The Lord recognizes in that relationship between sheep and shepherd something of his own relationship to us. In submitting to his Lordship, we are assured that we will experience true freedom, what Saint Paul calls the glorious freedom of the children of God, the freedom to live in the fully human way that God desires for us. They got into boats by the shore of the Sea of Galilee after Jesus and his disciples and crossed to Capernaum looking for him. According to the reading, when the risen Lord appeared to Paul, there came a light from heaven all around him. In his message for Vocations Sunday, Pope Francis says that our response to the Lords personal call to us always requires an exodus from oneself in order to centre ones life on Christ and on his gospel. The Lord calls each of us to be a good shepherd in some shape or form to others. Barnabas immediately recognized that God was at work here. These cookies may track your personal data. It was while he was at prayer that he became aware of the disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee struggling with a strong wind and a rough sea. Listening to Gods word prepares us, disposes us, to recognize and receive the Lord who comes to us in the Sacraments. The story they told was a true story but it was not the whole story. In the world of Jesus, there were no sheepdogs to do the shepherds work for him. The good news is that even when we turn from the light and chose darkness, the light shines in the darkness and, if there is even the smallest opening in us to the light, the darkness will not overcome the light of Gods loving presence. Ever since, the church has repeated the actions and words of Jesus at the last supper. Saint Paul seems to have a very strong sense of how the Lord can work powerfully in weakness. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, Peace be with you. The most important decision we can make in life is to believe in the one whom God has sent into the world and allow that belief to shape the whole pattern of our life. If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. The stranger who joined the two disciples on their sad journey was the very person whose death they were grieving. If we are not masters of the wind, we are even less masters of the Spirit. The Lord stood in the midst of his fearful disciples; he spoke to their fear, Peace be with you, and he drove out their spirit of fear by breathing the Holy Spirit into their lives. His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? Jesus revealed Gods faithfulness to us; he loved us even when we put him to death. We have deeper, spiritual hungers and thirsts as well that we need to attend to if we are to live a truly balanced life and be at peace within ourselves. As a result, they invited the members of the church to choose people of wisdom and of the Spirit who could attend to this important work of providing for the most vulnerable. The Lord continues to call us to himself, drawing us into an ever deeper relationship with him. If Lectio Divina is used for group prayer, obviously more structure is needed than for individual use. He had a sense of the Lord coming to him in the sound of a gentle breeze. Shortly after his return, Pope Gregory died. He invites us, as he invited the two disciples, to share with him the story of our lives in all its various hues. When I was a child my father used to take me to Dalymount Park to see Bohemians football club play their matches; he was a great fan of Boes, as they were known, and Dalymount Park was only about fifteen minutes walk from where we lived. This particular gate is also the good shepherd who has laid down his life for us so that we might have life and have it to the full. The Word of God is alive and active and will transform each of us if we open ourselves to receive what God wants to give us. He comes to recreate us through the Holy Spirit. In todays first reading we have the dramatic story of the call of Paul. That is one way of understanding what is happening on the road to Emmaus in todays gospel reading. Daily Homilies. For this Liturgical Year: Weekday Reflections for 2019/2020 'The Word of God is Living and Active' available at messenger.ie & 'Journeying with . Martin Hogan continues to write many books on the Gospel Readings for each day of the Catholic Liturgical Year. As a result, many of the Jewish Christians there had to flee from the city. Jesus is always calling us too to take some new step on our faith journey. He does not retreat from us even though we might retreat from him. We can all be a little bit like the disciples before the challenges that life throws up. We are those who seek to take Jesus as the Lord of our lives. In this mornings gospel reading Jesus speaks as the shepherd who looks after each member of his flock and keeps them all united to himself. He is speaking here as the good Shepherd who is prepared to lay down his life so that the members of his flock can have life and have it to the full. In the first reading we have an Ethiopian returning home from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. During the hour of his passion and death, Jesus disciples, with the exception of the beloved disciple and the women, ran from him. He was sent because he was known to be a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith. When you reflect on that saying of Jesus, it is indeed very reassuring. Like Thomas, they may find it difficult to identify fully with those believers who acclaim with conviction, We have seen the Lord, and whose faith seems so much more assured than theirs. Reflections on Daily Readings December 22 - Carmelites Student Daily Reflection. Yet the gospel ends (the shorter ending) with the young man calling on the faithful women to tell the other disciples that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee where they will see him. Andrew, Philip and the other disciples went on to discover that the Lord worked powerfully in and through the few resources that the small boy made available. Jesus climbed the hillside, and sat down there with his disciples. Indeed, Jesus describes the good shepherd as one who is prepared to give nothing less than everything, his own life. At the deepest level of our being, we are searching for God. God sent his Son into the world so that everyone may have eternal life. The gospel reading goes on to declare that because Jesus comes from heaven, he is able to bear witness to what he has seen and heard in heaven, what he has seen and heard from God his Father. There is a personal bond between the shepherd and this one sheep. News reached the church in Jerusalem that something unexpected was happening. Reflections on Daily Readings 2022 Introduction We have compiled a comprehensive set of reflections on the readings, covering the entire year. The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon. Then they told their story of what had happened on the road and how they had recognised him at the breaking of bread. When the risen Lord joined the two disciples, he first invited them to tell him what they had been talking about. It is Paul who teaches us in his letters that this communion with the Lord that we enjoy in this life will not be broken by death, because our ultimate destiny is to be with the Lord forever, as he says. According to this mornings gospel reading, Jesus shows himself to be the good shepherd in two ways. He doesnt say, learn my teaching, but learn from me. He first of all breathed on them, saying, Receive the Holy Spirit. Some of our friends went to the tomb and found everything exactly as the women had reported, but of him they saw nothing.. As Jesus says, it blows where it pleases. Pick and choose as you please. This is a call to Eucharistic communion with the Lord. but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. Noticing that there was one small boy with five barley loaves and two fish, he asked, What is that between so many? However, the way Jesus spoke in response to the problem was much more inspirational. The gospel reminds us that, while the physical and material is vital because we are physical and material beings, our searching must not stop at the physical and the material. If we do that we can be sure that we will never lose the firm hold of the good Shepherd. They ran from the suffering and crucified Jesus. If human birth makes the child a son or daughter of his or her parents, birth from above or birth of the Spirit, makes us sons and daughters of God, thereby giving us a share in Jesus own relationship with God as Son. She travelled to Avignon to Pope Gregory XI insisting that he return to Rome. We live our lives in response to calls of all sorts. In the words of the gospel reading, he leads us to a place where we may life and have it to the full. It was the Scriptures that Jesus opened up for the two disciples in order to tell them that story of God, a story which does not end in death, but in glory. Yet, we can put a damper on the Lords work, a bit like Philip and Andrew, or we can create a space for the Lord to work, like the small boy. He sums up this two-fold role he has as the gate by affirming, I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full. Click on the "Save cookie settings" button to apply your choice. He gave instructions to the disciples, he prayed aloud to God, and somehow the crowd got fed with the young boys small fare. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. He comes to assure us that his love for us endures even when we fail him. In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus makes reference to stealing. The temptation to lock away our faith out of fear can be very strong. The faith of the Ethiopian is first nurtured by Philip through his proclamation of the word before the Ethiopian comes to celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism. We know that Jesus has a unique relationship with God his Father; that relationship is characterized by a profound loving intimacy. In their own words, their hearts began to burn within them. It all seems too much for us. Jesus often spoke about day to day realities, like the wind, as a way of talking about more spiritual realities. The Lords concern is not just with the general, but with the particular, not just with the flock as a whole but with the individuals who make it up. Vocations Sunday reminds us that the most fundamental call that comes to us in life is the call of the Lord. He journeys with us as a shepherd and a guardian to bring life out of our various experiences of death, to heal our brokenness, and, in the words of todays Responsorial Psalm, to revive my drooping spirit. The parable that Jesus tells in the gospel reading makes reference to a shepherd as well as to a gate. Many questions are asked by people in the course of the gospels. Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Subscribe | Prayer| Titus Brandsma, Site designed, developed and hosted by Matthew Price: Transformation by Design. We all have opportunities from time to time to create openings for people that allow the Lords work to be done. He can give them not just physical food that cannot last, but food that endures to eternal life. Below you can choose which kind of cookies you allow on this website. We are not in the dark about God, wondering who God is and what God is like. In that context, he speaks of the wind as an image of the Spirit. One of the tasks of life is to try and listen to the particular call that the Lord is addressing to me here and now. And there are other sheep I have According to the verse before our gospel reading (Jn 6:15), Jesus had withdrawn to the mountain by himself, in response to the crowd wanting to make his king. They had abandoned him when the hour of his passion and death came, but he had not abandoned them. The opening up of the Scriptures for the two disciples led them to the recognition of the Lord in the breaking of bread, the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Catherine was a great mystic or contemplative, but her mysticism did not withdraw her from the world. Shortly after his return, Pope Gregory died. The authors were the Nuns of the monasteries that were members of the Saint Teresa Association in 1990. He saw in his relationship with the risen Lord the completion of his Jewish faith. The Lord spoke of himself as the good shepherd. The Lord gives us the Spirit to draw us to himself and, through himself, to God the Father. We all have something to receive from someone else. It is sent out monthly at the end of the previous month (for instance the Lectio Divina of Febrary will be emailed out by the end of January). It was St Irenaeus, one of the early theologians of the church, who said that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. We depend on him especially when the wind is against us and the waters of life get stormy. For God sent his Son into the world At every Mass we first have the Liturgy of the Word, and then the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Jesus is the good shepherd in that sense. In this mornings gospel we are given words spoken by John the Baptist. A little can go a long way when it is placed in the hands of the Lord. The church has endured for over 2,000 years because it is from God. as soon as he sees a wolf coming, It is nearly evening they said and the day is almost over. So he went in to stay with them. As such times, we need people like Barnabas who recognize that the Lord is behind this new direction and who encourage us to trust that the Lord is present in what is happening. The stories we tell each other can often be like that. Their being locked behind closed doors out of fear was the mood of Good Friday. The Lord can work powerfully through the members of the church, even when they seem few in number and increasingly frail, especially in the Western world. Philips teaching led to the Ethiopian requesting baptism. However, he was just as concerned, if not more concerned, with peoples spiritual hungers. The Greek word translated obedience suggests attentive listening. He is not a stranger to his flock nor are they strangers to him. Even though most of us like the light, the gospel reading declares that people have shown they prefer darkness to light. Sheep are gathered in a sheepfold for protection. Jesus immediately challenges him to take a much bigger step towards him; he calls on Nicodemus to allow himself to be born from above, to be born of water and the Spirit. It follows that the Lord will never call us to something that would result in a diminishment of life for ourselves or for others. Yet, the Lords part in our relationship with him is always so much greater than ours. Rather, the more Jesus increases in us, the more we become our true selves, our Christ selves, the person God is calling us to be. Paul saw the Son because the risen Lord appeared to him just outside Damascus. I firmly believe that churches should be open as often and for as long as possible. We live our lives in response to calls of all sorts. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. One of the loving services we can render each other is listening to each others heartfelt and painful stories, especially in these times of Coronavirus. We need to keep trying to go where the Spirit is leading us. The reflections and insights of the sisters flow out from their own life of prayer and experiences.
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