There's a lot of traveling, delivering, and visiting going on in our readings today. In Genesis Abraham cares for the needs of three mysterious travelers. The psalm responds, celebrating the kind of righteousness that Abraham practices. Then, in his letter to the Colossians, Saint Paul describes his own ministry as almost like a delivery service: he, God's steward, brings the word of God to their community. Finally, Luke's Gospel shares the well-known story of Mary and Martha, and the different ways they welcome Jesus into their home. Amid all this coming and going, we are invited to pay attention to the ways we tend to the needs of others. Each of us can ask, How am I present to God and others in my life?

There's a different pace to a summer Sunday, especially on those days when we dream of air conditioning and wave any available paper to stir the air. Yet we persist in gathering, even with so many breaks from the usual routines. We distance ourselves not only from routines, but from schedules and familiar well-worn paths. These are playful days and contemplative days. We see long-lost friends and visit almost-forgotten places.

The Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy praises God for inscribing the commandments in our very bodies. God’s law is not distant or foreign, but a natural part of us. In his letter to the Colossians, Saint Paul echoes Moses, praising God for becoming one of us. The truly human, flesh-and-blood Jesus reminds us that God always wants to be recognizable and familiar to us. Jesus, who is also truly God, wants to be on intimate terms with each of us.

God’s passionate desire to be known by us is almost too wonderful to take in. Luke’s Gospel helps us understand how to respond. The Good Samaritan parable provides practical advice for those who believe in God’s intimate love for them and want to share that love with others.

Today’s readings celebrate God’s providence. No matter how wonderful (or heartbreaking) our relationships are, God always provides for us. No one cares for us the way God does.

Isaiah delights us with a deeply intimate image of God caring for us “as a mother comforts her child.” The prophet describes us not as the usual “children of God,” but as “babies.” We should not resist this image, but rejoice in it. Trusting in God’s care, we can all let down our guard and rest like infants in the lap of our mother.

On this Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the readings describe anything but an ordinary time. They are disturbing and they leave us disturbed. The Old Testament reading recounts a young man’s radical break with the past to follow a new path. The Gospel describes how life as we know it is abruptly changed if we follow the call of Christ. The psalm and Paul assure us that such life-altering change is possible only because of the power of God’s love. We are presented with a stark choice. To love as God loves, we must leave our old lives behind. We must leave behind not just the bad, the selfish, and the evil but the ordinary, our daily work, and the important, our families, our lives. Loving as God loves requires a radical transformation, not a smooth transition.

Today we celebrate the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Each of the readings includes a blessing and a sharing of food. They remind us of the central place of meals in our lives. Each meal brings to mind other meals: the sharing of cookies and milk, pizza and beer, loaves and fishes, bread and wine. When we prepare a meal for our family, our friends, even strangers, we always put something of ourselves into the preparation and the meal itself. The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ reminds us of what God put into the preparation for this meal that we celebrate today. We share this sacred meal and are transformed as we remember the death of Jesus and the sacrifice that nurtures our faith, sustains our lives, and supports our work.

Today we celebrate the Holy Trinity, one of the most confounding mysteries of our faith. Through this mystery we experience our relationship to God: Creator, Savior, and Holy Spirit. This relationship is not easy to understand or to describe. It does not become clearer through analysis. Its complexity mirrors the complexity of all our relationships. We understand our relationships with our spouses, our children, our parents, and our friends only through daily give-and-take, annual rituals, and the life-changing moments we share. We understand our relationships only as we live them. The relationships we have with those we love, and who love us, sustain us through an uncertain and difficult life. This is the Holy Trinity.

In between: we all find ourselves there from time to time—sometimes uncomfortably. Like in between money coming in and money going out, earning income and paying bills. In between customer and manager, diner and chef: any honest server trying to serve both. In between theory and practice, ideal and reality: everyone from parents to pastors. Ask the kids—or parishioners! This Sunday, in between Ascension and Pentecost, reminds us we're in between Jesus' departure and glorious return—sometimes uncomfortably.

Paul's back! After last week's "violent abuse," opponents organized a lynch mob that beat Paul nearly to death. But call Paul the "energizing evangelist," transforming deadly cruelty into life-giving zeal. Paul's past courage should inspire our commitment; Revelation's future "new heaven, new earth" should inspire our optimism. But Revelation's present assurance, "Behold, God's dwelling is with the human race," should challenge us to become "missionaries of mercy." Because Pope Francis declared that the Church's credibility is completely dependent on our showing unconditional mercy. Mercy, said Francis, makes the Church, the world, and everyone young again, reawakened to life's noblest virtues. Fittingly, in today's Gospel Jesus reinforces that theme: "This is how all will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Each year this Fourth Sunday of Easter celebrates Jesus the Good Shepherd. Today’s Gospel seems especially timely, for as Christians worldwide suffer persecution like Paul and Barnabas, Jesus promises his sheep enduring, invincible safety: “They shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” But we who are free to live our faith peacefully sometimes take our membershipin Jesus’ flock for granted, wandering astray to seek our own pleasure and prosperity. The simple cross that Pope Francis always wears seems to show us how Jesus responds to that. Francis’s cross features an image of Jesus, who has sought and found a lostsheep, then joyfully set it on his shoulders to carry it gently home. May Good Shepherd Sunday inspire us, so often lost and found ourselves, to assist Jesus in seeking, finding, and gently carrying home our fellow precious lambs.

Seeing is believing! Since cellphone screens connect us instantly to social media, live TV, and loved ones’ faces near and far, “Doubting Thomas” could be our patron saint: “Unless I see, I will not believe!” But how comforting for any of us who share Thomas’s doubt, or love “doubters” who do, to see how kindly Jesus responds. By offering the very evidence that Thomas demanded, Jesus doesn’t scold Thomas, but seems to understand such skepticism. Could Jesus have been thinking of us, who long to believe that “Jesus is risen!” but see so much suffering, and perhaps even cause some, that we wonder, how could something so wonderful be true? In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the risen Jesus’ healing love comforts through disciples who love others. In Revelation, “our brother John” doesn’t just claim he saw Jesus alive, but passes on Jesus’ life-giving words. “

Happy Easter! Or as most other languages prefer: Blessed Pasch—Passover! Pasqua, Pascua, Páscoa, Pâques! Israel's Passover through the Red Sea to the Promised Land! Jesus' Passover through the Cross to resurrection! Our catechumens' Passover last night, and ours once upon a time, through Baptism's waters to our family's Eucharist! Welcome, everybody! As someone once said of the Catholic Church, "Here comes everybody!" So in this Jubilee of Mercy, we make our own Saint John Chrysostom's Easter welcome from fourteen hundred years ago: "Let everyone enjoy this radiant feast! You who fasted from Lent's beginning, and you who didn't fast at all, rejoice! The table's richly set! Come, take from it, everybody, no worries, no embarrassment! All of you, taste the banquet of faith! Enjoy the feast of forgiveness! Let no one grieve for having sinned again and again: pardon has risen from the tomb!" Happy Easter! Blessed Pasch! Welcome, everybody!

We begin the final week of Lent with these familiar readings. This year, we hear the Passion from the Gospel of Luke. These readings for Palm Sunday and the Passion used to be read on successive Sundays. Now they are combined into a single feast, so that we may see the whole sweep of the glory and the suffering played out. Jesus accepts the adulation of the crowd, the foreshadowing of his glory in the Resurrection. He bids farewell to his disciples in his last Passover, and forgives his tormentors as he dies on the cross. Later this week, we enter the Holy Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, when the whole story of our redemption will play out once again.

When Jews celebrate the Passover, they always tell the story of the Exodus in present terms, as if they themselves experienced those events: when we were prisoners in Egypt; when God brought us out of slavery and through the waters of the sea. We would do well to follow their example and see the works of Jesus and his sacrifice as being in the present, as happening to us now. We believe that Christ's work, his teachings, and his sacrifice on the cross were not just for his followers in the past, but for all people at all times. When we think of this in our prayers, we become one in faith with that great cloud of witnesses, the saints.