Corpus Christi (Body and Blood of Christ) is a Eucharistic solemnity, or better, the solemn commemoration of the institution of that sacrament. It is, moreover, the Church's official act of homage and gratitude to Christ, who by instituting the Holy Eucharist gave to the Church her greatest treasure. Holy Thursday, assuredly, marks the anniversary of the institution, but the commemoration of the Lord's passion that very night suppresses the rejoicing proper to the occasion. Today's observance, therefore, accents the joyous aspect of Holy Thursday.

The dogma of faith which forms the object of the feast is this: There is one God and in this one God there are three Divine Persons; the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Yet there are not three Gods, but one, eternal, incomprehensible God! The Father is not more God than the Son, neither is the Son more God than the Holy Spirit. The Father is the first Divine Person; the Son is the second Divine Person, begotten from the nature of the Father from eternity; the Holy Spirit is the third Divine Person, proceeding from the Father and the Son. No mortal can fully fathom this sublime truth. But I submit humbly and say: Lord, I believe, help my weak faith.

Check out the Youth Ministry schedule of events for the months of June and July. For more information, contact Youth & Young Adult Ministry Coordinator, Karen Loebl, kloebl@rcchawaii.org or text 808-258-4505

After Jesus had ascended to heaven from Mt. Olivet, the apostles and disciples returned to the Holy City. They remained together in the Upper Room or Cenacle, the place where Jesus had appeared to them and which may well be called the first Christian church. About a hundred and twenty persons were assembled there. They chose Matthias as an apostle in place of the unhappy Judas; they prayed and waited for the Paraclete.

The Ascension The death of a member of his family or of a loved friend, must be the saddest event imaginable in the life of an atheist. He is one who really is convinced that there is no God, no future life and therefore that the relative or friend is to turn into dust in the grave, never to be met with again. The thought that every day that passes is bringing him too nearer to that same sad fate, death, which will be the end of all his ambitions, all his enjoyments, the end of everything he thought he was or had, must be something hard to live with

The Gospel is from John 14:23-29. In the first reading at today's Mass, we were given the story of the first General Council ever held by the Church authorities. There we saw that a vital decision was reached through the guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit. "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and ours" (Acts 15:28) was how the authorities announced the conclusion they had reached. In this Gospel which we have just read, Christ promised his Apostles, the night before his death, that when he returned to the Father, the Holy Spirit would be sent to them. He would teach them all things and recall to their minds all that Christ had taught them. In other words, the Church, through the Apostles, was promised the direct assistance of the Holy Spirit in preserving and interpreting what we call "the deposit of faith" or the sum total of the divine revelation given to us for our sanctification.

The Gospel is from John 13:31-33a, 34-35.We are disciples, followers of Christ, but how many of us would pass the test that Christ himself lays down for deciding who are his true followers? The word "charity" unfortunately has come to have a very restricted meaning in our present-day vocabulary. It signifies giving an alms, a gift of money to a needy person. This is but a very small part of the true charity, true love of neighbor which Christ made the distinguishing mark of the true Christian. He who truly loves his neighbor must be interested, first and foremost, in those things which concern that neighbor's most important purpose in life, his eternal salvation.

The Gospel is from John 10:27-30. This Sunday is often called "Good Shepherd Sunday." Jesus intended the beautiful parable of the Good Shepherd with its many consoling truths and promises for men of every century, including the twentieth. We are all too prone to evaluate the words of the Gospel in an exclusively historical sense. The liturgy's primary aim is to portray the present, not the past, to give grace and life along with history. You must, therefore, give the parable a present day context, apply it personally. After each sentence stop and say: Christ is doing this today — and to help me. The parable brings to our attention three consoling truths: Christ gives His life for His sheep; He remains with them constantly through the bond of grace; He will not rest content until there be but one flock and one shepherd.

The Supreme Court is ready to make a major landmark decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. Jackson Women’s Health Care is an abortion clinic in Mississippi challenging the Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act (2018) that limits abortion at 15 weeks. Modern science has proven that a fetus at 15 weeks is capable of feeling pain, has a fully formed nose, lips and eyebrows and is able to suck their thumb.

The Gospel is from St. John, 21:1-19, The primary purpose in recounting this appearance of the Risen Christ to his Apostles, was to stress the actual conferring of the Primacy on Peter. From this very first meeting with Christ at the Jordan (Jn. 1:42) the Savior had told him that his name Simon bar-Jonah would be changed to Cephas, which means Rock. Some year or so later, at Caesarea Philippi, this change took place when Christ said to Simon, "You are (Peter) Rock. and upon this Rock I will build my Church . . . and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 16:18-19).

The Gospel is John 20:19-31, doubting St. Thomas. It may surprise and amaze us that the Apostles were so reluctant to believe that Christ had risen from the dead, to live forever in glory with his Father in heaven. But we must remember that during their two or three years with him they saw nothing in him but a mere man, one with divine powers, but yet a man; certain prophets of the Old Covenant had some such powers also. Christ had "emptied himself of his divine nature, and he had foretold his resurrection many times. But that he could be really God, as well as man, was something they could not then grasp, and if he was a mere man death had to be the end.

For John, the Evangelist, the resurrection of Jesus is the decisive moment in the process of his glorification, indissolubly linked with the first phase of this glorification, namely his passion and death. The event of the resurrection is not described in the spectacular and apocalyptic details of the synoptic Gospels. For John, the life of the Risen One is a reality that asserts itself silently, in the discreet and irresistible power of the Spirit. The fact of the faith of the disciples is announced, "While it was still dark" and begins through the vision of the material signs that recall the Word of God. Jesus is the great protagonist of the story, but he does not appear personally.

So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" And Jesus found a young ass and sat upon it; as it is written, "Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on an ass's colt (Jn 12:13-15)!"

Today’s text leads us to a meditation on the conflict between Jesus and the Scribes and Pharisees. Because of his preaching and his manner of acting, the doctors of the law and the Pharisees do not like Jesus. So they seek every possible way to accuse and eliminate him. They bring before him a woman caught in adultery to ask him whether they should observe the law that said that such a woman was to be stoned. They wanted to provoke Jesus. By posing as people concerned for the law, they were using the woman to argue with Jesus. The same story happens time and time again.

Dante says that Luke is the ‹‹scriba mansuetudinis Christi››. Indeed, he is the Evangelist who loves to emphasize the mercy of the Master towards sinners and presents us with scenes of forgiveness (Lk 7: 36-50; 23: 39-43). In Luke’s Gospel the mercy of God is manifested in Jesus Christ. We can say that Jesus is the incarnation of the merciful presence of God among us. “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (Lk 6: 36). Luke focuses on an image of God already revealed in the Old Testament (Ex 34: 6), but which, unfortunately, seems to have been ignored by the scribes and Pharisees who stressed the image of a God “who visits the sins of the fathers on the children” (Ex 34: 7).

Check out the Youth Ministry schedule of events. For more information and to register for any of these events, contact Youth & Young Adult Ministry Coordinator, Karen Loebl, kloebl@rcchawaii.org or text 808-258-4505

The text of the third Sunday of Lent puts before us two different but related facts: Jesus comments on the events of the day and He narrates a parable. Luke 13: 1-5: At the people’s request, Jesus comments on the events of the day: the massacre of pilgrims by Pilate and the massacre at the tower of Siloam where eighteen people were killed. Luke 13: 9: Jesus tells a parable about the fig tree that bore no fruit.

A few days earlier, Jesus had said that He, the Son of Man, had to be tried and crucified by the authorities (Lk 9: 22; Mk 8: 31). According to the information in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, the disciples, especially Peter, did not understand what Jesus had said and were scandalized by the news (Mt 16: 22; Mk 8: 32). Jesus reacted strongly and turned to Peter calling him Satan (Mt 16: 23; Mk 8: 33). This was because Jesus’ wordsdid not correspond with the ideal of the glorious Messiah whom they imagined. Luke does not mention Peter’s reaction and Jesus’ strong reply, but he does describe, as do the other Evangelists, the episode of the Transfiguration.

Luke, with the refinement of a narrator, mentions in 4: 1-44 some aspects of the ministry of Jesus after His baptism, among them the temptations of the devil. In fact, he says that Jesus, “Filled with the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert, for forty days” (Lk 4: 1-2). Such an episode in the life of Jesus is something preliminary to His ministry, but it can also be understood as the moment of transition from the ministry of John the Baptist to that of Jesus.

Jesus told his disciples a parable: "Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,' when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother's eye."