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Dive Into Sunday's Word
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5th Sunday of Easter
May 18, 2025MASS REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Adults and Teens: How freely to I love others?
Children: How do you show kindness and love to everyone, even people you don’t know or don’t like?
Focus
Jesus said, "…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."
One-Minute-Homily
> When do children believe that their parents love them unconditionally—or at least as unconditionally as humans can love? Sometimes it takes a lifetime. Convincing our children that we love them unconditionally is difficult—first of all because it is hard to do, and, in any case, hard to believe.
> In today’s Gospel, Jesus instructs the disciples to love as God loves – which is to say, to love unconditionally. That is the amazing thing about God’s love for us, and the thing that, to the best of our ability, should characterize our love for others. It is both hard to do and hard to believe.
> What is unconditional love? It is caring deeply about another simply because they exist, because they are another human being, and a child of God -- not because they look like us, think and believe and act like us, or have some value to us. And caring deeply in an active, not merely a passive, way.
> The Eucharist is the most complete expression of God’s love for us; it unites us as a family striving to love others as God loves us.
For Additional Discussion or Journaling
> Question for Children: Do you think your parents would ever stop loving you?
> Question for Youth: Parents are not always the best example of unconditional love; where and how do you experience the kind of love Jesus is talking about?
> Question for Adults, Families and Faith Communities: How conditional is our love for others – those we know well and those who are strangers to us? What are our conditions?
Learn More
• Read Sunday's readings
• Read a reflection on Sunday’s readings
• Explore the cultural context of the Gospel
• Reflect on an image for Sunday's Gospel
• Hear the Gospel from a Third World perspective(compiled by Dave Cushing)
THIS WEEKEND'S LAY MINISTERS
4th Sunday of Easter
May 11, 2025MASS REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Adults: Am I willing to be a missionary for Jesus Christ? Why?
Teens and Children: Do you talk about Jesus to people outside of church? Why or why not?Focus
Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”
One-Minute-Homily
> Throughout most of history, human relations were marked by certain hierarchies: powerful over the weak, rich over the poor, men over women, divine over human. Only lately, in the modern era, did we realize that genuine relationships require mutuality, not dominance, cooperation and collaboration, not control.
> The Incarnation of Jesus Christ planted the seeds of this kind of mutuality, which the early disciples realized but later abandoned. We hear this ideal expressed in John’s Gospel as the relationship between a shepherd and the sheep: “I know mine and mine know me." And "The Father and I are one.”
> As disciples we are challenged to promote genuine human relationships based on mutuality. That means transforming the hierarchies between white and non-white, advantaged and disadvantaged, able-bodied and disabled, Christian and non-Christian, clergy and lay. Pope Francis called this “going to the margins,” recognizing that we are “siblings all,” as one of his encyclicals was titled.
> At Eucharist we celebrate the new covenant, and the real presence of a God who came to the margins, becoming human, and living among us.
For Additional Discussion or Journaling
> Question for Children: Do you ever treat other people like they aren’t important or don’t fit in?
> Question for Youth: How are you experiencing the challenge of leaving behind a relationship formed by hierarchy between parents and children and forming adult relationships based on mutuality?
> Question for Adults, Families and Faith Communities: Do we promote mutuality … or do we protect hierarchies that divide our communities between people who are important and those who aren’t, people who are welcome and those who are not?
Learn More
• Read Sunday's readings
• Read a reflection on Sunday’s readings
• Explore the cultural context of the Gospel
• Reflect on an image for Sunday's Gospel
• Hear the Gospel from a Third World perspective(compiled by Dave Cushing)
3rd Sunday of Easter
May 4, 2025MASS REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Adults & Teens: How gratefully do I receive
Focus
Jesus in the Eucharist?
Children: During Mass, the priest turns the bread and
wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus. How do you feel
knowing Jesus wants to be with you and even become
part of you when you receive him during Communion?
Jesus said to them, "Children, have you caught anything to eat?" They answered him, "No." So he said to them, "Cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something." So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish.
One-Minute-Homily
> Western society (and our own egos) tell us we should be able to take care of ourselves; we should be self-sufficient and independent. As a result, we despise being dependent and resent those who are. We hate having to ask for help; we hate being sick and getting old.
> In today’s Gospel, the disciples encounter the risen Jesus and discover that they are dependent on him: he guides them, and they are successful. Like Peter, he empowers them to love, not for the sake of themselves but for the sake of serving the flock and feeding the sheep.
> We disciples must embrace our dependence on the Lord and on the people around us; and we must embrace others’ dependence on us. We are responsible for others, and we are dependent on the Risen Lord; we stretch out our hands and he leads us, often enough to places we do not want to go.
> “Our Father,” we pray at Mass; it reminds us that we are all sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, interdependent on Him and one another.
For Additional Discussion or Journaling
> Question for Children: Who are the people you depend on? Does anyone depend on you?
> Question for Youth: In one sense, growing up means becoming more independent and self-sufficient. Do you see how, in another way, it means becoming more aware of our interdependence on others and on God?
> Question for Adults, Families and Faith Communities: Who are we dependent upon? Who are we responsible for? Can we identify and accept our interdependence?
Learn More
• Read Sunday's readings
• Read a reflection on Sunday’s readings
• Explore the cultural context of the Gospel
• Reflect on an image for Sunday's Gospel:
• Hear the Gospel from a Third World perspective(compiled by Dave Cushing)
THIS WEEK'S BULLETIN
2nd Sunday of Easter/Divine Mercy Sunday
April 27, 2025MASS REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Adults: Do I really trust in the Lord? Why or why not?
Teens & Children: Do you really believe God always does what is most loving and good for you? Why or why not?
Focus
On the evening of that first day of the week,…Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you…. As the Father has sent me, so I send you…. Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."
One-Minute-Homily
> Mercy is not a popular virtue in our society. We prefer our heroes and our leaders to be aggressive, vindictive, and merciless. Leave mercy to the weak, the foolish, the losers. Mercy is a sign of weakness; it robs us of the satisfaction of justice—or vengeance.
> The Church has proclaimed the Second Sunday of Easter “Divine Mercy Sunday.” It reminds us of God’s mercy, revealed so dramatically in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ generally and in today’s Gospel particularly.
> With the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, God has chosen to live among us, and to act in us through the Holy Spirit. That’s why Jesus can say to his disciples -- and to us -- what we do here is just as real as in heaven. In other words, we are challenged to be just as loving, forgiving and merciful as God-With-Us, even to those who, like Thomas, struggle to understand and believe.
> At Eucharist we beg for mercy--Lord Have Mercy! Christ Have Mercy! Lord Have Mercy!—confident, as the late Pope Francis often said, that Mercy is the other name for God.
For Additional Discussion or Journaling
> Question for Children: How does it make you feel when someone forgives you or is merciful toward you?
> Question for Youth: In the process of growing up, we discover that a lot of things we do will affect ourselves and others for a long time to come. Does the Gospel help you appreciate the power or responsibility that you are gaining?
> Question for Adults, Families and Faith Communities: Would people look at us and say that we are merciful? Do we fully accept people like Thomas, who had a hard time believing?
Learn More
• Read Sunday's readings
• Read a reflection on Sunday’s readings
• Explore the cultural context of the Gospel
• Reflect on an image for Sunday's Gospel
• Hear the Gospel from a Third World perspective(compiled by Dave Cushing)
