Following a good shepherd

Have you ever been hurt by one of God's shepherds? Indirectly and directly, we've all suffered from priests who've abused their vocations, but a shepherd is anyone who's had the responsibility of guiding us and protecting us.

What is a GOOD shepherd?
He (or she) is caring.
He protects his flock.
He guides his sheep to safer pastures.
He goes after the lost and finds them.
He carries the weak ones over the rough spots.
He fights off the wolves and defeats them with the power of God.
Always alert to do his job well, he is closely connected to the Lord who empowers him.

Today's first reading makes it clear how upsetting it is to the Lord when shepherds fail to do what they're supposed to do. Just because they've been given authority over us does not automatically give them a special place in God's kingdom. The sheep are held higher in God's esteem than shepherds who are not like Christ the Good Shepherd. As Jesus says in today's Gospel, "Thus the last shall be first and the first shall be last."

When we're hurt by our shepherds, it's healing to remember how God feels about it: "I will take my sheep from their evil clutches," he says. "I myself will look after them and tend to their needs." Jesus is the perfectly Good Shepherd. He picks us up and gently embraces us, kisses our wounds, and carries us where we need to go, while we safely rest and recover.

To truly rest in the Divine Shepherd's arms, we need to forgive the human shepherds who pastured us poorly. We need to remember that they, too, have not been pastured well, and often their selfishness comes from an all-consuming need to pasture themselves — a need that only Jesus can successfully fill if they let him.

All human shepherds (even the best of them) are imperfect and will fail us from time to time. If we seek perfect love and guidance from them, insisting that they give us all that we need, we take our eyes off of Jesus and what he can do for us. Only with Jesus can we, like it says in Psalm 23:1-6, be wanting for nothing, fully satisfied. Only with Jesus can we find lush pastures, restful waters, and refreshment for our soul whenever we need them. Only with Jesus can we always find the right path through our dark valleys. Only with Jesus can our lives overflow with goodness.

Keep your eyes on Jesus!

How to enter the kingdom of God

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus says, "Only with difficulty can one who is rich enter the kingdom of heaven." Lest we think we're exempt from this warning because we're not wealthy or because, if wealthy, we use church attendance as a guarantee, God gives us today's first reading for an examination of conscience.

He says in those verses: "By your wisdom and your intelligence you have made riches for yourself." YOUR wisdom, YOUR intelligence. What are you rich in (and not necessarily with material wealth) by your own doing? What did you achieve an abundance of without prayerfully seeking God's approval, guidance and help?

Jesus tells us that we must let go of our attachments to the world so that we can enter fully into the kingdom of God, not just when we die, but now too, so that we can experience his unconditional love each moment of every day. We pile so many worldly (unGodly) attachments upon our backs that we're like camels laden with luggage! None of this baggage can squeeze through the gate into God's kingdom. If we try to hold onto them, WE don't fit through the gate.

We are rich in "doing things my way." In the kingdom of God, everything is done HIS way, which of course is the best way. No "conditional" love can get through, because it's not truly love. The attitude of "if you make me happy, I will approve of you and accept you and be nice to you" is a huge load of trash. It's not love at all.

The garbage that others have thrown at us won't fit either. Nor will the emotional bandages that we use for covering the wounds they inflicted upon us. Jesus has already taken all of our blows upon himself. If we're still wounded by them, it's only because we haven't surrendered to every method of healing that HE knows will heal us.

We can't include the bag of self-righteousness or pride. We don't need it anyway, because Jesus is proud enough of us. We have to drop the bag of low self-esteem, because Jesus shows us our true worth, and it is far greater than we think it is.

Identifying all of our worldly bags so that we can free ourselves from their weight seems impossible. The disciples asked, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus answered, "For you this is impossible, but if you seek God's help, it will become very possible."

It starts with: "Forgive me, Lord, and help me to identify all my bad habits, addictions, unloving ways, and worldly wisdom. With your gentle but persistent help, I will let go of my baggage and live more fully in your kingdom now and be ready for heaven when I die. Increase my desire to get rid of everything that does not belong to you. Amen!"

For the sake of Love

What are you willing to give up for the sake of Love? Or, to put it another way, what are you willing to give up for the sake of Jesus? Since God is Love, it's the same question.

In today's Gospel passage, the rich young man walked away from Jesus feeling sad, because he was unwilling to give to others what God had given to him in abundance. He didn't really want to be perfected spiritually.

In scripture, "perfection" doesn't mean doing everything perfectly right all the time; it means being just like our Creator, i.e., achieving total and complete unconditional love. Jesus is saying, "If you want to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect, love him with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your gifts, all your talents, all your skills, all your time, and all your possessions."

He is not asking us to sell everything we own in a yard sale and donate the proceeds to charity. What he IS telling us to do is to honor God with all we've got and get rid of everything that interferes with Love. The most powerful, successful way to do this is in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where we get rid of everything that interferes in our union with God.

What are you attached to that prevents greater intimacy with God? Which of the following apply to you?

- friendships that slow or reverse your spiritual growth
- a job that contributes to your sinful weaknesses
- bad attitudes
- a fascination with violence, the occult, and/or immoral entertainment
- the "I've got to be right" mentality that puts others down
- money (do you give God 10% of your income as scriptures command?)
- possessions you're not even using that others need
- business methods that contradict God's ways
- addictions
- disobeying a Church teaching because you don't like it
- (fill in the blank)

Look at what Jesus gave up for the sake of loving you:
- a carpentry business (or whatever employment he had)
- a safe, familiar home in Nazareth
- family and friends in Nazareth
- his own preferences for how to spend his time
- his freedom
- his perfect health
- his desire to avoid pain and suffering
- his life

The Gospel reading for next Sunday challenges us to examine our tendency to judge others. The Canaanite woman had two prejudicial strikes against her: gender and nationality.

Of course, Jesus was there as Savior for the whole world, but the disciples didn't know that yet. To stretch their minds (and ours), Jesus waited for her faith to become so obvious that it would overshadow every limitation that had been imposed upon her.

For Jesus, the only outsider is someone who refuses to come into the kingdom of God. But we don't readily think like this. Our Church is full of people who have been misjudged. Many feel outcast. We easily jump to wrong conclusions about each other.

For example, why don't more of us go out of our way to make single parents feel welcome in normal church life? Why don't we make it easy for them to come to extra activities at church, by providing free babysitters?

If you're divorced, do you assume that others are deliberately excluding you? That too is usually a misjudgment.

Why do homosexuals feel outcast even though Church teachings have been issued that compassionately invite them to a holy lifestyle?

Why are there lay people who feel blocked from being collaborators with their priests?

Judging our fellow Christians causes pain for the individual and allows unmet needs to continue in the Church, because the giftedness of the judged is being rejected. But if we remain conscious of our own tendencies to react to others with assumptions and judgments, we have the power to choose to be Christ for them and to receive Christ from them.

Questions for Personal Reflection:
Have you ever felt like an outsider? Even in the presence of Christ? How have you been pushed aside and neglected? What kind of damage did it do? Are you willing to try to again to get more involved?

Questions for Community Faith Sharing:
Whom are we most likely to judge? What is your parish doing — or what have you personally done — to heal some of the damage that was caused when others were misjudged? What else needs to be done?

The meaning of the Assumption of Mary

Today's readings can help us understand Mary's holiness and how it affected her physically. They answer the question: How could she pass directly from earth to heaven without experiencing the corruption of death in her body?

Mary was the only human after Adam and Eve who was conceived without inheriting the Original Sin. We celebrate this on December 8th, remembering her "Immaculate Conception". God the Father arranged this so that Jesus the Son — who was completely holy and fully God — could reside within her human body for the months of pregnancy and could be raised by a very holy mom.

This gave Mary an advantage of grace that you and I do not have. Adam and Eve had it, but when faced with temptation, they chose to sin. God had given them deathless life, but they chose a life that included corruption.

As a new Eve, Mary faced temptation but chose to remain close to God. Thus remaining full of God's grace, she was able to do live in complete holiness and never experience within herself the corruption of sin and death. When she reached the end of her time on earth, God's divine life raised her from the earth and immediately resurrected her earthly body into her glorified body.

To live in God's grace, we have to cooperate with it by saying no to temptation. Since we fail at this, Jesus died on our behalf so that we can get to heaven anyway, as long as we don't completely turn away from God's grace. He gave us the Sacrament of Baptism to free us from the inheritance of Adam and Eve's Original Sin. But we don't have to be satisfied with the minimum. God wants to give us much more grace!

We have the Holy Spirit. We have God's divine life within us so that we can do what the holiness within us wants us to do. Sinning makes us miserable. We don't actually like sinning, because our true nature, made in the image of God, desires to do what is good.

God has given Mary a ministry, an eternal vocation of sharing the gift of grace that she received from him. Thus, she can help our love for Jesus grow and our desire to resist sin to increase.

Praying the Rosary can give us a direct connection to Mary's fullness of grace. It's not just a string of repeated words. Nor is it just a set of meditations on the life of Jesus. It opens our spirits to the Holy Spirit through the assistance of Mary's prayers. In the Rosary, our souls join hers in magnifying the Lord. When so magnified, his love draws others to closer to him, and thus we join Mary in her ministry of giving Jesus to the world.