MY parish, Immaculate Heart of Mary, has a lot to celebrate nowadays! Besides celebrating a successful and well-attended celebration of its centennial year, St. Anthony Messenger, a national Catholic magazine, has dubbed our elementary school as LA’s Little School that Could. The popular magazine put on its cover story of April issue our children’s choir, “the only US Catholic elementary school choir to compete in this summer’s World Choir Games.”

A few days ago, Relevant Radio picked up the story by Maureen Pratt, a syndicated columnist for Catholic News Service and author of six books. Radio host, Sean Harriot, asked Pratt how our struggling school is able to participate in a world-class music event. Pratt immediately commended the “spark” and the “creativity” in us, the leaders of the parish and school. She explained that these attributes have enabled us “to create something out of nothing.”

“LOOK at my hands, and my feet, that it is I, myself. Touch me and see me… he showed them his hands and his feet.” This was how the Disciples recounted Jesus’ appearance to them after he resurrected from the dead. They were words of intimacy and connection, words of assurance and love. He had not left them – He was alive!

He came into them where they were – in their troubled and fearful lives – and granted them his peace. Reassuring them that it was really him who was standing in their midst, he sat down with them, expressed his hunger, and served himself with a “piece of baked fish.”