A typical day in the earthly ministry of Jesus was full of events that included teaching on the mysteries of the Kingdom, healing of the sick who came or were brought to Him, spending some quiet time in prayer with His Father, and a private session with His Apostles in order to explain the many parables He may have used in teaching the people earlier. Mark recounts two major healings in our Gospel passage this weekend.

One would expect that the disciples of Jesus, some of whom were professional fishermen before Jesus called them, would possess at least a little more than a fair understanding of the sea and the elements. To be fair to them, even Jesus trusted their acquired ability to sail Him across in the boat, to the extent that He fell asleep and they may have applied their knowledge of the ways of the sea to keep the boat afloat, at least for some me before they called upon Jesus to come to their aid.

The exiled people of Israel received a series of “prophecies of doom” that painted a gloomy story of their contemporary situation from the Prophet Ezekiel who ministered to the people during the period of exile. A er one of such oracles, God decided to off er them a message of hope for restoration. God employed an agricultural parable to pass this relieving message of hope, this must have resonated with the people, an overwhelming majority of whom were agriculturists. The Lord was going to take from the crest of the cedar, a tender shoot, which He would plant on a high and lofty mountain of Israel.

We are back to taking our Readings on the weekends from the Ordinary Time after the celebration of Easter, Pentecost, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi. This weekend, the Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year B, we are treated to the intriguing dialogue between God the Creator and Adam the disobedient creature after the first fall. Recall that God had created Adam and had placed him and Eve in the Garden of Eden where all that they would need was provided.

It is safe to say that the story of the Christian Scripture which we call the Bible is the story of two Covenants: the first between God and the people of Israel, the second between God and the New Israel, the assembly of God’s children also known as Christ’s faithful. The Book of Genesis traces the origin of the world and man’s relationship with His Creator, a relationship that was mortally wounded by man’s disobedience and the gradual revelation of God’s plan to return man to the right relationship with His Maker. In Genesis 15, God made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, this covenant was sealed with the blood of animals.

Central to the teaching of the Catholic Church is the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity which in simple terms holds that in the One undivided God are three persons: God the Father, the Creator of the all that exists; God the Son, the eternal Word of the Father who is begotten not made by the Father and who was sent by the Father to redeem creation after the fall of man; and God the Holy Spirit, the finger of God who proceeds from the Father and the Son and who animates all that the Father and the Son wishes to empower and renews the face of the earth.

Happy Pentecost Sunday! Happy Birthday to the Catholic Church! The Feast of Pentecost comes ten days after the Ascension of our Lord, and fifty days after we celebrated His Resurrection at Easter. God the Father and the Son chose to send the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles on Pentecost Sunday in fulfillment of the promise made by the Son to His Disciples, in order to embolden, animate and empower them to witness to the Truth without fear. It was on the day that the Church, the Assembly of the new people of God, was birthed even though Jesus had long conceived and nourished it with His teaching while he ministered here on earth.

The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is the commemoration of the day when Jesus ascended into Heaven forty days after the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. Some of the Gospels describe Jesus blessing His Disciples, separating from them and being carried up into Heaven where He is seated at the right hand of The Father. Acts of the Apostles 1:6-11 explains the importance of the Ascension, as it marks the departure of Jesus from interaction with His Disciples in this world and His entrance into the Realm of God. The Ascension of the Lord is considered the climax of the redemption story, and the gateway to Jesus’ priestly work of intercession. It also shows that Jesus has overcome death and is alive with the Father in Heaven.

The twelve men chosen by Jesus to be His Apostles were all Jewish. Similarly, most of the area that Jesus went about teaching and healing was Jewish territory. Little wonder when the Apostles began to make Disciples of all nations, they naturally went to fellow Jews and shared with them the Good News about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the salvation that His death and resurrection purchased for all people. However, there were non-Jewish people who heard of the growing “way” and desired to be part of it.

Part of what the Acts of the Apostles offers us in a most profound way is a fairly chronological exposition on the origins of the Church, how the young band of disciples grew into a formidable group of believers, how they encountered and handled setbacks, and how their connection, and their witness to, the resurrected Christ and the endowment of the Holy Spirit sprinted them into a formidable force for positive change in their time.

We know that the most important proof for the Resurrection of Jesus is neither the empty tomb on Easter Sunday nor the testimony of Mary, Peter and John the beloved who “saw and believed.” The most reliable proof for the Resurrection lies in examining the dramatic change in the attitude of the Apostles and disciples after the Resurrection in comparison to their attitude before the Resurrection. It is obvious that the Apostles exhibited attitudinal transformation after they saw Christ.

Each Liturgical Year, between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday, the First Readings at most Masses are taken from St. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. This is intentionally arranged by the Church to afford us the opportunity to reflect on how the Apostles reacted and responded to the Resurrection of Jesus, and how their reaction to the unique experience of Christ’s Resurrection influenced the happenings that shaped the evolution of the early Church. The Readings at the liturgy this weekend explore the conviction of the Apostles that Christ’s Passion and Resurrection had been foreshadowed all along through Israel’s Scripture and history. At the Resurrection of Jesus, every piece of the history of salvation, as presented in the Scriptures, suddenly fell into place and began to make sense to the Apostles who now understood what was hitherto a mystery to them. They could now clearly see that God had planned all that happened in accordance with His Holy will, and that Christ is the fulfillment of the prophecies of Israelite Scripture.

On April 30, 2000, the First Sunday following Easter and the Sunday that completed the Octave of Easter, Pope John Paul II both canonized Sister Faustina Kowalska (a Polish nun who saw visions of Christ in which Our Lord asked her to be an Apostle of Divine Mercy) and declared in his Homily of that day his own desire that the “Second Sunday of Easter…. From now on throughout the world will be called ‘Divine Mercy Sunday.’” Following these holy wishes of the Holy Father, on May 5, 2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued a decree officially establishing the Second Sunday of Easter as “Divine Mercy Sunday.”