tempered, suspicious people never wear bathrobes in order to stay prepared for battle.

You are most yourself in your bathrobe.  You are at your most vulnerable, you are at the mercy of others in a bathrobe.  Putting on your bathrobe means taking off your pomposity and your self-importance.  You are at your most giving and forgiving in your bathrobe.

Bathrobes are made for cuddling, not arguing.  Bathrobes embrace us in a spirit of blissful peace and unconditional love.  Presidents and prime ministers, generals and leaders, should wear bathrobes at all times.

[Adapted from an essay by Barbara Holland.]

The peace and comfort we feel in our bathrobes are the peace and comfort that Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel — peace that is centered in our selfless love for others, comfort that is found in realizing God’s presence in our very midst in the love of others.  The Risen Christ calls us to embrace the attitude of our bathrobes — to put aside our own self-obsessed agendas and need to control in order to put on the Gospel that places forgiveness and reconciliation, justice and community, before all else.  

The Ascension of the Lord  [C]
  
“You are witnesses of these things.  And behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you . . .”
Luke 24: 46-53

The work of trust

There are people we entrust with our lives — or a big part of our lives, anyway.

We entrust the education and care of our children to teachers and coaches.

We entrust our retirement savings and college funds to financial managers.

We entrust the structural security and efficient operation of our homes to contractors, electricians and plumbers. 

Firefighters, police, doctors and nurses — all professionals we entrust with our health and safety.

We trust these folks because they have demonstrated a sense of responsibility and competence in their fields and have proven that will act in our interests. 

And there are many people who have entrusted some part of their lives to us: our employers, our clients, our friends — and, most important of all, our families and children.

It is no small thing to be entrusted as such.

It means putting aside our own interests to seek what is best for those who have placed their confidence in us.

It begins by understanding and appreciating what they want to make of their lives and their expectations for the future.

To entrust some part of our lives to another requires letting go, respecting their expertise and competence, accepting the reality that some things will go wrong or fail, that nothing is forever.

And to accept the responsibility of taking on what someone entrusts to us requires patience, understanding – and being ready and willing to say what they may not want to hear, but have to.

Such trust, such commitment, is sacred.

Today, on the mount of the Ascension, Jesus entrusts to us his life, his Gospel of healing, compassion, reconciliation and hope.  Having given his life to reveal the love of God for all of us, he entrusts that work to you and me.  He commissions us to be his “witnesses” and to continue his work — with all its risks and despite all our doubts.  The work of building his church of reconciliation and love requires of us humility, respect, patience; it asks us to let go of our own interests and wants to open our hearts to change and a willingness to cope with that change.  In baptism, every Christian of every time and place takes on the role of witness to all that Jesus did and taught.  We are witnesses not only in our articulating the powerful words of the Gospel but in the quiet, simple, but no less powerful expressions of compassion and love that echo the same compassion and love of God — God who is Father and Son and Brother and Sister to us all.  

Seventh Sunday of Easter [C]

“Holy Father, I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word . . . ” 
John 17: 20-26

A prayer for busy moms, coaches, and grandparents

Remember the mom who taught your second-grade religious education class the year you received your First Communion?  Now that you’re a parent yourself, you understand and appreciate the extraordinary sacrifice of time she had made and her generosity of heart to prepare you and your classmates for your First Communion with such patience, understanding and love.  Jesus’ prayer in today’s Gospel is for her.

As you watch your own son or daughter play team sports, you see yourself at their age struggling to make contact with the ball or trying to stop an opposing player who had height and weight — and skill — over you.  But there was that one coach who took you under his or her wing, who worked you hard to show you that you could do it.  No, you didn’t make the pros or get an athletic scholarship to a first-tier school — but you left that team with a confidence and work ethic that you carry to this day.  In his Cenacle prayer the night before he died, Jesus blesses that dedicated coach.
         
Most of us have or had a favorite aunt or uncle or grandparent.  We could talk to them about anything.  Their love was unconditional, their support total — and their advice honest.  They may have taught us to do things we still cherish: tying our own dry flies, baking an old family recipe, playing guitar, painting in water colors.  Our lives have been blessed by the wisdom of their years and the lessons of their experience.  At the Last Supper, Jesus gives thanks for their blessing to us and their families.

On the night before he died, Jesus prayed for and exalted all the family members and friends and teachers and coaches and mentors in our lives who have instilled in us the values of the Gospel.   In John’s account of the Last Supper, after his final teachings to his disciples before the events of his passion begin, Jesus addresses his Father in heaven.  He begins praying for himself, that he may obediently bring to completion the work of redemption entrusted to him by the Father.  Next, he prays for his disciples gathered with him in the Cenacle, that they may faithfully proclaim the Word he has taught them.  Finally (today’s Gospel), Jesus prays for the Church of the future — those who teach, reveal, and proclaim God’s love in our midst, and those of us whose lives have been blessed and enriched by their witness.  It is that love of God that binds us together as a Church, that makes us not just an association of good people but a family of faith.  In Jesus’ “high priestly prayer,” we behold our connectedness to the Church of all times and places: from the Risen Christ’s greeting of peace Easter night to our own Alleluias this Easter season.  Christ exalts those who strive to create that sense of unity and calls us to work for that connectedness with one another and with those who follow us by honoring the essential dignity that everyone possesses as a child of God.