Maybe I’m stretching to connect it to the readings for this Sunday, but I think the image of the Church as a field hospital is perhaps a helpful way to understand Christ as the Good Shepherd, as we hear Him described this weekend.

I’d like to make available to you here some of the Resurrection Accounts found in the Scriptures. You might like to do some reading about them on your own. In any case, it’s pretty cool to see them laid out together.

The devotion to the Divine Mercy comes from the mystical visions of the Polish Saint, Faustina Kowalska. In 1931, Jesus appeared to her. Then, through a series of apparitions, He spoke with her and taught her.

People still say it: “I’m spiritual but not religious.” It’s an old expression, but it’s also very modern and still in vogue. It’s used to describe someone whose spiritual life is divorced from organized religion.

What’s it going to take for us to remain with Christ? To stay with Him. To follow Him all the way to the cross, so as truly to share in His Resurrection?

The Christian is different. The Christian knows that to die is to live. The Christian is literally dying to live.

Imagine your parents gift to you a tree from a nursery. They deliver the tree to your front yard, its roots wrapped in burlap. “Thank you,” you say to them, “how lovely. And look! Its leaves are beginning to bloom! I love it. Thank you.”

We were formed from the dust, from the earth. But - and this is the most important thing - while God did form us from the dust, He did something more. As He formed us, He also breathed His life into us. He gave us a rational soul, an intelligent spirit. And in that intellect is our reason, our free will, and our conscience, the stuff of God’s own life. And It’s what makes love possible.