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4th Sunday of Easter Good Shepherd Sunday

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is often called “Good Shepherd Sunday” because no matter what reading cycle we are in, the Gospel always focusses on the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The image of a caring shepherd, which was formed within an ancient agricultural society, remains valid even today. It speaks of the intimate closeness and tenderness of Christ’s relationship with each one of us individually.  The shepherd knows his sheep, and the sheep their shepherd. Complete trust is implicit. The first reading gives us insight into how the early church was struggling with the opening up of the good news to the Gentiles, leading to diversity in the make-up of the communities, much as we have in parishes today.  Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas were preaching, was home to a military garrison, so conversion of the soldiers promoted the spread of the good news as they were stationed throughout the Roman Empire.

The Gospel today makes some sweeping claims eternal life promised for his sheep, and total protection from anyone who would seek to snatch them away.  It finishes up with the declaration that Jesus and God are one. The Latin root word for shepherd is pastor, and it is from this root that spring the church terminologies and concepts of pastoral care and roles within faith communities.  These roles imply a duty of love and care.  Besides that the Shepherd-King was an ancient image of God used by the Hebrew people. This year, the Gospel reading talks about Jesus as the ‘gate of the sheepfold’, that is, Jesus is the one through whom we truly enter into the fold of God. The reading implies that those who get into the sheepfold some other way bring only disaster and destruction. Those who enter the fold through Christ, the Good Shepherd, will be safe, will be led to good pasture. The parable of the Good Shepherd has many consoling truths and promises for people of every century, including ourselves in the twenty first. That mixture of tenderness and toughness, care and self-sacrifice, is one that summarises Jesus own practice of leadership.

It is not a leadership of detachment and defensiveness; rather, it is a leadership of physical involvement and self-sacrificial love. In the good shepherd’s foolish extravagant love, his own life matters less than that of his sheep as we know Jesus gave up his life for us on the cross on Good Friday. When we think of Jesus as our Shepherd, we also need to think about being good shepherds to other people. The good shepherd challenges our own way of leaving people behind remember that Jesus also said “I have come to seek out and save the lost.” All of us know people who have wandered away from the Church, who have lost their sense of belonging, who feel they have no community to belong to.  How will they know they are welcome back if no one tells them? How will they be helped back if no one offers to make the journey with them shepherding them back to the sheepfold? The story of the good shepherd gives us the opportunity to be good shepherds to those around us and its up to us to take up the challenge. This Sunday also  marks the celebration of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations instituted by Pope Paul VI in 1964.The theme this year will be “Vocations: grace and mission ”. In his message for the day, Pope Francis explains that there is no vocation without mission. Today we remember those who were shepherds for us as we pray for more people to take up the call of priesthood or religious life continuing the mission of Jesus in our own time and place, as we continue our journey in the steps of the Good Shepherd who calls out to all of us follow me.  

Third Sunday of Easter

We gather this weekend after the solemn celebration of Easter and Divine Mercy Sundays, We also remember that the celebration of Easter continues until the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday and then Easter Time ends and the paschal candle is placed near the baptismal font. This Sunday’s gospel recounts Jesus appearance on the evening of Easter Sunday  to two disciples who were going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, their life with Jesus had come to an abrupt end as all seemed to be lost.  For in the past few days Jesus, their beloved Leader, friend and Teacher, had been arrested, tried, sentenced, tortured and killed. Now they are feeling that without his presence, his inspiration his support and encouragement, they simply cannot go on.   They are so disappointed and disillusioned about what had happened  that they have even decided to leave the Church, the community of his followers they are walking away from it all. Slowly but surely they are putting Jerusalem and the other disciples behind them.

They are heading for the village of Emmaus, to start a new and different way of life. And there Jesus was walking along the road with them as they were talking about what had happened in Jerusalem in the days before and how the authorities had put Jesus to death. Jesus explained all the passages of scripture that were about himself but it was only at the breaking of the bread that they recognized him later in the day. They then went back to tell the apostles that they had seen the Lord and told their story and how they recognized him at the breaking of the bread. The Emmaus story is the story of the church it is the story of you and me as the two disciples represent all of us who claim that we are Christians with all our doubts and disagreements our joys and sorrows. We come together in faith each Sunday in answer to a call, often a quiet murmur from the recesses of our hearts in which Jesus calls out to us saying come to me you who are weary and overburdened and I will give you rest.  We are searching just as the companions on the road to Emmaus were and they were weary from all that had happened to them often times we are also  weary from the things that happen to us. 

In the scriptures we find the explanation and understanding of events and relationships which have shaped the faith of so many people  over the long  years of the churches history. Our faith is lived out in the real world, the world of family, work, recreation, politics and economics as well as many other things. We don’t live in two separate worlds one spiritual and the other secular.  Those who would have us believe that we can separate our lives into two compartments are mistaken as faith and life go together.p  It is the application of scriptures to the events of our own lives and times that reveal that God is walking with us and maybe even working through us. But with all and in everything it is in the breaking of bread that we recognize Jesus the Son of God who is with us on our journey. It is in the sharing of the Bread of life that we are made one with each other and with Christ.  Our faith grows and our relationship with God and his people unites us in bond of love.  We are formed into one Body, the Body of Christ.   We are on this journey in fellowship with one another  being led by Jesus who calls out to us to follow him from the Cross of Good Friday as well as from the empty tomb of Easter Sunday. 

As we grow in faith, we are led to understand those past events as experienced yet again in our time and place.  The Risen Lord uses so much gentleness with us! He doesn’t oblige us to ‘believe’ but He offers us the means  that enable us to judge based on the measure of our own hearts. As St Augustine wrote in the opening of his Confessions ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in you’  As we recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread may we be joyful agents of conversion of one another.   As we show the caring face of the Church those who need us wherever they may be.

Second Sunday of Easter

The great Easter feast of last Sunday began the Church’s fifty-day celebration of the Resurrection  The Gospel of each Sunday is a meditation on Jesus as the resurrected Christ, made known in the scriptures and the breaking of the bread, the bearer of life in all its fullness, our way, truth and life, pledge of God’s love. Many people think that Easter begins and ends on Easter Sunday but it doesn’t stop there, the celebration of the season of Easter goes on for 50 days and ends on Pentecost Sunday. I wonder what the Apostles would think if they were to come down to us these days and find that we are celebrating the Death and Resurrection of Jesus that took place 2020 years ago, they would be amazed especially as they thought everything was over with the Crucifixion on Good Friday. In this Sundays Gospel reading the Apostles were still huddled together behind locked doors, mulling over the shocking experience from the week before when all seemed to be lost but as we know all was not lost.

Then Jesus appeared  to them and assured them that He was alive. His message must have troubled them as well when he told them: “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”  In the same way as the apostles were sent out we are sent out to bring his message of  mercy  and love to other people. Then of course there is doubting Thomas who heard the witness of the those who saw Jesus but, like so many of us today he wanted more proof. Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” That is a great  quote for us, who have not “seen” the risen Christ in person as the disciples did. We have come to believe though we have not seen him in the flesh but he is with us in the midst of our communities.  When Jesus says to the Apostles Peace be with you the Peace he is talking about is much more than the lack of conflict.  True peace, gives us happiness, since it is built on trust in God and one another.  The gospel tells us how Jesus gave his followers peace because they trusted him.

In spite of the scepticism of Thomas and so many others, throughout history Jesus  offers us the same peace of heart mind and soul.  The terror of Gethsemane and Calvary were necessary to defeat the terror of every person, the terror of the emptiness, isolation, and alienation that is the effect of death. With the crucifixion and the resurrection death is not an abyss of emptiness, uncertainty, or alienation from truth, goodness, and beauty.  After Jesus’ masterful work by taking on suffering, terror, and death itself, death is transformed into a way from life on earth to eternal life. Jesus’ life death and resurrection encourage us and give us the energy through the Holy Spirit to be a community of people who have unconditional love for one another and other people. As Christians we live in the world and are commissioned to lift it up from death into resurrected life  here and now by what we do and say. In that work as Christians we grow, we become complete, we discover and amplify our own and our communities relationship with the Lord. As we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday we remember the joy, the hope, the grief and the anxieties of the people in our time those we know and those unknown to us and we bring them to the merciful Lord. Let us not give up on our efforts, as small as they seem, to bring peace into our families, workplace, classroom and community. May all of us be witnesses to the love  and mercy of the Gospel as we try to bring the caring face of God’s mercy to the people wherever we are today.

Easter Sunday

Holy Saturday is a day to pause and take stock, all is quiet as we wait watching by the tomb, after the great liturgies of the last few days and the fasting of the forty days of Lent we are Quiet in the  reflective mood that is part of Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday gives us  a chance to think about all that we are and what we should be as Christians while we wait and watch for the resurrection. While  we  wait we think about the  betrayal, suffering and death of Jesus as we look forward to his resurrection when we hear the cry he is risen.

The Easter Vigil is the most distinctive liturgy of the Christian year, as we celebrate our life in the risen Christ during the Vigil. In the expanded readings we recount the history of God’s saving actions in the lives of his people.We add new members to the Body of Christ in the sacrament of Baptism and we renew our own baptismal vows. Then in the Eucharist, we celebrate our membership of the Church, the Body of the Risen Christ. On Good Friday we celebrated Jesus life giving death on the Cross but today we stop and reflect on our own personal faith journeys. The Easter celebration is an invitation to come out of darkness of life and the way we live it into the light of the risen Christ. In that light we see him and recognise each other as brothers and sisters in the Lord. It is that light which summons us to leave the darkness of our lives behind and all of us have some of those. As a  result of Jesus conquering death on the cross nobody can be written off as a lost cause ever again. Year after year when we celebrate Easter we hold as holy the memory of God’s great act in raising Jesus from the dead. We believe that God’s graciousness will be extended to ourselves and that our own death will not be the final word.  Our faith and our hope is that we will participate in Jesus resurrection on the last day. But a question raises itself: is our faith in the resurrection limited to remembering Jesus’ resurrection and hoping for our own on the last day? What happens between times? What about today? The resurrection of Jesus is a proclamation that this outcast from Galilee is the beloved Son of God who cannot be held in the darkness of death because he was raised by God his father. The truth that God raised Jesus from the dead gives hope and help to all those who want that miracle repeated in the midst of life. All of us believe that God’s work continues not least because we believe Jesus’ words: “I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me will never die.” Our celebration of the Easter Season begins with our celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday  and continues for 50 days until Pentecost  and then it resonates throughout the rest of the year: full of gratitude for Christ’s passion, with joy in his resurrection and, strengthened by the Spirit, we continue our Christian journey this Easter time.

HOLY THURSDAY

Lent has ended and now we begin the Holy Week Triduum. The word Triduum is the Latin for three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the great Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night. The Church celebrates one liturgy each day. We should not think of the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil as three separate events, all three form part of one single extended liturgy. In fact at the end of the Mass on Holy Thursday there is no dismissal and blessing instead we accompany Jesus to the Altar of repose that represent the garden of Gethsemane . In the same way there is no formal beginning and end to the Good Friday liturgy.  This three-day liturgy concludes with the solemn blessing at the end of the Easter Vigil or at the morning Mass on Easter Sunday.

Holy Thursday is all about the priesthood and the institution of the Eucharist at the last supper. On the Morning of Holy Thursday, there is only one mass celebrated in a Diocese (Although the Chrism Mass may be celebrated earlier in the week). All the priests gather around the Bishop and the people of God to renew their commitment to priesthood. Also at this Mass the oils of Chrism, Catechumens and the Oil of the Sick are blessed by the bishop, these holy oils will be used in the Baptisms, Confirmations and anointing of the sick in the local parishes over the next 12 months. The theme running throughout this day is one of humble service that is service of God and his people.  The Evening Mass commemorates the Last Supper again the theme is service and sacrifice both of these are aspects of the same mystery.  The scene in the upper room is not your usual friendly night out. There is something about the host which makes this meal different.  We see Jesus on his knees as one who demonstrated the parable of his kingdom: that in his upside-down world, the king was servant, and the person  who ministered to the other was master and king.

And whatever belonged to the creed of power and greed  had no place in Jesus Gospel of love and service . He gave them the most costly gift he could give: the gift of himself. It was at this moment that Jesus identified himself for ever with bread and wine. He gave his followers more than food for thought; he gave them himself. In the same way in 2023 we receive Jesus in the form of Bread and wine from the hands of our priests. All these acts of self-giving service are the same act – that of the Son of Man who came ‘not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many and he did that for  us all those years ago as well. May we take up the mantle of humble service giving a helping hand to others and not counting the cost to ourselves. Many people over the years have given much at great personal cost and have not failed in their example of humble service and that for me  is what  Holy Thursday is all about  Humble service for others and not being afraid of being the presence of Christ no matter what the cost is.  Jesus has shown us that it is worthwhile to pay the price for who we are and for what we stand for as his followers; it is worthwhile to pick up our bill for having fellowship with him.

The liturgy on Holy Thursday is a meditation on the essential connection between the Eucharist and Christian love expressed in serving one another. Christ is not only present in the Eucharist but also in the deeds of loving kindness offered to others through us. We are the ones who make ‘real’ the presence of Jesus in every smile, kind word and loving action. On Holy Thursday the Lord invites us again to copy what he has done for us and that is to serve others as he did when he washed the feet of his followers on that first Holy Thursday evening.