In today’s second reading Paul offers a wonderful argument to his converts at Corinth for seeking to help those in need. He is dealing with a practical problem, arranging a collection for the poor of the church of Jerusalem; but as he often does, he develops an important teaching about Jesus to make his point.

Living along the shores of Lake Superior—the “big lake,” as the locals call it—you can often hear the advice, “Respect the lake; don’t take it for granted.” People who know Lake Superior respect its power and watch out for its many moods. Sunken ships and boats crushed into kindling are testimonies to what the lake can do.

We either pay attention to or ignore “clock time” as we play in the summer sun and note the earth’s tilt and the lengthening days. We live by time. We reckon time in seconds and minutes and hours, or we use broader chunks like suppertime and summertime.

Today the Church focuses on the Eucharist. Today’s readings remind us how connected to ancient blood sacrifices we are when offering our unbloody sacrifice. The reading from Exodus describes a solemn ritual designed so the Israelites would never forget their covenant with God. The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews turns us from those ancient animal sacrifices, the first efforts to worship the living God. Our sacrifice is the body and blood of the Son of God. Because of Christ we have a new covenant.

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. The Church sets aside this Sunday to focus our attention on the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, God who is one, but three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In today’s responsorial psalm the Church sings out: “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” All three readings describe how God has answered that prayer already.

poral experience of the early community, made it seem that Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension were inseparable aspects of a single mystery. Only in the later writings of Luke and John has further theological reflection helped the Christian community to distinguish different dimensions of the mystery. Liturgical tradition has followed the forty-day chronology formulated by Luke. We would miss the point, however, if we were to demand a precise historical chronology of events such as the Resurrection-Ascension that are primarily spiritual in nature and that clearly surpass the bounds of time and space as we know them.

We have a unique episode in the Acts of the Apostles today. A whole roomful of people are baptized with the Holy Spirit before they are baptized with water! The verb used—“the Holy Spirit ‘fell’ on them” (Acts 10:44)—is characteristic of the way the Spirit works throughout the book of Acts: powerful and surprising. Though this “baptism” is not the normative way the New Testament describes baptism, it is still a good reminder today that the Holy Spirit is not controlled by whether or not we pour water, but rather that our sacramental signs reveal the presence of the Spirit at work among us.

Few of us, even when we meditate on the image of the vine and branches, stop to really think about how God “prunes” us. For some there is the danger of thinking that we are already producing fruit for the kingdom, in deed and truth as John says, perhaps raising a family, being active in our parish, and so on. But even those branches which are bearing fruit, the Gospel tells us, can be pruned to produce still more.

Do we truly know the voice of Christ? Do we truly respond to the voice of our shepherd with our own distinctive voice? How often we attempt to imitate those around us, appropriating the response of another member of the flock to Christ. Perhaps we need to balance the image of being sheep of one flock with the image from the second reading, which tells us that we are all children of God. What child has precisely the same interaction with parents as his or her siblings? Instead, they frequently do and say things to distinguish themselves in the eyes of their parents.

It is interesting that during the Easter season, when we do not hear a reading from the Old Testament, it becomes so important. This is particularly true today. Peter’s speech begins with a prayer formula familiar to Jews: “The God of Abraham . . .” (Acts 3:13). It likewise contains the potent phrases “Holy and Righteous One” and “mouth of all the prophets” (3:14, 18). Peter was stating in no uncertain terms that the law, psalms, and prophets had been fulfilled in Christ.

The desire to be able to prove the existence of a divinity has troubled humanity since human consciousness first became aware of the divine. To this very day we are fond of saying that any number of things—from sunsets to hot fudge sundaes—are “proof that there is a God.” We get so caught up in the story of “doubting Thomas” that we fail to notice that today’s Gospel gives us John’s account of Pentecost, the bestowing of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples following the Resurrection.

During the first three or four centuries of Christianity, if you asked a Christian to name the feast days of the church, your answer would have been a puzzled stare, for there was only one feast: the Resurrection of the Lord. Every Sunday was a feast celebrating the one great feast. Even though our calendar now has many beautiful and holy feasts, we must continually be called back to the fact that all these other feasts exist because of the feast of Christ’s Passover from death to life. The psalm today proclaims this message well: “This is the day.” It is not one of many days, but it is the day of all days, the one that gives all the others their origin, purpose, meaning, and destiny. Listen carefully to Peter’s speech in Acts with its recollection of the Passion, to the words of the apostle Paul, and to the account of Mary Magdalene, John, and Peter finding the empty tomb, and you will hear the many wonderful works that God has done for us through Christ. Rejoice and be glad!