[Goanet] [JudeSundayReflections] 4th Sunday of Easter
20-Apr-2015 Dear Friend, During this Easter season we are given many signs of the presence of the Risen Lord. We see his presence when he appears to the apostles many times after he has risen from the dead. We also see his presence in the community that was formed around the Risen Lord, and the witnessing of the apostles. Today we are given one more characteristic of the Risen Lord, his care for his sheep, and all who wish to belong to his flock. As people of the Resurrection we are assured that He is our Good Shepherd. Do we in turn show a caring attitude towards others? May we have a nurturing weekend! -Fr. Jude Sunday Ref. 4th Sunday of Easter Jesus the Shepherd, Searches, Safeguards and Saves us! 26-Apr-2015 Acts 4: 8-12; 1John. 3: 1-2; John 10: 12-18; In today's reading we see the power of the Risen Lord, which had transformed Peter, who preaches eloquently and takes on the establishment. Peter was speaking to the elders, the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, a powerful opposition for an uneducated fisherman, yet he and the other apostles displayed courage and greatness as they confront them head on. If we are being questioned and asked how this man was healed, let it be known, that this man is standing in good health by the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Peter could have taken the credit for the miracle. Peter has learnt his lesson and knows that if he relies on himself he will fall, but his confidence is in the Lord, who never fails. Peter moves from the immediate fact of the healing, to the thing signified, namely the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Good ShepherdsIn San Salvador on March 24, 1980, an assassin killed Archbishop Oscar Romero with a single shot to the heart while he was saying Mass. Only a few minutes before, Archbishop Romero had finished a hope-filled homily in which he urged the people to serve one another. Since Archbishop Romero was demanding human rights for his people under oppression, he knew that his life was in danger. Still he persisted in speaking out against tyranny and for freedom. He once told newspapermen that even if his enemies killed him, he would rise again among his people. Today, good shepherds who lay down their lives mean husbands and wives who can't do enough for each other to demonstrate their commitment to each other; parents who make countless sacrifices for the good of their children; teachers who spend untold hours instructing the weak students; doctors and nurses who work untiringly to show they care for their patients; employers who share profits with their workers; politicians who unselfishly promote the common good of their voters and parishioners who generously support their parish community.Albert Cylwicki in 'His Word Resounds' One of the most beautiful descriptions of God given by Jesus is contained in today's gospel reading where he proclaims: I am the good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Jesus was the visible sign of God's constant care for his people. In our present day set-up the image of the shepherd may be alien to us but in Palestine the shepherd was a common figure in the countryside. The shepherd in Palestine led his flock, he did not drive them as shepherds elsewhere did. The shepherd literally lived with his flock, spent most of the day and night with them. Though there were hundreds of sheep belonging to different shepherds, the shepherd knew his own and his own sheep recognized his voice and followed him to the pastures. The good shepherd cared for the sheep to the point of death. He does not just surrender his life for his sheep, but he gives his life willingly, as He said at the last supper. Knowing His sheepOne of the memories I have of the home of my birth was a dog we had, called Roxy. We lived on a fairly quiet road, but as the years went by, the number of cars increased. Irrespective of how many passed by, Roxy was quite indifferent. Then suddenly, the ears were at full stretch, up he sprang, and raced at full speed along the road. There was no sign of anything coming, but we all knew that my mother was on her way, driving back from town, and was probably several hundred yards away. With all the cars, this was the sound that Roxy recognized from a distance. By the time he met the car, my mother had rolled down the window on the passenger side, slowed down slightly and with the car still moving, Roxy sprang right into the front seat and accompanied her on the latter part of the journey. I'm sure most of us have known unique relationships between animals and humans.Jack McArdle in 'And that's the Gospel truth' A Good ShepherdAfter a particularly brilliant concert, Beethoven was in the centre of congratulating friends and admirers, who praised his piano magic. One unusually enthusiastic woman exclaimed: Oh, sir, if God had only given me the gift of genius! It is not genius, madam, replied Beethoven. Nor magic. All you have to
[Goanet] [JudeSundayReflections] 4th Sunday of Easter
4-May-2014 Dear Friend, Does anybody care for us and about what is happening to us? Often we feel that nobody really bothers, nobody really cares for us. When we do come across people who take us seriously and acknowledge us, we are deeply touched by their concern and love. Today we are reminded that somebody up there loves us. God does care and is concerned about his people. Have an uplifting weekend experiencing the loving care of God! - Fr. Jude Sunday Ref: Fourth Sunday of Easter 'He is our Shepherd and cares for us always!' 11-May-2014 Readings: Acts: 2: 14, 36-41; 1 Peter 2: 20-25; John 10: 1-10; In his sermon, Peter reminds his listeners that while God raised Jesus, and made him Lord and Messiah, the people on the other hand crucified Him. Peter's listeners are moved by guilt to ask, What must we do? Peter's answer was that they should reform and be baptized. They realized they could no longer believe and act as they once did. In accepting Peter's message today, we too must make the changes in our lives that reflect the One whose rule we follow. Listening with faith demands a response or else the Word is rendered impotent in our lives. Follow My Voice On September 11, 2001, the Pentagon was slammed by a hijacked airliner. People were trapped in the flaming building. A police officer ran inside and kept repeating in the darkness, ''Follow my voice. Six people did. They owe their lives to that voice. We know the popular child's game called, Follow the Leader. As children, remember when we played, Simon says? Whatever Simon says, we do, because, Simon is the leader of that game. At some point of our life, we all picked out leaders to follow, some good, some bad. Depending on whom we chose, we were led well or astray. Jesus says, My sheep hear my voice. But hearing Jesus' voice is very difficult in the current environment of our lives. Each day hundreds of other shepherds are calling our names for our attention. They offer formulas for health, wealth and happiness. They offer formulas for solving problems, getting along in relationships, raising children, avoiding becoming popular and getting ahead. John Pichappily in The Table of the Word In today's gospel, Jesus says that He is the Good Shepherd and the Gate of Life. During the time of Jesus there were two kinds of pens, either the common village pen or the field pen. In the first half of the gospel Jesus alludes to the common village pen. Specifically he refers to the early morning routine when the shepherd came to the village pen to get his flock and lead it out to pasture. The sheep hear his voice as he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. When he has brought them out he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. Among the Hebrews, sheep were most often raised for wool and for milk and not for meat, consequently the animals became like pets, part of the household. Minding the sheep was not a business but a life. Basically what the passage communicates to us is the personal care and concern of Jesus, the caring Shepherd: 'The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.' We are precious and real in the sight of God. In the second half of today's Gospel Jesus refers to himself as the sheep-gate, which refers to the field pen and specifically he refers to the narrow opening in the pen through which the sheep passed. Jesus says: I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever comes in by me will be saved; he will come in and go out and find pasture. What does Jesus wish to tell us when he says He is the door of the sheepfold? In Jesus' time it was not the door or gate of the sheepfold that was important, it was the person, the shepherd, who was important and it was he who provided security and protection to the sheep by being the door. The shepherd would lie down at the gate and no sheep could go out unless they went over him. No one could come in unless they crossed over him. Jesus is crucial to the life of the believer. He is the gate, the guardian who protects us from all that can harm us. He is the door, the one who provides us passage to the Father. He is the one who is the gateway to the fullness of life. I am the gate In his book 'The Holy Land', John Kellman describes a field pen. It consists of a circular stone wall about four feet high with an opening in it. Kellman says that one day a Holy land tourist saw a field pen near Hebron. He asked a shepherd sitting nearby, Where's the gate for your pen? The shepherd said, I am the gate. The shepherd then told the tourist how he herded his flock into the pen each night and then lay down across the entrance. No sheep could leave the pen and no wild animal could enter it, without stepping over his body. Anonymous She thinks I'm real! There is a story of a grandmother, a mother, and a little boy, three generations, who went into a restaurant, and sat down to order. The
[Goanet] [JudeSundayReflections] 4th Sunday of Easter
14-Apr-2013 Dear Friend, In life we realize that people are rewarded for their successes and punished for failures. Hence we equate living with being always successful. But our common experience tells us that we can’t always succeed, we are bound to make mistakes sometimes. However, in our faith life there are no failures and God comes to us especially in moments of failure. In this Easter Season discover a God who never fails us! Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections: 4th Sunday of Easter “Jesus, the Good Shepherd cares for his sheep!” 21-Apr-2013 Readings: Acts 13: 14, 43-52 Rev. 7: 9, 14-17 John 10: 27-30 This Sunday’s first reading focuses on Paul and Barnabas preaching at Antioch. They are filled with the Spirit and preach with zeal and the people listened to them and liked what they heard. Their ministry is a great success and paradoxically that causes a problem! The Jews become jealous of the success of Paul and start to oppose him, contradict him and find fault with his teaching so much that Paul is frustrated at the rejection and opposition and leaves the town and goes off to the pagans. What seems to be a failure turns out to be a blessing in disguise. The pagans now have an opportunity to hear the good news preached to them and are converted. The important thing is to be able to listen to His voice and do His will rather than ours. God’s interruptions or…… One night the Philadelphia Orchestra, under the baton of Leopold Stokowski, was performing a Beethoven overture. In it, a part for the trumpet is played off stage. When the time came for the offstage trumpet, there was no sound. Stokowski was furious. Again the time came for the offstage trumpet. Again, there was only silence. After the overture ended, Stokowski stormed offstage to find the trumpet player. There he was his arms pinned to his side by a security guard who said, “This nut was trying to play his horn while your concert was going on out there.” - Do we not sometimes frustrate God’s plans by failing to recognize Jesus’ role in it? Mark Link in ‘Sunday Homilies’ In today’s passage Jesus is reminding us that he knows us just as intimately as a shepherd knows, his sheep. “I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life; they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from me.” We may not know him but He knows us. His word reassures us that we belong to Him. He promises us that He alone gives us eternal life. Jesus’ discourse from which our Gospel is taken, comes from the Jewish feast of the Dedication, a feast celebrating the presence of God in the temple. The temple was not just a building, for Israel it was the visible place where God dwelt with his people. To go to the temple and worship in the temple was to approach God. Now within this setting Jesus teaches a completely different way to God. He stands within the precincts of the temple and boldly proclaims that it is by hearing His voice that one can come to eternal life, and never be lost. One does not approach God through a building, no matter how beautiful or sacred, one does not approach God through laws, rituals and sacrifices no matter how sacrosanct. Jesus is the only way to the Father. Through the ‘voice’ of his teaching, life, death and resurrection, the ways of God are made known to us. The ‘voice’ of Jesus is not just the sound, which came from his human mouth. It is everything about him: his way of life, his loving, his teaching, his dying and his being raised from the dead. Jesus uses the image of the shepherd to make this point. No longer does one need to look to the temple or any other human institution to find the abiding presence of God. “I and the Father are one.” The Pastoral Touch I will never forget the testimony of a pastor whose experience I heard on radio one day. I do not remember the pastor’s name. But I can recall most of what he said when he gave his testimony that I am about to share with you. He said, “When I started out, I wanted to be a great preacher, someone whom people revered and thought of highly. As I got older and wiser, I began to realize that people don’t want just a preacher. They want a pastor. One day this hope became evident to me as I went to see an AIDS patient in the hospital. When people came to see him they stayed at the edge of the room near the door. One preacher even said a prayer from the door. But, when I went to see him, I went over to him held his hand and said a prayer. He cried, because that was the first time anyone other than medical personnel had touched him since he had been in the hospital.” The point of the story is that whether one is a preacher or not, people who are hurting and/or sick want others to be pastoral to them. A Pastor is a metaphor for a shepherd who looks after his/her congregation just as a shepherd looks after his sheep. John Pichappilly in ‘The Table of the Word’ Being a Good Shepherd Philip
[Goanet] [JudeSundayReflections] 4th Sunday of Easter
8-May-2011 Dear Friend, Are we enjoying life? Living it up? We may claim that we are having a good time! But often we yearn for more; we don't seem to be satisfied by the way we are living life. We keep trying one thing after another. We try to reach the top, and have wealth and power but still feel empty inside. Have we tried God? Jesus guarantees us the fullness of life through Him. Have a fulfilling weekend with Jesus! Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections Fourth Sunday of Easter 'Jesus the gateway to fullness of life!' 15-May-2011 Acts 2: 14, 36-41; 1 Peter 2: 20-25; John 10: 1-10; In the first reading from the Acts Peter addresses the crowds after the first followers had experienced the coming of the Spirit. He boldly says, Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. His listeners are moved and ask what they need to do to be saved. Peter asks them to repent and believe in Jesus the only way to fullness of life. Peter's message is essentially the same as today's Gospel and responsorial psalm: The stone which the builders, the Sanhedrin and the other leaders - had rejected, had become the corner stone of the whole edifice of salvation. Showing the Way In San Salvador on March 24, 1980, an assassin killed Archbishop Oscar Romero with a single shot to the heart while he was saying Mass. Only a few minutes before, Archbishop Romero had finished a hope-filled homily in which he urged the people to serve one another. Since Archbishop Romero was demanding human rights for his people under oppression, he knew that his life was in danger. Still he persisted in speaking out against tyranny and for freedom. He once told newspapermen that even if his enemies killed him, he would rise again among his people. Today, good shepherds who lay down their lives are husbands and wives who can't do enough for each other to demonstrate their commitment to each other; parents who make countless sacrifices for the good of their children; teachers who spend untold hours instructing the weak students; doctors and nurses who work untiringly to show they care for their patients; employers who share profits with their workers; politicians who unselfishly promote the common good of their voters and parishioners who generously support their parish community. Albert Cylwicki in 'His Word Resounds' In the Gospel Jesus explains his role as the Risen One in a parable I am the gate. The words 'I am' are a claim to divine life. They echo the name of God revealed to Moses when he received his call to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt to the Promised Land. As Jesus echoes that name there is an invitation to all to believe that He is God. He claims that he is the gate. There is no gate as such into the sheepfold. The shepherd acts as the gate. The sheep pass into the fold through his hands. He examines them, and tends to their bruises. When all are in he lies down across the entrance. No one can come in nor go out except over his body. He is their security. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. He concludes, I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly. The risen Lord is calling us to the fullness of life. He is the only gate, the entrance to divine life. In the context of being the life-giver of his people he calls himself the Good Shepherd, who loves his sheep, takes care of them provides for their needs and leads them to rich pastures. Jesus is the only way to life. All other ways prove deceptive and short-lived. They may bring temporary pleasure but certainly no lasting happiness. Are we existing or living? Our Shepherd wants us to enjoy life, -a full life that is only possible in and through Him. The Sheepgate Like many devoted shepherds, Jesus is both the shepherd and the gate. I once heard a description of Middle Eastern sheepherding practices that ties these two images together. The sheepfold, especially one unattached to a larger settlement or dwelling, is a circular wall of stones, topped by barriers of briar. There is a small opening for the sheep to pass through. Once they are all in, instead of closing a hinged gate, the shepherd simply lies across the opening, so that nothing or no one can get through without going over his body first, without confronting or even killing him. This particular kind of shepherd literally makes himself into a barrier gate, a role that requires not only care but courage. If the marauders or predators are to get to the sheep, they will only do so over the dead body of the shepherd. When Jesus reveals that he is the gate of the sheepfold, he is not just suggesting that he is the unique way into safety or the only way out to pasture. He is saying that he will prevent our destruction by laying down his life. He has come to us that we may have life and have it abundantly. John Kavanaugh
