4th Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023
Prayer
God of all people,
you have given us a reliable and caring guide,
in your Son and our good shepherd, Jesus.
He leads us to you and guides us through life.
May the message of the good news in the words of the gospel
help us to hear his voice speaking to us.
May we find encouragement and joy in all who care for us,
for Jesus speaks to us through them.
May Jesus lead us to a valley of peace.
May we learn from him to have time and space for one another.
May all we do help us to be like a good shepherd.
Reflection
There are many stories told about Jesus,
and how people relate to him.
One day Michelangelo was painting the Sistine chapel.
From high up on the scaffolding
he spied an old woman down below, praying.
To relieve his boredom, he put on a deep voice and said:
'This is Jesus speaking.'
The old woman shouted back:
'Be quiet. I'm speaking to your mother.'
There are also many stories told about
people whose faith had disappeared for a while,
and how they were helped to recover it
through someone whose faith was strong.
Ronald Rolheiser tells a true story
that is another part of the jigsaw in this story of our faith.
There was a woman who had been raised in a religious home,
and had been a regular churchgoer until her university years.
Then her interest in religion progressively dropped
so that by the time of her graduation she no longer attended church.
Her indifference to religion continued for several years.
Her story focused on how that changed.
One day, several years after having given up going to church,
she went to spend some time with a married sister
who lived near a major ski resort.
She arrived on a Saturday evening, and the next morning
her sister invited her to go to church with her,
but she went skiing instead.
That Sunday, on one of her runs downhill,
she hit a tree, and broke a leg.
Sporting a huge cast,
she was released from hospital several days later.
The next Sunday morning,
her sister again asked her to come to church.
This time, with skiing not an option,
she accepted the invitation.
The readings for the day were about the Good Shepherd,
and there was a visiting priest from Israel.
The priest did not know she was there,
and could not see her, complete with plaster cast,
sitting in the back pews,
but this is how he began his homily.
"There's a practice among shepherds in Israel,
that existed in the time of Jesus, and is still in use today.
It needs to be understood in order to appreciate
what Jesus says about the Good Shepherd.
Sometimes very early on in the life of a lamb,
if a shepherd senses that
this particular lamb is going to be a congenital stray,
and be forever drifting away from the herd,
he deliberately breaks its leg,
so that he has to carry it until its leg is healed.
By that time, the lamb becomes so attached to the shepherd
that it never strays again."
The woman explained,
"I may be dense, but, given my broken leg,
and all that chance coincidence,
hearing those words woke up something inside me."
Ronald Rolheiser made this comment:
James Mackey suggests that
divine providence is a conspiracy of accidents
through which God speaks.
What this woman experienced that Sunday was precisely
the language of God in her life through a conspiracy of accidents.
We know that for the disciples, their relationship with Jesus
was the foundation of their lives.
They believed in what he said,
especially in his message of love.
They lived their lives as his friends.
He was their helper and guide in all that they did.
In our world today, key questions to ask ourselves, are
who do we think Jesus is,
and what part does he play in our lives?
For some of us,
answering that may be done quickly and easily,
for others it might take most of our lives.
For most of us, I suspect, it changes as we go through life.
There will be troughs and peaks,
not unlike those of the first friends of Jesus,
as our faith undulates and changes as the years go by.
It might even lose all significance for us,
until perhaps, some seemingly chance event,
gives us a new insight.
Also, I think it is quite possible, if not inevitable,
that for many different reasons,
we may find that going to church does not really help us,
and so we stop going.
This may happen whatever age we are.
But I think we should never forget that
what can help us cope with life,
and help us "make it through the night",
is the message and person of Jesus, our friend and brother.
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