Today the Church celebrates the glorious feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Forty days after His Resurrection, Jesus returns to the Father not to abandon the world but to reign over it, to intercede for it, and to prepare humanity for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Ascension is not an ending. It is a beginning. Christ ascends so that the Church may arise.

The Gospel given to us today from the Gospel of John is often called the "High priestly prayer" of Jesus. Before His passion, before the Cross, before the disciples fully understood what was happening, Jesus lifted His eyes to heaven and prayed. What we hear today is not merely instruction; it is the heart of Christ revealed in prayer.

Today's Gospel gives us part of Jesus' farewell discourse at the Last Supper - a moment charged with tenderness, urgency, and promise. He is preparing his disciples for a world in which he will no longer be physically present, yet He insists that His absence will not mean abandonment. instead, it will open the way to a deeper, more intimate presence. Jesus begins not with a command but with a relationship. Love comes first. obedience is not presented as a burden imposed from outside, but as the natural fruit of love.

In the Gospel of John 14:1-12, we find Jesus speaking to his disciples on the night before his passion. Jesus has just told them he is going away and they do not understand. into that uncertainty, he speaks words that echo through every age: "Do not let your hearts be troubled." This is not a shallow reassurance. Jesus does not deny that trouble exists; rather, he redirects the disciples' focus. The antidote to a troubled heart is not control, nor certainty about outcomes, but trust - "Believe in God; believe also in me." Faith here is relational. it is not merely agreement with ideas, but a living trust in a person.

Today's Gospel gives us one of the most intimate and powerful images in all of Scripture: He is the Good Shepherd and we are His sheep. At first glance, this may seem like a simple rural metaphor, but beneath it lies a profound revelation about identity, trust, leadership, and life itself. Jesus begins with a warning: “Whoever does not enter the sheepfold through the gate but climbs in another way is a thief and a robber.” In other words, not every voice that calls out to us has our good in mind. There are voices in our world and even within our own hearts that try to lead us away from truth, from peace, from God. These voices can sound convincing: success without integrity, pleasure without responsibility, independence without love. But Jesus is clear—these are not the voices of the shepherd.

The Gospel of Luke 24:13-35 gives us one of the most tender and relatable resurrection stories: the journey to Emmaus. It is not set in a temple, nor in a place of triumph, but on an ordinary road - where two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem, away from hope, away from what they thought would change everything. The two disciples are leaving Jerusalem after the crucifixion of Jesus. their hopes have been shattered. they say, "We had hoped," perhaps the saddest phrase in the Gospel.

Today we celebrated the Divine Mercy Sunday and the Gospel is centered on the appearance of the Risen Christ to His disciples and to Thomas. The hearts of the disciples are more tightly closed than the room itself. They had seen their teacher arrested, tortured and crucified. everything they believed in seemed shattered. They were not waiting in hope - they were hiding in fear. And into that fear, Jesus comes, not with anger, not with accusation, not with disappointment but with peace.

The Gospel begins in darkness, in uncertainty, in the quiet ache of the human heart. Mary discovers that the stone has been rolled away. Immediately, she runs - not yet with faith, but with alarm. "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb," she says. Her first conclusion is not resurrection, but removal. Even those closest to Jesus were not expecting Easter. This detail is important. It reminds us that resurrection- faith is not wishful thinking, it is something surprising, something that breaks into human expectations.