St. Arbucks Chapel – April 23, 2025
We had a wonderful Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday and all of the services through Easter Day. I led the Easter worship at Catholic Care on Sunday afternoon and then went to St. Veronica’s Senior Behavioral Health center and served Communion to 15 residents. It was incredibly moving for me emotionally and spiritually. I started the service by saying, “I am here to remind you that God loves you and Jesus your Good Shepherd is with you, and he desires to have Communion with you today.” One of the residents, an older woman, started to cry and when I served her Communion the blanket covering her frail body was full of tear marks. I said to her, “Jesus knows you by name and by need. He sees your tears!” From Holy Monday through Easter Day, we served 1,808 persons, and that doesn’t include those from Catholic Care and St. Veronica’s. God is good! Thank you for making Easter so beautiful in so many ways. Thanks to our volunteers, our musicians, and all who had a part in serving the people God brought to us, extremely well.
Easter Monday, I awakened to the news that Pope Francis had died. I was surprised, not shocked, but thankful he was able to offer the Easter blessings to the thousands gathered at St. Peter’s square. You may have heard me say before, I believe Pope Francis was a spiritual father to the whole of the Christian family. Two quick things: 1. The emphasis on mercy and not judgment. God alone is judge. Our job is to be merciful as God is merciful toward us! Secondly, the Body of Christ, the Church, is a field hospital for sinners – the wounded and broken (that’s all of us) and not a museum for the saints. To be a field hospital assumes we are a place of healing, not hurt. It also means that we go out and retrieve the wounded and broken and bring them to a safe place where God can restore and renew. Too often, in Christianity, regardless of the label on the front of the church, we have developed a fortress mentality. Let’s keep the people we know in and keep everyone else out. It is what Jesus criticized the Pharisees for because it is a practice of boundary-marker spirituality. We become very focused on who is worthy to be in and who should be shut out. As we know, from the Gospels, Jesus reflected in his teaching and practice, the field hospital not the museum for saints. May we continue the legacy of Pope Francis in our day. God, help us!
For those of you who attended the Stations of the Cross on Friday, I promised a handout. It will be available on the Welcome Table this Sunday! If you would like it emailed to you instead, please send me an email at jgannon@chwichita.org