The Gospel and second reading for this Fifth Sunday of Easter emphasize the need for us to remain in Christ, and he in us. This shared life finds expression in the image of the one vine and many branches.

Some city teenagers often scorn and reject farm kids. Yet it’s no exaggeration to say that humanity owes its life to farmers who care for the world’scrops and livestock. This week’s scriptures remind us that Jesus was as rejected as a shepherd, a farm boy, yet we owe our very lives to him.

Throughout the Easter season, all three of the Sunday readings are taken from the New Testament—the Christian scriptures. Together they explore what it means to believe in Jesus as the Christ, the One who fulfilled the prophecies of the Jewish scriptures.

It is not often that the author of one of the books of the Bible comes right out and tells us directly why he is writing what he is writing. In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, taken from the conclusion of John’s Gospel, the author tells us that he has chosen to record these events so “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name” (20:31).

On Easter morning everything—the spring weather, the flowers, birds, and butterflies, the people around us in their finery, the beautiful liturgyand music—everything seems to bear witness that Jesus Christ is risen today! Like the eyewitness accounts in today’s scriptures, the glorious and joyfullife all around us helps us to believe the good news of the Resurrection and sing “Alleluia!”

The contrast between the processional reading in today’s liturgy and the proclamation of the Passion is striking. We are given a glimpse of how profoundly the word of God is fulfilled in Jesus.

Because the people broke the old covenant, God promised a new covenant, not in the blood of oxen and other animals, but in the blood of the Son, Jesus Christ. This new covenant, foreseen from afar by Jeremiah and the prophets, was not to be engraved on stone, or written on paper, but carved on our hearts so that we might know God intimately. Not by keeping many laws are we to be saved, but by the love of God, living and real in our hearts through the sacrifice of Christ.

The people of God forgot the covenant and flouted God’s laws. They did not listen to the prophets among them, who spoke for God in warning them. Prophets are sent from God to remind us why we are here, but they are often, even in our own time, mocked, disregarded, and mistreated rather than thanked and listened to.

There’s no better way to deepen our Lenten practice than to review the Ten Commandments. The first three, having to do with our right relationship to God, get the most ink. The one we busy people probably have the most problem with is keeping holy the Sabbath.

God tested Abraham by asking not for an ordinary sacrifice, which would have been a partial burning with the meat divided between God and the people and eaten by those who sacrificed, but for a holocaust, a total burning of the sacrificial animal. This type of sacrifice consecrated the entire offering to God alone.

If there is one word that stands out in today’s readings, it is “covenant.” God’s faithfulness and goodness serve as examples to us of how to live.

Today’s Gospel centers on the plight of a leper and Jesus’ response of healing. In Hawaii, the bacterium that causes leprosy probably entered from China in the mid-1800s, and the native islanders were susceptible to the dreaded disease. In 1866, the government literally dumped the sufferers on a remote and virtually inaccessible island peninsula with towering cliffs. Thrown off ships into the sea, the sick people were told to swim for the beach and head for caves, and for seven years the only supplies were similarly cast into the sea to drift ashore.

We’re reading St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians these days. What was Corinth like? It had a beautiful setting on an isthmus, about fifty miles from Athens. The location makes for very easy exchange by sea routes between Greece and Italy, a factor in its economic success even today. In Paul’s day it was a cosmopolitan and wealthy city with inhabitants drawn from all over the world, including a sizeable Jewish community.

“Behold the Lamb of God!” We hear this phrase every Sunday at Mass, but there’s a good chance that many Roman Catholics do not know who in the Bible originally spoke it. The phrase appears only in the Gospel of John, on the lips of John the Baptist, who utters it twice.

Where on earth would you go to honor the magi? Iran or Saudi Arabia, Tarshish or the Isles come to mind, but Cologne, Germany would be a good choice. There the Shrine of the Three Kings has been the centerpiece of the city's cathedral since the fourth century. Today it is the largest reliquary in the world: a gilded and ornamented triple casket gleaming high above the altar. In the fourth century, the supposed relics of the wise men were taken from Constantinople to Milan, where they remained until the German Emperor with the unlikely name Frederick Barbarossa (Red Beard) gave them to the Archbishop of Cologne. Ever since, pilgrims have streamed into the city to honor the magi, the first of all pilgrims, and thus the heavenly patrons of all who have some holy wanderlust.