Good Shepherd Sunday Summary:

What kind of flock is the Good Shepherd trying to cultivate or from the Good Shepherd’s perspective, what does a good flock look like?  

The Lord desires actually for his flock to be a dynamic reality. The Lord desires every member of his flock to be really fully engaged and active in the walk of discipleship in this life.

Secondly, Jesus didn't intend his Church to be merely a collection of individually holy people. If each one of us here is a perfect saint. but we have no sense of connection to the body of Christ, the Church, if it is just about our individual, private relationship with God and even if we're doing really well in that relationship, if the horizontal aspect is missing, then we are not perfect saints.

The Lord, of course, is ultimately the one who shapes his flock. We have to rely on God’s grace to become the kind of flock he desires us to be. But he also encourages us; he invites us; he asks us; maybe even demands of us that we do our part. That each member of the flock lives his or her vocation to the full; plays his or her role in the flock to the best of their ability. 

It should be normal for us to pray not only as a community during the liturgy, not only privately at home or privately before the Blessed Sacrament or where ever we are but also praying with one another one-on-one or in small groups. It should be normal for us to be offering to pray for other people and really if you think about it, prayer is the very privileged context within which we invite the Good Shepherd to shepherd us. When we pray, we're opening our hearts and minds to God. We are asking the Lord for guidance. We're asking for help. We are asking for grace. We are making ourselves available to receive the help that God wants to give us, and so prayer is really fundamental for any kind of change of culture within our parish community. Prayer is this special venue, if you will, in which we allow ourselves to the shaped into the kind of flock the Good Shepherd wants us to be.

Let us ask the Lord to help us, to shepherd us on this Good Shepherd Sunday and always that we might be faithful; that we might be the dynamic kind of engaged flock and disciples that he wants us to be.  

Summary:

How does the Church grow? We don't have control over other people. I mean there might be a certain amount of arm twisting that goes on to get your kids and grandkids to come to church or your neighbor or whoever. We don't have control over the decisions that other people make. We can't force anyone to have faith. That is not the way this works. We can have an influence on other people but chiefly our work is to change ourselves. There is a realm where we have control. We can undergo ongoing conversion and it’s not just an individual matter that if we each individually become saints, then our Church family grows. But it also has something to do with our life as a community. If our life as a community is more and more dynamic, if it is more and more joyful, it becomes more attractive to people. People hear about, “Oh, that parish down the street, the people come out of church looking so happy and they live their lives with joy and hope.” It  starts to draw people and, of course, we can make intellectual arguments for the faith that may be the way, that maybe the path for some people's conversion, but most people are going to be touched at the heart level and also some people with the mind but most people follow what looks attractive to them, what looks like what will make them happy, what will give them peace.

We are looking first at unceasing prayer. How can we be transformed as a community so that prayer is totally normal for us and not just the prayers that we pray when we come in individually or the liturgical prayer or the rosary that is prayed before Mass, but how does prayer work its way into all aspects of our lives individually and as a community. Last summer you may recall, again, if you have a super good memory, that I suggested we start engaging in these prayer conversations that simply consist of: “Would you pray for me for this intention? Here is something that's burning in my heart. Would you pray for me?” And then the other part of the conversation is: “Is there anything that you would like me to pray for?” 

I am going to challenge you this week to have that conversation at least once. Just, “Is there something I can pray for for you and would you pray for me for this intention.” Fair warning! I may ask for a show of hands next Sunday. There would be no shaming; there will be no shaming. But we actually want to do this, right? It is just one little step toward the transformation of our whole parish culture, and we have wonderful parishes in the area, but there is room for growth. We want to fill these gaps even the front pew. We want to be a beacon of light. We want to be able to joyfully share our faith. 

The wounds of Jesus are not merely signs of his triumph over sin and death; they are not nearly an identifying factor so that these disciples can believe that this is truly Jesus. His wounds teach us something about our own wounds and what it means to experience healing. His wounds didn't go away. They were healed but there was still the mark. There was still the mark in his palms, in his hands, and in his feet and in his side. So, if we're asking for our wounds just to go away and Jesus gently responds to that and says, “That is not how healing works.”

Model of a wound: tThe wound, which is in our heart, the layer of belief that is around that, whether it is identity lies, false beliefs about who we are or judgments about who other people are or groups of people; and then the vows that are formed based on those beliefs, those false beliefs.   

Summary: 

We see in the first reading today Saint Peter really announcing to the people he is speaking to that Jesus is the one that they were expecting. Jesus is the one that they hoped for. He is the promised Messiah. He, by his death and resurrection, has brought to affect this reconciliation of humanity with God. Jesus himself has bridged that gap. He has restored our friendship with God most High. 

But the question is how exactly do we today in 2024 obtain that benefit that he brought about so many years ago? What do we do?

Jesus established a Church that would remain upon the earth long after he ascended into heaven and the Church could be the instrument through which the Father would pour out his grace into humanity. 

But he gives us the Sacraments as a tremendous gift to the Church so that as we participate in this Sacraments we are made anew.

He is waiting for your “Yes,” not just once at the Baptismal font, not just a second time at your first Confession, or a third time at your First Communion. He is looking for a “Yes” everyday of our life and the Sacraments nourish us so well because in the Sacraments we are not just going through some symbolic ritual we are actually receiving the grace that these rituals signify. That is profound. That is a beautiful, beautiful truth of our Faith that God is offering, he is not forcing Salvation on anyone, he is offering and waiting for a ‘Yes” not just on Easter Sunday, but also on Easter Monday and on Easter Tuesday – everyday of the year he is looking for a ‘Yes.” 

There might be a number of different emotions stirred up in our hearts when we are presented with the passion of our Lord Jesus. Perhaps grief or sorrow, sadness, maybe even anger or indignation. Perhaps gratitude? There can be all kinds of emotional experiences. Most importantly, the Lord wishes to elicit a response of love. So, we might just take a moment and pay attention to what is going on in our hearts and ask the Lord to help us to respond with love. To allow love to be stirred up in our hearts. A love like the love which he has shown us. 

Summary

We hear Jesus say toward the end of today's Gospel, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” The careless reader might look at that and say, “Ah, he is talking about being lifted up from the earth. The Ascension. And then he'll gather all of his beloved disciples into the joy of the Kingdom of Heaven.” But look at the next line. It says, “He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.” He's talking about being lifted up on the Cross. 

He was speaking, however, of that event - of his self-donation, his suffering, his passion, his bearing the weight of the world's sin. He was speaking about the fact that he would invite all of humanity in their sufferings to come to him in that moment of their greatest suffering and to be with him and not just to accompany him at the Cross as if we would come to the Cross and stand there looking but his invitation is drawing everyone to himself. His uniting those who suffer with him on the Cross so that their sufferings and their trials actually participate in his redemption of the world. 

This moment is the fulfillment of what you said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”  We don't want to reject that invitation, brothers and sisters, we want to draw near the Lord especially in those most difficult moments and if we do that, we will experience what it means for the seed of the grain of wheat to fall to the ground and die but then to life again. 

Summary: 

 Jesus was not at face value cleansing the temple of something that was just literally wrong being done, he was cleansing the temple of the ‘attitude’ that was the misplaced.

I've said for the last couple of Sundays that Lent is like our whole spiritual life in miniature. First, I was talking about the it is an ongoing battle; last time I was talking about the Transfiguration; today we can apply that same principle. During Lent, how do we relate to all the precepts that the Church gives us? Well, the Church tells us about fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and abstaining from meat on all the Fridays of Lent and Ash Wednesday and then we should do some extra prayer, alms giving and fasting. We can look at all of that in a very legalistic way. As I said on Ash Wednesday, don't get to the end Lent and say, ‘I did it!’. We can look at it in a legalistic way and say I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do, or we can see all of these practices as truly transformative and not as I said last Sunday ‘transactional’. 

But see then when we get to the end of Lent, we can say. “Oh, yes, I have embraced all of these things and I've grown my love of God. I've grown in my relationship with him.” But remember that that is just a miniature of what our whole spiritual life ought to be. So, if we approach these teachings, these Laws and practices of Lent from a right perspective then that should help us to approach the Law and the precepts and teachings of the Church from the right perspective in the rest of our life - outside of this season of Lent so that all of the things that we do in obedience to God’s Law are seen as opportunities for true growth in holiness.

Summary:

     Considering that we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration every year on August 6th it is kind of interesting that the Church would prescribe that this account should be proclaimed on another Sunday of the year. It is always on the 2nd Sunday of Lent every year, so it got me to thinking of all the times to present the Transfiguration, why Lent? What does the Transfiguration have to do with the season of Lent? I am going to give three shots at explaining it.

       First, with Scripture in context, the account of the Transfiguration in Saint Mark's Gospel appears immediately after Jesus’ first prediction of the passion which he concludes by teaching his disciples that they, too, are going to have to take up their cross and deny themselves if they are really wanting to be his followers.

 Second, the Transfiguration gave Peter, James and John a vision that they would be able to hold onto later especially in the times when they would suffer persecution, and rejection, and opposition because of their faith in Jesus.  

       Third, it is understood that the Transfiguration happens in the context of prayer and that I think shows us why the Transfiguration is fittingly recalled. Prayer, one of the absolute fundamentals, is not about fulfilling an obligation so that we can say, “Ah, I said my prayers today” and feel satisfied with ourselves. No, when Jesus invites us to go up the mountain with him in prayer, he is actually calling us into a very relational and personal encounter in which he would like to help us to know him better and love him better.   I have heard it said in different circles recently that prayer is not supposed to be transactional but transformational. Prayer is not the transaction that you check off of your list and say, “Okay, I did that today.” But actually, it is an invitation into this dynamic encounter with the person of Jesus Christ and through him in the Spirit with the Father. 

     So, why the Transfiguration?  Perhaps these three things: a reminder that the journey of Lent is not penance for its own sake but rather the transfigured Jesus shows us the image of what we shall be. We are on a journey into glory. Secondly, that just as the glory of the Transfiguration was a memory that the Apostles could hold onto for difficult times to come, so the joy of the Resurrection celebrated at Easter is something we need to carry with us throughout life especially in very difficult times. And third, that all of this unfolds in prayer. We are invited to discover the greater depths in prayer. We are invited to make our prayers more substantial and relational. You might find other reasons to look at the Transfiguration during Lent, I encourage you to ponder those, too. What does the Transfiguration mean to you? How does it relate? What is its relevance to you right now? Does the encounter with the risen Lord have a transformational effect? 

Summary:

Lent, the season of Lent, is the spiritual life in miniature. It is forty days set aside during the year when we are really invited to go into the desert with Christ. You are invited to engage in these battles that go on within us. Lent is not the only time of year when prayer is called for, or fasting, self-denial. Lent is not the only time when self-restraint is appropriate or almsgiving. Sure, we focus on these things during Lent, but Lent is just our spiritual life in miniature. Perhaps the Church gives us the season of Lent as a great reminder to keep on fighting that fight. I am not saying that you must be in full on battle mode, or the devil is hiding under every rock. No, but we should always be engaged in some way in fighting the fight allowing the Spirit of God to be operative in the day-to-day struggles. 

 So, engage this Lent. Don’t do some token little observance, some token penance to say, “Ah, I did something for Lent.” As I mentioned on Ash Wednesday, choose something that is truly transformation so that when you arrive at Easter you can say, “I have changed, I have grown, my life is new again.” We are not just preparing for the Celebration of the Resurrection; we are also preparing for the renewal of our Baptismal promises. Right? In Baptism we entered into a covenant greater than Noah. We entered into the covenant that is sealed in the blood of Christ; we were made a new creation so that when we stand there with our candles at Easter and renew the promises of our Baptism, we are inviting the Spirit of God, which we received in our Baptism, to be more and more victorious in our life. So Lent is practice for that. We are engaging in that battle, and we are trying to deny that fallenness in us, that inclination to sin, that when Easter comes it will be glorious and we will truly be made new. I assure you that the reward is well worth the effort. 

Summary:

One way that we are invited to connect with the lepers  or relate to them is that worship means something to us and to be deprived of the opportunity to worship because of the disease is a suffering. 

But what else? I think we can look at the leper and say that leprosy is symbolic of something else. Leprosy is symbolic of something else. Leprosy symbolizes that which gets in the way of our rightful worship of God. Just like for the leper, as I said, the worst part for him was that he could not go to the temple. He had to be apart from the worshipping community so then in that case the leprosy is not just a terrible disease that he has to suffer. It is the thing that gets in the way of worship. And so, that is the same case for us. Even though we don't have a physical leprosy we can consider that there are things that get in the way of are our worshipping God as we ought to worship God.

 Maybe it's sometimes it's just a feeling of feebleness or weakness in our faith. Sometimes it is distractions. Is there anyone here who's not busy? Everyone is busy – busy, busy, busy. So many things we are distracted with, day in and day out. Things that we've got to do, yes, but sometimes just distractions that divert our hearts’ attention.  Likewise, attachments to other things. Perhaps it is the pursuit of material wealth or the pursuit of a good reputation and the esteem of other people. Maybe it's the pursuit of our creature comforts. It’s not that having material possessions or having the esteem of other people or having creature comforts is wrong. 

The question is how strongly are we attached to those things and can they, in fact, get in the way of the worship that we offer to God each day? Sometimes it's fear. Fear that we would not have enough time for other things. Fear of what others might think of us as we get too “religious.” Maybe it is just our daily struggle with sin. It is good for us to take a moment and identify those things in our lives that just get in the way of our worshiping God with our whole heart and doing everything for the glory of God as Saint Paul says. 

Summary:

The insight that we really gain here is that Satan does all of this to Job for no other reason than to try to drive a wedge between Job and God. Satan does not care a lick about Job; he is not trying to convert Job to satan worship or something like that. He is not interested in Job. All he wants is for Job to turn away from God therefore to deprive God of his beloved Job. That's all that Satan is interested in. That is a good lesson for all of us to learn as well because sometimes we are brought low. 

 It is not hard for any of us to think of that thing in life that we wish would just go away. A struggle with sin or a struggle economically; or a broken family relationship that you wish was healed; trouble in the workplace, in the neighborhood; fear about what might happen in the world and so forth and so on. It does not take us long to put our finger on something, some area of suffering or trial or difficulty in our life. The lesson of Job is that we don't need to ‘spend’ ourselves trying to figure out how to make that thing go away. How to make suffering go away. We are not going to make it go away by ‘understanding’ it, necessarily. Job is left not understanding why all of this happened. All he can say is, “God is greater than I.” 

God does not delight in our suffering. The scripture is clear about that. God does not delight in our suffering. But he sees in our suffering, nonetheless, a way to draw us closer to him. That if we would turn to him in that moment, you experience support for the moments of suffering every day. We would recognize that he is sustaining us and that we are not alone; that he's actually helping us to grow. 

Maybe one of the things we should do is zoom out and say what are the larger forces at work here and to make the decision: “I’m not going to allow this to drive me away from God. Rather, I am going to turn back to God with all my heart -  I'm going to cling to God in the moment of this suffering especially when it gets the worst, I will not let go of God, I will trust in him that he's going to use this trial that I'm going to bring me closer and closer to him. If we can do that, we will discover that God through our sufferings is inviting us into an encounter with Jesus his son who wants to put the broken pieces together and to restore wholeness.

Summary:

So, the fact is brothers and sisters, we may live in a representative democracy but first and foremost we live in a Kingdom. We live in a kingdom. We have a king who is the authority to whom we turn. Christ the King whose teaching’s we embrace. But more than that our life of faith is not just to say, “Okay, I can accept all of that. I believe that.”  To be a Christian means we live as faithful citizens of that Kingdom. We allow Jesus to govern us. You see Jesus is not the kind of governor, he's not the kind of authoritative figure that we might be used to in the secular world. He is absolutely worthy of trust. He doesn't abuse the power that is his but always uses his power. His power is his love. His power is his mercy. His governing of us is directed not toward his own good or his own pleasure, exactly, but to our good by which he is glorified, yes, but ultimately his concern is not himself but you. 

 So, we are completely safe in placing ourselves in the Kingdom allowing this king of ours to govern us and rule us. We find in the end that in this miraculous and extraordinary way our freedom actually grows by being faithful subjects of this king. We don't lose our freedom. We don’t end up the losers we end up being, we end up being victorious with our Lord who wants us to flourish as human beings. He wants us to have the fullness of joy, the fullness of life and peace and satisfaction. 

 So, the question I guess for us is simply, what are the different voices that we listen to in our life? Whom do we consider to be authoritative for us? The Church is not teaching us today that we need not pay attention to anyone else but only Jesus. The Church would teach us that we pay attention to Jesus first and all the rest after that. Do we find ourselves as faithful subjects of the king always wanting to know what he has to say to us? Always walking, always living with open ears and an open heart to receive what he has to give us. That's the kind of life that he desires and again it's not a surrendering of our freedom, but the Lord is engaging our freedom. He doesn't want to squash our hearts, squash our will; he wants to make our heart and our will like his - which is a beautiful thing.

Summary:

About four years ago in the September of 2019 our Holy Father Pope Francis decreed that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time each year should be observed as Word of God Sunday. And so, it's a special opportunity for us to reflect on the importance of the Word of God in our life. Certainly, the written Word, the scriptures, the importance of praying with the scriptures and being nourished by the scriptures each day in our walk of faith. But I think there's an invitation also to go a little bit deeper than that and say it's not just about text on the page. We are invited to reflect on what is the Word of God. We think about ‘word’ as something in print or the sound waves that hit our eardrums and we perceive that sound. But the word is actually that which is expressed by the printed text or what is expressed by the sound that is coming to us. The word is not just the sound or the print on the page, it is the content of that and so if you think about it, the ‘word’ is actually prior to the writing or the sound. There is something that exists before it's spoken.

Summary: 

Just these three things: hearing the call, growing in holiness, and sharing the good news. They summarize really our Christian life. 

These three things, hearing the call, growing in holiness, and sharing the good news - they happen together. They are simultaneous although there is a logical progression from one to the next. It is not that one has to be complete before the next begins. So, we're always in the process of for the call listening for what God wants to say to us. Working on growing and holiness deepening our friendship with Christ, and we have to share the good news.

I propose this three-part overview as something maybe to lend simplicity to your consideration of how you're living the Christian life. Perhaps it can be the basis of an examination at the end of each day. “Did  I listen? What was the Lord saying to me today? Did I grow in my Christian life today? What were the opportunities that I had to choose to follow Jesus today? Did I choose to do that, or did I say ‘no’? And thirdly, what opportunities did I have to share my faith? Was I indeed a bridge for someone else or was an obstacle? Did people see how I lived my life today and kind of think about God or something else? 

We simply ask for the grace today to be faithful to these three things: hearing the call, growing in holiness, and sharing the good news.

Summary: 

Our celebration of the Epiphany today is not merely the commemoration of the visit of the Magi to the newborn Christ in Bethlehem and sort of the conclusion of the Christmas narrative with the conclusion of the Christmas season. It also really points us to a dynamic in the spiritual life that is key for us to understand. It has to do with to God’s desire to communicate himself and his wondrous deeds to all the world.      

The manifestation, the Epiphany, is about the coming together of God's revelation and our perception so that they meet in this place of communication. It is not just that God has revealed himself and he goes unnoticed; nor is it that we are here waiting to perceive and there is nothing to perceive. Our seeking comes together with his revealing into this moment of discovery. 

Discovery is what our Christian life is about! Discovering God! Not once. Not twice. Not once a week. But continuously discovering God!

The only question is are our ears open? Are our eyes open to perceive what God is doing? Or God's revelation in each moment in our life sometimes go unnoticed and unheeded.