“A stream has welled up, it has become a torrent . . . It has flooded the universe, it has converged on the temple. No bank or dam could halt it . . . All who were thirsty have drunk of it and their thirst has been quenched, For the Most High has
given them to drink. By means of the living waters they live for ever. Alleluia!” - Odes of Solomon, 6 -(These Odes are from very early in Christianity and were likely sung as hymns. Open
yourself to the simple message it conveys. Drink of the living water of the risen Christ.)________ Christianity and Spirituality monthly forum Tonight: 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. CDT Topic: "Christianity and Reincarnation," by Philip St. Romain More info via the link below Free sign up for Zoom link
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Acts 3:11-26; Psalm 8:2ab and 5, 6-7, 8-9
Lk 24:35-48
The disciples of Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way,
and how they had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread.
While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.”
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have.”
And as he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.
He said to them,
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I
was still with you,
that everything written about me in the law of Moses
and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
And he said to them,
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”
Come Holy Spirit: a study series for the Easter season.
Free access to 16 video teachings on the Holy Spirit, with
handouts
Two Zoom sessions for discussion and sharing.
Registration is open.
https://shalomplace.com/inetmin/holyspirit.html
Reflection on the Scriptures
In the Gospel today, two disciples have just returned from their walk and meal with Jesus on the way to Emmaus. They are in the process of telling the others what happened
when, all of a sudden, Jesus is there! Everyone is “startled and terrified!” I have to smile at that – I imagine even the two telling the story were startled when it happened again. Isn’t that usually the way, though? Don’t I often tell stories I know to be true, for someone anyway? It could be a tragedy I heard on the news, or a happy story about the unlikely circumstances that led to two people meeting. And yet, when similar things happen to me or someone close to me, I am startled, or even
terrified, that they are now reality in my own little world. The distance between words and experience evaporates. Head knowledge becomes heart knowledge. We tell a bit of the Church’s story, our story with God, every time we pray together in the liturgy. And yet, I am always a little startled when I notice that Jesus is there. As the psalm says, “What are we that you (God) should be mindful of us? ... You have made us little less than angels.”
In the Gospel, Jesus calms his friends down by showing that he is real-ly and tangibly there with them. Then they are still incredulous, but with joy. The depiction of the disciples’ joy is my favorite part of the movie Risen. When Clavius interviews them about Jesus, they can’t keep from grinning. Their joy overflows into witness, into real, tangible signs like the healing of the crippled man in the first reading.
We, the Church in 2024, would not be here without that kind of joy. May our Easter joy overflow like the first disciples’ did!
-by Molly Mattingly
Psychic Energy and Contemplation by James
Arraj From St. John of the Cross and Dr. C. J. Jung, Part III, Chapter 7. Inner Growth Books, 1986. Underlying this psychological principle of compensation is a view of the psyche in terms of psychic energy. The psyche is conceived as a bipolar system which embraces a series of pairs of opposites: conscious and unconscious, thinking and feeling, introversion and extraversion, spirit and matter, etc. These opposites create a tension which is the source of psychic energy. Jung surmised that the psyche could be
conceived as a relatively closed system in which basic laws of energy following the model of physical energy hold sway. The chief of these laws is the principle of equivalence: "The principle of equivalence states that for a given quantity of energy expended or consumed in bringing about a certain condition, an equal quantity of the same or another form of energy will appear elsewhere."(2) In this connection psychic energy is not intrinsically one particular kind of energy; it is not qualitative, but quantitative. Each psychic content has a certain amount of energy which can increase or decrease. How much psychic energy a particular content has is a value judgment. We like something more or less, or feel something is better for us than something else. In consciousness we are aware of these transformations of energy. We lose interest in one thing and
begin to value something else more highly. But how is it possible to estimate the energetic values of unconscious contents? Here "the constellating power of the nuclear element corresponds to its value intensity, i.e., to its energy." (3) This constellating or attractive power can be measured in various ways. Early in his career, for example, Jung carried out a series of word association experiments in which he physically measured the hesitations that surrounded particular words. These
hesitations were caused by the energy that had accumulated around various unconscious contents.
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