Reflecting on John 20:1-9

There is a detail in John’s eloquent and symbol-laden Easter gospel that we must not miss: When Simon Peter arrived, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.

Well, that settles it. Jesus’ body was not stolen by grave robbers, perhaps hoping for a big ransom from his believers. No robber would politely remove the burial cloths, and then take the time to roll up the face mask. It appears that Jesus resurrected straight through his burial cloths.

Contrast that with the raising of Lazarus, relayed in the eleventh chapter of John: 44 The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”

THIS is what convinced Peter. He was present at the raising of Lazarus. He witnessed the dead man coming out of the tomb, covered in the face cloth and burial cloths, which smelled so bad Jesus immediately ordered that they be taken off.

Peter witnessed a resuscitated Lazarus. In the tomb of Jesus, empty but for the burial cloths, he witnessed the resurrected Jesus.

But WHY is the face mask rolled up in a separate place? Recall Exodus 33:20-22: God told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

The Resurrected One leaves the face cloth behind because, when he goes to the Father, he can take the heat.

            Are you ready to see Jesus face to face?

Kathy McGovern c. 2025

The entire Passion account moves so quickly. It begins with a peaceful Passover meal, then moves to the Garden, where, after his Agony, the soldiers come with swords and torches. He asks why they put on such a big show when they could have arrested him at any time during the day. But, he says, “This is your hour, the time for the power of darkness.”

There are times when the power of darkness seems to take hold of previously good and reasonable people. Nazi Germany comes to mind. Looking at videos of those ghastly rallies, with thousands giving the Nazi salute, it’s impossible to imagine that darkness could take hold so quickly, but in less than six months the concentration camps were turned into extermination camps.

When we visited Yam Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem that remembers the Holocaust, our guides wondered that Germany could have been the locus of the viciousness against the Jews. It had, just before Hitler took power, been the image of democratic discourse.

Perhaps the most compelling moment of Luke’s account, though, remembers that there were two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus. One was belligerent until the end, while the other was profoundly moved by his encounter with Jesus.

I want to be the thief who is deeply touched and converted by Jesus. I want to release all my defensiveness and arrogance. I want all my sinfulness to melt at the feet of Jesus. I want to say, “I am guilty, after all. Please heal me, Jesus.”  

Are you ready to release all your unhealed wounds unto the foot of the Cross? Jesus, remember us when you come into your kingdom.

What bitterness are you willing to release this Palm Sunday?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on John 8:1-11

That poor woman. How terrifying to be dragged in front of all those righteous men, so thrilled to finally have an actual, breathing sinner in front of them, and stones to boot! But I’ve always thought this event was a set-up. Yes, they may have known that a woman was consorting with a man not her husband. But perhaps this situation provided the perfect trap for Jesus, the Jew who preached compassion when faced with the rigors of the Law.

It must have been soul-deadening to walk around under the weight of those 619 laws.

I imagine those scribes and Pharisees had to have found the Law onerous as well. Had they noticed Jesus during the Festival, and assumed he’d be back in the Temple area the next day? Did they take advantage of the situation with the woman, and use her to force a confrontation with Jesus about compassion? The truth is, there isn’t a single known event of Jews stoning a woman caught in adultery.

I wonder if that proscription, coming all the way back in Leviticus 20:10, was something that bothered the Jews. Were they hoping Jesus would give them a way out of a terrible death penalty they would never have exacted anyway?

He did give them a way out, twice. The first was when he suggested that the one who was without sin throw the first stone. Whew! We’re all saved! We don’t have to pretend that we were actually going to kill her.

The second time Jesus offered a way out, of course, was on the Cross. That’s our way out from revenge, and violence. We should go, then, and not sin anymore.

How does your compassion offer a way out to people in your life?

Kathy  McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

I know you’ve heard my story: how I shamefully commanded my father to give me my share of my inheritance right then.

Now, let me explain a few things. Because I was the younger son, my inheritance would be a LOT less than that of my older brother. Not only that, but he would inherit the house and the farm, too.

So when I rudely demanded my share that day, I knew it would not be much. But have you ever tried to get food from the earth in the hot sun? Year after year, the work never ends. And, too, just a few miles away was the Roman city, Sepphoris. I wanted to there, see the dancing girls, and drink the delicious Roman beers.

The lure of that exciting city was too much for me. I wanted to see the Roman plays, go to the gymnasiums, and assimilate into the Roman culture.

Well, I ran out of money fast, and all my friends disappeared. The work dried up, and soon I was sinning against the Torah more than ever, feeding the pigs and even eating in their troughs!

And I had family back home! I was starving. And here came my noble father, lifting his robe and running toward me! (He had to run fast, too, because the vengeful neighbors were coming towards me, ready to beat me for my disgraceful behavior.)

How good his arms felt! I was finally safe. And yes, I made it up to my brother, taking his work as my own. I share the majority of the workload now—I am younger, after all.

I wonder. Do you have someone who needs your forgiveness?

Are you still resentful of family injustices from decades before?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15

This mysterious God who speaks to Moses from the burning bush is exactly the God we all pray to hear. We long for the God who says, “ I have witnessed your sufferings. I have felt your anxieties. I have heard your prayers for healing of the illnesses and sorrows of your loved ones. I am not far away; I am not indifferent. I have been with you all along, and I am going to act in your regard.”

This God was a wholly new experience for Moses. He had forgotten that he was specially called, and that this was the God who called his father Abraham to travel to a new and distant land eight hundred years earlier.

Yet, here was this VOICE speaking to him on the holy ground of the Burning Bush, compelling him to believe that there was a good God, a God who remembered the promises made to his ancestors, a God who had held him and watched over him from before he was born.

We don’t have the same dramatic story that Moses had. We weren’t placed in a basket and sent down the Nile River, praying that a kind Egyptian princess might find and save us. But maybe we DO have our own precious memory of being held by a loving God, our own experience of a God who is present, who tells us to be not afraid (365 times, by the way).

Be silent today. Listen for the voice that speaks to your heart, telling you again that your life and your sufferings are precious to God, and that God will hear and answer you. We are all praying for you.

                  What do you long to hear from God?

Kathy McGovern c. 2025

Reflecting on Luke 9: 28b-36

Lord, it is good for us to be here. Not on Mount Tabor—an exceedingly scary mountain during the muddy season, by the way—but here, in our own cities, and in our own skin.  The Mount of Transfiguration is the perfect place to visit every year on the second Sunday of Lent. It’s good for us to remember Jesus, transfigured in Light, and his heavenly companions, Moses and Elijah.

It’s also good to consider those most intimate of his male disciples, Peter, James, and John, whom he often singled out to accompany him on transformative events. They saw him raise Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5: 37-43) from death to life. That soul-shattering experience must have transfigured them in ways not recorded in the gospels. And it was those three again who were with him in the Garden, during his agonized prayer, and when the soldiers came to arrest him (Mk. 14:33).

With the flash of the soldier’s swords, did they remember the flash of Light on Tabor? Did they see Jesus transfigured then, as he was led away? Or was it they who were transfigured, not at that terrifying moment, but a mere three days later, when the transfigured women—forever changed and forever remembered as the first witnesses of the resurrection—came running from the Empty Tomb?

It’s good for us to be HERE, with all our stuff. We need transfiguring so badly. We need our laziness transfigured into a fiery energy for good. We need our unhealthy habits transfigured into light-filled  habits of returning phone calls, checking in on lonely neighbors, and returning to warm engagement with our families.

It’s finally Lent. Let your LIGHT shine.

What changes are you already making this Lent?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 4: 1-13

When Jesus defeats Satan in the desert, Mark, at his usual breakneck speed, tells the whole Temptation story in one sentence. Matthew ends the story with, “And then Satan left him.” John doesn’t tell it at all, although there are some parallels in his gospel, particularly when Jesus is tempted to make bread in the wilderness (6:26).

But it’s Luke who ends his narrative with that intriguing last sentence, “he departed from him for a time” (4:13). Ah. Isn’t that always the way? Is there anyone who has “conquered” an addiction problem who would say that they have never been tempted again, that they don’t walk one day at a time, deeply grateful for every moment of freedom?

I wonder if Jesus knew, in the desert, that even though he had just vanquished the Enemy, he wouldn’t go away forever, but would lay in wait for three years? Then, like a ravenous lion, he would reappear, “entering into Judas Iscariot “ (22:3), who turned Jesus over to the chief priests (22:4).

And thus, it began. Next, Jesus told Simon Peter at the Last Supper that Satan had asked to sift him like wheat” (22:31). We know that Peter did not withstand that challenge, but denied Jesus three times in Caiaphas’s courtyard (22:55-62).

But don’t miss this: that’s not the end of Peter’s story. Jesus comforts him at the Last Supper, promising him that he has prayed for him, that he will not fail forever, and that, afterward, he will strengthen the Twelve.

Imagine Jesus saying that to you today. I have prayed for you, that you have the strength to begin again. O Jesus, who vanquished our Enemy, pray for us.

Readers, please choose an unknown person in this reading audience to pray for this Lent.

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Sirach 27: 4-7

There’s a lot to think about in the readings this weekend regarding what we reveal when we start talking. Since our words betray what’s really going on in our hearts, it’s enough to make us all take a vow of silence! I suppose the safest way to talk is to stop after every word and carefully consider your next syllable, but think how tedious an actual conversation would be if both speakers were too terrified to speak.

So, like the fruit of a tree, people’s words disclose what’s really going on in their minds, and we’re advised not to evaluate people until we hear what they say. But, really, isn’t the only way to really know someone is by observing his or her actions?

I think of those two sons in the gospel parable of Matthew 21: 28-32. The father asks both sons to go work in the vineyard. The first says, “No! I’m not going,” but goes, and the second says, “Sure, I’ll go,” and he never does. “Words! Words! Words,” sang Eliza Doolittle. “Show me!”

Our acts flow from our being, from who we are. In his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The just person justices.”  We might say, “Hurt people hurt, healed people heal.”

But time gives us the opportunity to become more of who we want to be, and the son who ended up not going out into the vineyard might very well have gladly gone out a few years later. The Church, says a cardinal in the film Conclave, is not only what we did yesterday, but what we’ll do tomorrow.

Please, God, give me time to be the person I’ll be tomorrow.

Who do you most hope to be tomorrow?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 6: 27-38

I think I have some idea of how Jesus’ astonishing commandment to stop judging (lest you shall be judged) works. Have you ever made a large pronouncement about a particular person’s behavior, confident that your audience agreed with you, only to be humiliated when someone in the group simply and quietly reminded you to stop judging? I have, and it was painful.

The result, though, is that I am very cautious now about in whose company I make derogatory remarks about people. Since I thought it was safe to be condemnatory, and found out that, just as scripture warns, I ended up being condemned myself, I definitely look both ways before I open my mouth. And guess what? Over time, that practice of being VERY careful to whom I say ugly things about people has made me less judgmental, if only because I don’t get enough practice.

A body in motion stays in motion, and that’s good advice for our hearts. But a tongue in motion also stays in motion, and that’s very bad for our hearts. The discipline to guard our tongues against gossip, slander, or even just joining in with the crowd disparaging someone, is a strength that can go the distance throughout our lifetimes.

Looking back, how grateful are you that you held your tongue when you were angry with a teacher, your boss, your spouse, or your kids? I can think of so many uncharitable things that have floated across my brain at different times, but that, through God’s grace alone, I never said out loud. And Jesus’ math works: if you are kind, you will receive kindness. The Master Teacher shows us how to live.

What memories do you have of holding your tongue, and being grateful that you did?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Sitting with my friend Gail, the parish president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, in a class today about these very beatitudes, she said something astonishing: “Look around this room. There are people here experiencing a greater poverty than some of the people who live on the street. We can’t see their poverty, because they carry it inside.” Ah. So true. But Jesus promises that the kingdom of God is theirs. I wonder if we’ll ever understand how.

Hunger, too, is a terrible experience, and manifests in many ways. I think of the many young people today who are crippled with anxiety. How they must hunger to be comfortable in the world, to have the confidence to drive a car or speak to a stranger. Oh, how I pray that their hungers might be satisfied.

Maintaining the depths of grief for years on end is an experience I dread more than hunger and poverty. It IS a blessing when tears finally subside, at least for stretches of time. Even though it seems impossible at the time, laughter will find its way back to us, and we certainly relish restored happiness more after we have cried what seemed to be endless tears.

And isn’t the experience of being hated, excluded, insulted, and denounced the very thing we would do anything to avoid? But Jesus tells us that’s okay, because people better than we are have been treated the same way. In truth, virtually every ethnic group that’s come to this country has experienced bitter exclusion and hatred. What each of these groups has in common is the promise that God will make things right. What a blessing that will be.

In what ways have some of the trials of your life been turned into blessings?

Kathy McGovern ©2025