Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we listen to Jesus’s instruction and promise about how to live at one with God.
Alleluia, alleluia. If you love me and will keep my word, and my Father will love you and we will come to you.
What wonderful assurance! We don’t have to labor to find God, or worry about searching for God.
God will come to us – will blossom in our hearts like a sacred flower, – if we love Jesus and keep his Word.
In the opening sentence of her book “Too Deep for Words”, Thelma Hall, r.c. says this:
There is an inner dynamic in the evolution of all true love that leads to a communication too deep for words. There the lover becomes inarticulate, falls silent, and the beloved receives the silence as eloquence.
Our verse today carries that same, exquisite mystery, the silent and complete unity that comes from mutual love.
Our Gospel elaborates on the invitation.
But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
Matthew 6:6
Let us savor these promises in our prayer today.
Poetry: in the silence – Rumi
In the silence between your heartbeat bides a summons from Love.
Do you hear it? Name it if you must, or leave it forever nameless, but why pretend it is not there?
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Alleluia Verse holds the complete essence of Jesus’s life. If there ever was glorious “nutshell”, this is it:
Alleluia, alleluia. I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. (Jn. 13:34)
Our motherhouse chapel is breathtakingly beautiful. Thinking of it as a “chapel”, people who first walk through its doors are astounded at itscathedral-like dimensions. I know I certainly was as a wonder-struck eighteen-year-old on my first visit.
Our Chapel in the 1950s
For the next almost three years, I often sat in my little pew pondering the chapel’s central mural — and especially the words framing it.
The words are an invitation and a command. The painting beneath is the whole instruction on Love… “…love as I have loved you.”
After those initial years, I chose those precious words for the motto to be engraved on my ring. I have prayed ever since that it might someday be engraved on my heart. In a culture that can so misunderstand the nature of love, I always appreciate the chance to visit that altar or to look at that ring.
May we have the courage to be “Alleluia Lovers” in this love-hungry world!
Poetry: from one of the greatest poets, Paul in his letter to the Corinthians
If I speak in the tongues in human or angelic tongue but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I grew up, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
Le Mans Cathedral is a Catholic Church situated in Le Mans, France. Its construction dates from the 6th through the 14th century, and it features many French Gothic elements. The cathedral, which combines a Romanesque nave and a High Gothic choir is notable for its rich collection of stained glass and the spectacular bifurcating flying buttresses at its eastern end. The Ascension window, towards the western end of the south aisle of the nave, has been dated to 1120, making it one of the oldest extant stained glass windows in France.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we stand with the disciples, straining for a last look at Jesus as He ascends into heaven. Their hearts are stretched with both joy and pain at all that is happening to them. They long for the Holy Spirit to come to them even as they mourn the physical departure of Christ.
As mentioned in Thursday’s reflection, many years ago I was blessed to stand in the Chapel of the Ascension, a small shrine on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Tradition holds this to be the site of Jesus’ Ascension. Inside is a well-worn rock with a slight indentation. Many venerate this as the last footprint of Christ on earth.
Whether or not this devotion is valid is unimportant. In the hush of my early morning visit to this shrine, the Holy Spirit embraced me, overwhelming me with an awareness of how the disciples felt that day in the absence of Jesus.
Many reading this may feel a similar absence, a need, or a longing for God. Perhaps by touching that sense of absence, that indentation in the rock of our hearts, we may invite and welcome the Holy Spirit to fill our need.
Poetry: Ascension Day by Christina Georgina Rossetti
“When Christ went up to Heaven the Apostles stayed” Gazing at Heaven with souls and wills on fire, Their hearts on flight along the track He made, Winged by desire.
Their silence spake: “Lord, why not follow Thee? Home is not home without Thy Blessed Face, Life is not life. Remember, Lord, and see, Look back, embrace.
“Earth is one desert waste of banishment, Life is one long-drawn anguish of decay. Where Thou wert wont to go we also went: Why not today?”
Nevertheless a cloud cut off their gaze: They tarry to build up Jerusalem, Watching for Him, while thro' the appointed days He watches them.
They do His Will, and doing it rejoice, Patiently glad to spend and to be spent: Still He speaks to them, still they hear His Voice And are content.
For as a cloud received Him from their sight, So with a cloud will He return ere long: Therefore they stand on guard by day, by night, Strenuous and strong.
They do, they dare, they beyond seven times seven Forgive, they cry God's mighty word aloud: Yet sometimes haply lift tired eyes to Heaven— “Is that His cloud?”
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jesus once again instructs his disciples to pray “in my Name”.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.
John 16:23-24
What does Jesus really mean by,:
“Ask in My Name”.
There is an idiomatic phrase popular in culture today, “just asking for a friend”. It is used when the questioner feels embarrassed or unsure about the question, or unworthy of posing it oneself, for example: Can you really go to jail for not paying your taxes, just asking for a friend?
What might happen if we prayed like this, taking Jesus seriously in his offer to intervene for us, to stand in the place of our fear, hesitation, confusion, or unworthiness:
Dear God, please forgive me for this sinful choice I made. I ask you in the Name of Jesus, my friend.
Dear God, will you please comfort my dear one who is suffering. I ask you in the Name of Jesus, my friend.
Dear God, will you please intervene to stop the suffering in the world. I ask you in the Name of Jesus, my friend.
How would the addition of this little phrase change my prayer?
The words are not a magic formula for working miracles. They won’t allow us to cure the sick or raise the dead in visible ways. But they will allow us to heal ourselves and others in ways beyond human calculation.
I think the words are a key to unlock our understanding that when we pray in the Name of Jesus, the miracle happens in us, not in our surroundings.
We realize that Jesus, in whose Name we pray, changed the world not by magic but by sacrificial love. Becoming his friend and praying in his name demands that we too live our experiences with that kind of unquestioning love.
Such love unveils the glorious mystery of the Cross to us. Even under its shadow, we see through to the triumph of the Resurrection as Jesus did.
Certainly, suffering was not removed from Jesus’ life nor from that of his followers.
But what was given was abiding faith, hope, love, and the trustworthy promise of eternal life.
Let’s ask for these precious gifts, in the Name of Jesus.
Poetry: Name Of God – by Sant Tukaram Maharaj who was a 17th-century Marathi poet, religious leader, and Hindu sant (saint). He is best known for his devotional poetry called “Abhanga” and community-oriented worship with spiritual songs known as kirtans.
Mahatma Gandhi, in early 20th century, while under arrest in Yerwada Central Jail by the British colonial government for his non-violent movement, read and translated Tukaram’s poetry.
He who utters the Name of God while walking gets the merit of a sacrifice at every step His body becomes a place of pilgrimage. He who repeats God’s Name while working always finds perfect peace. He who utters the Name of God while eating gets the merit of a fast even though he has taken his meals. Even if one were to give in charity the whole world encircled by the seas it would not equal the merit of repeating the Name, By the power of the Name one will know what cannot be known, One will see what cannot be seen, One will speak what cannot be spoken, One will meet what cannot be met. Tuka says. Incalculable is the gain that comes From repeating the Name of God.
Music: In Jesus’ Name I Pray – Charley Pride (Lyrics below)
In Jesus’ Name I Pray
Father give me strength, to do what I must do. Father give me courage, to say what I must say. Let that spirit move me. I’m nothing on my own. Father stand by me, I can not stand alone, in Jesus name I pray.
Father open up my eyes to your wonders all around. Father let me see the good and beauty of this day. Fill my heart with love, for my fellow man. And if I’m tempted Father.
Father take my hand, in Jesus name I pray. Father help me through the troubled days that lie ahead. Let your life stand before me, that I may find a way. So let me stumble Father, or fall beneath my load.
Father guide my footsteps. Hold me to the road, in Jesus name I pray. Let not hunger be my guide, nor fear be my master. Father let not envy, be a part of me in any way.
Father search my soul, take away my fear and doubt. Any moment that you find this, Father cast it out, in Jesus name I pray. Ah ah ah Amen.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jesus acknowledges the difficulty of living a Christian life in a hostile world, especially without his physical presence to lead the disciples.
He knows that his friends are anguished at the thought of being separated from him. He compares their heartbreak to the pain of a mother in labor. The comparison is a perfect one because labor pains yield a gift that washes away the memory of suffering:
… when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.
John 16:21
Jesus tries to comfort his followers with this analogy, but he doesn’t deny the sorrow they are experiencing. Jesus knows that separation from what we dearly love can be a crushing experience. He knows that change often carries unwanted loss.
Our lives are braided into this cycle of labor, birth, love, loss, sorrow and joy. Jesus assures us that if we live this cycle in faith and hope, all things return to him in glory:
But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.
John 16:22
Poetry: Braid Your Hair With His – Mark Heathcote
God - has many names, but ‘Love' is the one that counts most aptly ‘Love' … ‘Love'
‘Just Love' only, one word one name like ‘God' isn't it?
God - has so many names each acts as a veil but ‘Love' is, ‘Love' only. So braid your hair with His embrace, lock fingers with His.
His is a tree twining roots His is the first branch you perch on His is trees-bough at your centre your hearts bead is a locket of amber the tree's name is Love.
At those times in our lives when we more feel the absence of God than the presence, remembering the endurance and bravery of others may help us. Although it’s not a religious song, this melody kept playing itself in my heart as I read today’s Gospel. It opened my spirit to a very comforting prayer time.
Music: We’ll Meet Again – Dame Vera Lynn
Dame Vera Margaret Lynn Welch, CH,DBD, OStJ, was a British singer of traditional popular music, songwriter and actress, whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II. She died in 2020 at the age of 103.
She is widely known as “the Forces Sweetheart” and gave outdoor concerts for the troops in Egypt, India and Burma during the war. The songs most associated with her are “We’ll Meet Again”, “The White Cliffs of Dover”, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”, and “There’ll Always Be an England”.
( I’m going a little off the grid this morning because we get a double chance to celebrate the Feast of the Ascension with its recurrence this Sunday. So I will leave my scriptural reflection until then.)
For me, the celebration of Ascension will always be on a Thursday – and it will always belong especially to my Dad. Here’s why.
I was already a young nun in the early 1970s when I went home to visit my parents one beautiful May afternoon. We had a day off from school to commemorate the Feast of the Ascension.
That’s me in pink before nunhood
My Dad was sitting on the front steps contemplating a patch of pachysandra on our small front lawn, or so I thought. After initial hugs and greetings, Dad said, “I’m worried about something.” Worry bells starting ringing deep in my brain. Where was Mom!?!?
“Joe Brodski just walked by a little while ago”, Dad continued. I paused a moment to consider this seeming non-sequitor.
Now Joe Brodski never walked anywhere. He was our next-door neighbor whose only apparent activity was tumbling out of his house and into his car each morning to go to work. So I began to think that maybe the worry was about Joe Brodski, and not my Mom who had not yet appeared on the front steps.
“So what’s the worry, Dad?”, I asked.
“Well, I asked Joe why he was out walking and he told me he was coming back from church. Ren, I completely forgot it was Thursday – the Ascension – and now all the Masses are over!”
Dad was really distressed by this oversight and it took a little theologizing on my part to allay his concern. Still, his reaction was so sincere that it has stayed with me for nearly fifty years. I never fully appreciated my Dad’s deep spirituality – nor the embedded culture of faith in our home – until I had grown up and moved away.
Many years after that Thursday, I read David Foster Wallace’s famous graduation talk at Kenyan University. He opens the talk like this:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
Wallace goes on to explain, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
We didn’t talk a lot about faith in my family, we just practiced it. And that practice was like fish swimming in water. We didn’t even realize that faith was the medium soaking our whole lives.
When Dad realized that he had forgotten to go to Mass that day, he felt like the proverbial “fish out of water”. The deep abiding faithfulness of his life had suffered a little fracture.
In Jerusalem, there is an ancient stone on a hillside. People venerate it as the site from which Jesus ascended into heaven. There is a deep indentation in the stone which is believed to be the last footprint of Christ on the earth as He lifted toward heaven. Whether it actually is the site isn’t important. What matters is that the life of Jesus has left an everlasting impression on our hearts and souls – a well of grace which continues to feed our spirits.
Stone as it is today.Outline of foot
My Dad’s unassuming holiness has left the same kind of impression on me. It is a touch point which I visit many times during the year, but especially on Ascension Thursday.
I tell the story today because this Feast might be a good time for all of us to consider the “water” we swim in – that culture of faith which nourishes our life – and the life of our family and loved ones.
You may want to bless the many sources that have inspired and fed your faith over your lifetime – perhaps in your family, and perhaps in others relationships. Doing so can be a recurring source of grace even if the “inspirer” has, like Jesus and like my Dad, made their way back to heaven.
And we all might want to consider who depends on us for the nurturing water of their faith!
Music: My Father’s Faith – Janice Kapp Perry
A father’s faith can bless his little children
And help them rise above life’s daily storms.
A father works each day to keep his dear ones
Ever protected, safe and warm.
My father’s praise can send my spirit soaring
And help me see the good I may achieve.
My father’s trust can fill my soul with courage
And help my doubting heart believe.
My father’s tears can somehow say, “I love you”
When words fall silent in his tender heart.
Through daily acts of service and of caring
His deepest feelings he imparts.
My father’s prayers can call down heaven’s blessings
And keep his children walking in the light.
His constant strength is steady as a lighthouse
That brings me safely through the night.
My father’s arms can offer consolation
When I, in sorrow, turn my heart toward home.
His loving voice resounds within my being
To help me know I’m not alone.
My father’s eyes can see past faults and failings
And still imagine all I may become.
And when I fall he’s there to walk beside me
To tell me I can overcome.
My father’s love will shine through generations –
A gentle force that guides me through the years.
My father’s faith will be my inspiration
And make my path to heaven clear.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jesus counsels the disciples as they grieve his impending departure. He assures them that they will be consoled and animated by the Holy Spirit whom he will send to them.
We all understand how the disciples feel. They love Jesus. They have been through hell and high water with him. They are comfortable with him. They have learned to be brave with him beside them.
All in all, they can’t imagine going on without him by their side.
Jesus, as he has so often had to tell them, says “You don’t quite get it!”. He explains that there will be no vacuum – that the Divine Presence will forever be with them in the form of the Holy Spirit. They are about to catch fire with the Love between Jesus and the Father! They should rejoice!
But, you know, it took these disciples three years of see-saw living with Jesus to fully embrace his Presence. It’s going to take more than a speech to kindle in them the full wonder of the Holy Spirit. It’s going to take a lifetime. It’s going to take thousands of little matches striking again and again in their hearts.
Decision by decision, action by action, they must now allow the Spirit to bring God’s Presence to life within them.
When Catherine McAuley, the first Sister of Mercy, died, her beloved sisters kneeling at her bedside felt a lot like the disciples in today’s Gospel. How would they carry on the works of mercy without Catherine beside them? But as those of us who never knew Catherine realize, she left a living Spirit burning within those sisters which has descended to all her followers for nearly 200 years.
Within Catherine, as within all faithful disciples of Jesus, the Holy Spirit inspires, generates, and sustains the Presence of God for the sanctification of all Creation. The Spirit pours out over the world in our works of mercy toward all who hunger for Life.
Like the early disciples, we may wish Jesus would come along and cook us a beach breakfast so we could just sit down and talk to him in the flesh. But Jesus tells us today, as he told his disciples:
But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send the Spirit to you.
Let us ask for the kind of faith that can believe, see, and sit down with that Holy Spirit in our hearts, catching Her fire, lighting the world with Mercy.
Poetry: God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Music: Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God – The Gettys (with Gabriel’s Oboe from the movie “The Mission”)
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jesus talks about “the world”.
That word can cause a little confusion, both as we find it in scripture and in the history of Christian thought.
Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology says five connotations for “world” may be found in scripture:
The physical world – the actual plant Earth
The human world – the land and seas we can navigate
The moral world – the universe of good and evil
The temporal world – the world that will someday end
The coming world – eternal existence
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about the moral world which, in the New Testament, refers to those people who are indifferent and hostile to Christ’s teaching.
If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world… the world hates you.
John 15:18
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
We understand this use of the word. We see the evil in the world. We are saddened, angered and confounded by it when we recognize it.
But do we always recognize it?
Blatant evils like mass shootings and racial violence are readily recognized. But how do we sincerely act to confrontt and eradicate these evils?
And still, the most insidious evils are those that masquerade as good.
These masquerading evils often pretend to protect our rights, our security, our safety. But they usually do so at the expense of someone else’s rights – the poor, the refugee, the aged, the homeless, people of color……and all who have become “disposable” or invisible in our society.
These deceptions hide behind brave and noble words like “America First”, “Second Amendment Rights”, “Protect Life” and a rash of other slogans which fail to examine the whole impact of single-issue politics.
It’s confusing because we love America, right? We believe in people’s constitutional rights, right? We respect life, right?
What if our slogans instead more clearly reflected Gospel values:
The Human Family First
Safety Rights for Everyone
Health Security for All Life – Womb to Tomb
How can we be spiritually discerning about what is good within such realities and what is rooted in sinful self-interest? Jesus tells us in these words:
Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
John 15:18-20
We must look to the one who is hated and persecuted to find the Face of Christ. We must love that Face and learn its heartaches. We must become a companion in their search for wholeness. We must set aside any costume of self-righteousness and put on the garment of Mercy.
from Scripture: I think this passage, as well as divine inspiration, is pure poetry!
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:14-16
Today, in in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings celebrate the New Creation given us in Jesus Christ.
Acts describes the continuing whirlwind journey of Paul and Barnabas. They buzz all over the Mediterranean basin, carrying the Good News to Jews and Gentiles. Their work and enthusiasm teach us what the word “apostolic” truly signifies- reaching out to all people with the message of Jesus. Paul and Barnabas return home jubilant,
… reporting what God had done with them and how God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.
Acts 14:27
In our second reading, John, the visionary and poet, has another kind of door opened for him. His vision is of a New Creation, joined with God in a covenant of love. God renews the promise once made to Abraham, this time embodied in the gift of Jesus Christ to all humanity:
Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God.
Revelation 21:3
In our Gospel, Jesus tells us once again how it is that we become part of this New Creation:
I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
John 13:34
All of these glorious images may help us see our life in God through new eyes. Perhaps there are a few half-closed doors in our lives that need to be oiled with the grace of renewal. Simply recognizing these in prayer, in God’s presence, is a step toward a New Creation of our hearts and spirits. We are so beloved of God! Let us open our hearts to that renewing love.
Poetry: The Limits of Your Long – Ranier Marie Rilke, Book of Hours
Listen.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.
Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Music: Heaven on Earth by Stars GO Dim ( Lyrics below.)
I’ve been asleep Head in the sand Watching the time just ticking Clock runs around Days in and out Can’t really call it living Somewhere I let light go dark But here’s where my new story starts Take my life and let it be Set on fire for all to see Break me down, build me up again Don’t leave me the way I’ve been Take my heart into Your hands Come and finish what You began ‘Til I seek Your kingdom first ‘Til I shine, shine Like Heaven on earth Like Heaven on earth I wanna wake, I wanna see All of the ways You’re moving Show me the need ‘Cause I wanna be a part of what You’re doing In my heart, let Kingdom come Not my will but Yours be done Take my life and let it be Set on fire for all to see Break me down, build me up again Don’t leave me the way I’ve been Take my heart into Your hands Come and finish what You began ‘Til I seek Your kingdom first ‘Til I shine, shine Like Heaven on earth Like Heaven on earth Help me move when I should move Help me rest when I should rest Help me give what I should give All of me, nothing less Help me speak with grace and truth Help me fight for those who can’t Help me love the way You love Never holding nothing back (yeah like Heaven on earth) Take my life and let it be Set on fire for all to see Break me down, build me up again Don’t leave me the way I’ve been Take my heart into Your hands Come and finish what You began ‘Til I seek Your kingdom first ‘Til I shine, shine Like Heaven on earth Like Heaven on earth Like Heaven on earth Like Heaven on earth
Peter’s Vision of the Sheet – By Domenico Fetti – Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank., Public Domain
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have the long story and explanation by Peter about who can be welcomed into the Community.
The earliest Christians were all Jews. Their beginning Christian rituals had deep roots in Jewish tradition. Their entire expectation of a Messiah was wrapped in the garment of the Old Testament. So it was hard for them to comprehend that Gentiles might also be saved by the Blood of Christ.
We might be tempted to consider these Jewish Christians very provincial, parochial, or even prejudiced in their closed attitudes. But maybe we should just look in the mirror!
It seems to be an enduring human inclination that, rather than – like Peter – seek a road to inclusion, we claim privilege for ourselves and exclude others on all kinds of bases:
She’s a woman, so she can’t…. whatever…
He’s gay, so he can’t …
She’s divorced, so she can’t…
He’s pro-life, or pro-choice, so he can’t…
She’s a Muslim, an atheist, and (irony of ironies) a Jew, so she can’t…
He’s too young – She’s too old – so they can’t …
Maybe in your own life, you have felt the pain of some of these suggested or blatant exclusions.
Jesus, in our Gospel, has a whole different approach to whom he loves. All creatures belong to him and will be brought to the Father in love.
I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.
Let us pray today to know and love our God ever more intensely. Let us ask to experience God’s infinite love and knowledge of us so that our unquenchable joy, humble gratitude, and limitless charity grow more evident.
Let us pray these gifts for all our sisters and brothers, no matter by what gate they come to the sheep fold.
Quote: I couldn’t find the original source, but it is a quote common in Eastern Spirituality:
We are all One. There is no Other.
Music: They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love
This is an interesting rendering of an old hymn. Kind of touched my heart.
Lavish Mercy 