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:

First Sunday of Lent  [March 9, 2025]
Second Sunday of Lent  [March 16, 2025]
Third Sunday of Lent  [March 23, 2025]
Fourth Sunday of Lent  [March 30, 2022]

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]

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!         

First Sunday of Lent [C]

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.
Luke 4: 1-13

Charting your desert experience

So let’s say you decide that this is the Lent you’re going to drop the 20 pounds that have taken up permanent residence around your middle.

Good for you.

Now comes the hard part:  How do you do it?

Eating less, of course.

But how do you go about “eating less”?

Anne-Marie Slaughter writes in The New York Times [January 4, 2022] that merely resolving to eat less “rarely works in the long term.  It means changing my eating habits and having healthy tasty food readily available.  To have healthy, tasty food available I have to plan my meals every week.  I also have to make time to cook in advance so that I don’t open the fridge when I’m really hungry and realize that cooking something healthy will mean that it won’t reach my plate for another hour.

“To have that weekly planning and cooking time, I have to free up a big chunk of Sunday.  To free up a big chunk of Sunday, I need to work less so that I don’t spend so much of my weekends catching up on work I could not get to during the week.  To work less means summoning the honesty to remove a whole set of psychological barriers to saying no.  And changing all of these patterns will affect my family and my colleagues, requiring them to adapt and adjust their own habits.”

The decision to “eat less” is only the beginning — to actually “eat less” requires a change in the very way we approach food.

Many of our Lenten resolves fail because we think denial and sacrifice alone will lead to conversion.  To travel our Lenten deserts takes more than “stop doing” and “giving up” — it means rethinking how the many pieces of our lives fit together as a whole.  So may we “chart” our Lenten journey this year, following the same Spirit of God that leads Jesus to his moment of decision and now leads us to meaningful conversion — “turning” — in our lives: finding our way out of our winters of cynicism, our deserts of self-absorption, our wildernesses of despair and hopelessness by reordering our time and priorities.  These days before Easter’s dawning are a time for deciding what we want our lives to be and discerning how we can realize the purpose and meaning of this blessed time God has given us. 

Second Sunday of Lent [C]

While Jesus was praying, his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.  Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.
Luke 9: 28-36

God transfigured in life’s messes

A church organized a Tuesday morning mom-and-tots group, where the kids would play and the moms could indulge in adult conversation and sip coffee while it was still hot.  The group became very close, laughing and crying, talking and praying.

One day the group took up a book on prayer.  The author wrote that making quiet time for personal prayer was crucial to the spiritual life.  Most of the moms said they tried to fit in such “quiet time” during nap tie or laundry time or dishwashing time or shower time, but all agreed that a set daily “quiet time” was an impossible luxury.

The book offered a solution for the quiet-time dilemma:  “Get up earlier.”   All moms have to do is get up and have their quiet time in the dark before everyone else is awake, because — quoting the book — “you can sleep when you’re dead.” 

In other words, “a bunch of baby-brained, undernourished, zombie moms were being told that what they really needed to make their lives better was less sleep.”

One young mom spoke up:  “Sleep was the one thing I knew I needed to have if I was going to be a decent mom for another day.  I needed sleep, because my kids needed me to get dressed and go to the park and read the same book 400 times and kiss boo-boos and settle disputes over Legos and cut a single grape into 11 pieces and scoop turds out of the bathtub and not kill anybody, either by accident or on purpose.  Sleep was life.”

How could God entrust her, she asked, with the care and protection of three kids and then expect her to get up at the crack of dawn to “be quiet with him” because “I can sleep with him when I’m dead.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.  I really don’t.  I think God is with us.  Like, day in and day out, in the chaos and the noise and the silliness of life, he is there . . . never absent from the clamor of our kids’ laughter, their squeals, their skinned knees, their fussing and whining and raging fits in the Target parking lot.  God is not withholding himself from us, waiting for us to come to him in the wee hours of the morning as a measure of our devotion . . . !”

“So I’m gonna honor God intentionally in my sleep, because I’m pretty sure God wants me to be the very best mother I can possibly be to my boys . . . Tomorrow I’ll be sleeping in.  And I’m not even gonna worry about it, because I’m pretty sure I’ll have plenty of quiet time with God when I’m DEAD!"

[From The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever by Jamie L. Wright.]

In her call to motherhood, this woman has experienced “transfiguration”: the light of God’s presence radiates in her love and care for her children; the presence of Christ’s peace “transfigures” their home into the very dwelling place of God.  What Peter, James and John witness in Christ on the mountain exists within each one of us, as well:  God is present within us, animating us to do good and holy things, guiding our steps as we try to walk justly and humbly in the ways of God, enlightening our vision with wisdom and selflessness to bring the justice and mercy of God into our world. 

Third Sunday of Lent [C]

The parable of the barren fig tree.
Luke 13: 1-9

A rare gift

Sarah Gray was three months pregnant with identical twin boys when she and her husband, Ross, learned that one of them suffered from anencephaly, a fatal birth defect.  Six months later, Thomas and Callum were born; Callum survived, but Thomas died six days later.  Sarah and Ross decided to donate Thomas’ tissues and organs to science research.  They were able to donate his liver, his cord blood, his retinas and his corneas.

A short time later, Sarah was on a trip to Boston.  She remembered that Thomas’ corneas had gone to the Schepens Eye Research Institute at Harvard.  She and Ross had signed away any rights to future information about the donation.  But she decided there was nothing to lose by calling. 

“I donated my son’s eyes to you a couple of years ago,” Sara explained to the receptionist at Harvard.  “I’m in town on business for a couple of days.  Is there any chance I can stop by for a ten-minute tour?”

The woman who answered paused.  “I’ve never had this request before.”  The woman asked Sara to hold for a moment; finally, someone came on the line and said she would be welcomed.  The next day, Sara met one of the researchers at the lab.  The researcher said that an infant’s eyes “are like gold to us.”  Thomas’ cells were still being studied at the lab as they developed treatment for a number of different eye ailments. 

The warm and grateful welcome she received gave Sarah “the bug.”  So she and Ross arranged visits to the other three labs around the country where their little boy’s tissues had been sent.  At Duke University, they learned that Thomas’ blood was part of a study on how anencephaly develops.  Scientists at the Cytonet lab explained how Thomas’ liver was being used to develop lifesaving therapy for liver disease.  And at the University of Philadelphia, the Rosses saw how Thomas’s retinas were a Godsend to researchers looking for ways to treat retinoblastoma, a deadly cancer of the retina.

For Sarah and Ross and Callum, the donation of Thomas’ tissue was no longer an abstract “nice thing to do.”   The extraordinary good of Thomas’ gifts became something real to them.  Their feelings of grief turned into pride.  Their son and brother was with them in this life-giving work. 

[From Sarah Gray’s story at The Moth, told at the Tarrytown Music Hall in Tarrytown, N.Y.]

Sara and Ross Gray model the generosity of heart and spirit of optimism of the gardener in Jesus’ parable.  Like the gardener who sees some hope for the struggling fig tree, the Rosses are able to see beyond their grief to make some good come from their little boy’s death.  As God’s mercy and compassion know no end, we are called to embrace the faith of the gardener: to work and re-work our own small plots and realize its harvest of compassion and grace.     

Fourth Sunday of Lent [C]

“My son, we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come back to life again; he was lost and has been found.”
 Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

The return of the prodigal daughter

For Valerie Schultz, the parable of the prodigal has been playing out among the women in her family.

“There was a dark time in the life of one of my daughters when I dreaded answering a call from an unknown number on my phone,” Ms. Schultz writes in America Magazine [September 2, 2019].  “Dread is too mild a word, actually, because I was deeply afraid that some unwelcome call was going to be the notification that my daughter was dead.”

“A practicing alcoholic, she was out there, at the world’s mercy, her behavior rash and risky, and there was nothing I could do about it.  When the call finally came, it was less-bad news:  She was not dead but in jail.  Among other charges, she had assaulted a police officer.  I suspect she survived that encounter with the law because she was a white girl rather than a person of color, a thought that fills me with both gratitude and shame.”

Her daughter is now sober and she tells her story with her daughter’s permission.  Mom is now playing the role of the relieved parent trying to bridge the prodigal with her skeptical sisters.

“Their reaction to her recovery has caught me off-guard, although it makes sense: [They] have been the kids doing the right thing, comparatively speaking.  It is as though they were used to her being the one who messed up all the time, who caused their parents all the grief, and now they do not quite know what to make of her.  And as much as she presents this new, improved, self-aware person to them, as much as she wants them to trust her sobriety and integrity and honesty, they do not — not yet, anyway.  Which she, in turn, does not understand.  Why are they so judgmental?  Why do they brush her aside so dismissively?  Why are they holding onto their expectation of a return to her past prodigal ways?”

Valerie’s daughters have always been close, she writes.  “They have different personalities, but they have always supported each other, a steadfast squad of blood sisters.  Now there is turmoil among them, as this changing family dynamic rocks everybody’s place in it.  Do not ever let anyone say that sobriety is easy on a family:  The return of a prodigal can spark consuming fires.”

The prodigal is not a simple story with a clear and easy-to-embrace moral.  The older brother’s reaction is real — and understandable.  How much hurt do we allow the prodigal to inflict?  It’s not easy to be the parent who loves unconditionally; it is painfully difficult to face our prodigal-like failures and sins; it is beyond our comprehension, as the “older” sibling, not to demand accountability from the one who hurt us and the family.  But, as the Schultz’ family is working through, forgiveness begins by seeing things through the eyes of the other, to embrace the other’s hurts and doubts and fears, to understand their struggle to make sense of things.  Forgiveness is focused on the future, about healing the past in order to live joyfully and meaningful in the present.  May God’s complete and unconditional love, mirrored in the love of the prodigal’s father, embrace our hearts enabling us to both forgive and seek forgiveness and so re-create our futures in Easter joy.  

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.