The Council of Trent declared that “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained” in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Simply put, when Jesus said, “this is my body, which will be given up for you,” he meant it.

There are many reasons why knowing God, as he is in himself, is important. The one that always comes to mind for me is the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God. If we want to know who we are, then we must in some measure know who God is.

Pentecost, then, isn’t merely about grain being gathered. It’s also about God giving to his people the Law, the way of life by which they are to live for him and his good purposes.

In this period before Pentecost, it's ours to join the disciples in nine days (minus a couple if we start on Sunday) of prayer, observing the Church’s first novena. As the Apostles were gathered together after Jesus’ Ascension they prayed fervently in preparation to be clothed with power from on high.

I live and preach the seasons – Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, with Ordinary Time mixed in – and I am formed by the seasons. I find that my conversations are shaped by the liturgical seasons, and even my mood often reflects the same!

Saint Augustine once offered that the command is new because it renews the one who obeys it. “When we love as he loved us,” he writes, “we become new men, heirs of the new covenant and singers of the new song."

It is fitting that we honor Mary as the Mother of God and our mother this month. The more our hearts swell for love of her, the more we are made to honor the motherly – and properly feminine – love that she embodies.

This week in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard Saint Peter say, “We must obey God rather than men.” By raising Jesus from the dead, God has marked him out as the Jewish Messiah and the Lord of all Nations.

The three main themes of the devotion - and the focus of the recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet - are 1. to ask for and obtain the mercy of God, 2. to trust in Christ's abundant mercy, and 3. to show mercy to others and act as a conduit for God's mercy towards them.

Love has defeated death and is now on the march to renew the face of the earth.