Happy feast day of St. Mark, the briefest of the Gospel writers. St. Mark is commonly identified as:
Today the Jews ask Jesus: “How long are you going to keep us in suspense?” God has a way of keeping us in suspense. Maybe that’s a good thing. Nah–surely it is. Because it helps us live more fully in the present moment. You never know what God might do next.
Jesus said: “….the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” To what extent is God a stranger in my life? A good question to contemplate today.
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oday, the 4th Sunday of Easter, we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday. Any kind of shepherd you can think of–you have a shepherd and the sheep behind him, following from behind. That’s not good enough for Jesus.
What makes Jesus the Good Shepherd is that he doesn’t just want us to follow him at a distance, from afar, to follow behind him. He wants us to be in him and he wants to be in us.
Today we celebrate first communion at the 8:45am Mass and 3pm Mass. Jesus wants to be in us, and he wants us to remain in him. He doesn’t leave us on our own to follow him behind. He comes within. God in us, us in God.
This is what St Peter says today in our first reading. Listen to what Peter says: “There is no salvation through anyone else,nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”
This is a lot like John 3, where Jesus says that only he can go to heaven. No one else. It’s impossible for any of us to get to heaven by ourselves. We can only do that if we’re in Jesus…who is the resurrection.
Peter is saying that we have no hope without being in the Lord….no hope for eternal salvation, and no hope from salvation from our problems on earth.
A lot of people look to all kinds of saviors and shepherds to rescue them and guide them to greener pastures–money, Dr. Phil, Opera, bigger houses, more stuff, nicer cars, drugs. If I only get this thing or that thing, we delude ourselves, then I’ll be okay.
None of that saves us. Only Jesus can do that. Salvation–eternal and earthly–is only in Jesus.
Another thought–today is Good Shepherd Sunday. We pray that God will give us many more holy, good priests.
You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. -Anne Lamott
What a beautiful quote in my email inbox this morning: “When we accept our faults, we gain compassion for the faults of others.” John Kuypers
St Stephen, the first martyr, has some strong words in our first reading: “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the Holy Spirit; you are just like your ancestors.” Yikes. Pray God no one would have just cause to utter those words to us.
