“Seeing is believing.” This is common wisdom. If you just show me something, let me see it with my own eyes, then I’ll believe. You and I come to Mass each Sunday, I think, “eager” to see, and “eager” to believe. But what are you and I so eager to see today?

Remember last week when Father Tom preached? The crowd had just finished the meal of fish and barley loaves. Their stomachs were filled but they were still unsatisfied. They were looking for something more.

Do you remember how it used to drive you crazy when you were little, and your family sat around the table telling stories after dinner? The same stories, often in the very same words, the very same cadences. At my grandfather’s table, there were two commandments: “children are to be seen and not heard,” and “thou shalt not leave without asking, ‘may I be excused from the table.’” It was almost a liturgical refrain. “Yes, you may be excused.”

On warm summer weekends we encounter I-5’s paradox: thousands of vacationers on their way out of Seattle, and thousands of vacationers on their way into Seattle. Perhaps the paradox can be unraveled by the search that all of us have for a new and different place to refresh our wearied spirits. Jesus knew about this human need and search for rest.

This Sunday, all three readings celebrate prophetic voices. There is, first of all, Ezekiel. He lived in a time when Israel’s great age of independence had collapsed and God’s people were living in exile.

The Wisdom community in Israel was preoccupied with human origins and a connection with a God who is intimately linked to creation. Humanity is an imago Dei – the very image of God. They would have loved the new encyclical on the environment by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’. We have a divine spark within us that just will not burn out.

Happy Fathers Day To all you Dads, Grandfathers, God-fathers, and of course our spiritual Fathers, our priests, the fathers of our wider family, the Church.

Mary D. Magnano had plenty of heart, but she was not sentimental. She could be direct and critical, but she was not mean. You knew that she loved you – in her own way – but like a crafty politician, she might claim “plausible deniability” if you suspected that she had just given you a compliment!

In today’s Gospel we have a most extraordinary image of what Jesus expects his work to produce and achieve, and it’s a rather surprising metaphor. This is presented in contrast to the first reading from Ezekiel, in which God says, “I will choose a branch from the top of the tree, and I will plant it on top of a mountain, and it will grow into a great tree.” Jesus says just the opposite:

Thirty years ago tomorrow, June 8, 1985, five brothers of mine and I knelt of the marble step in St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. Archbishop John Quinn imposed his hands on our heads, and called the Holy Spirit down upon us. Then more than a hundred of our Jesuit fathers filed past, each pressing their hands on our heads.

The mystery of the Trinity that we celebrate today invites us to step back – back in time. This movement begins with listening to Moses, after forty years in the desert, as passionately exuberant about the God of Israel and what God has done as if it had just happened.

Here on Pentecost Sunday, we remember how the Holy Spirit arrived as tongues of fire. No words. No explanations. No encouragement. No warnings. Just a roaring wind and tongues of fire.

Long ago when I was a seminarian both in Seattle and in Rome, we used to have a novena to the Holy Spirit during the nine days before Pentecost, the days between Ascension and Pentecost.

The Easter stories are all about people who finally get the message. They are stories of people who let go of old ways, and are reformed by the risen Lord. We meet such a person today, Barnabas, the disciple who pleads with the other disciples to let go of their old perceptions of Saul and accept him as a brother in Christ.

I don’t know how many of you park in the Stewart Street Garage across from Church here on Sundays. With the voucher you can get from Frances, it’s a great deal. In recent months, I’ve taken to parking on the west side up a few extra loops, because from there I can get a better view of the construction that took away our very convenient surface parking lot, and, sadly, will rob us of some of our glorious morning light here at Christ Our Hope.

In Saint John Paul II's encyclicals, speeches and other writings he used the term new evangelization. What is he referring to and what are characteristics of this new evangelization'?

Easter Sunday is a tough act to follow. A crucified Christ rising from the tomb. More alive than ever before, crying out “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Today’s Gospel reminds us that the story of the resurrection begins with an empty tomb, with Mary Magdalene who weeps not just because Jesus has died, but because she believes someone has taken his body from the tomb. So Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb and see the burial cloths there. They see and believe.

At the end of this long day of waiting, we celebrate the mother of all liturgies, a true feast for the senses. The church gathers in darkness and lights a new fire and a great candle that will make this night bright for us. It is here that the scriptures intersect with our lives most powerfully.