| Shepherds of Christ Daily Writing |
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| Shepherds of Christ Daily Writing |
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May 18
, 2014|
May 19th Holy Spirit
Novena |
The Novena Rosary
Mysteries |
Please help us with the Building Payment
needed by May 19th. Thanks
Package for Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II will be canonized April 27th.
Here is a wonderful DVD about his life.
12" Statue of Sacred Heart of Jesus with glass
CD of Live Rosary from Blue Book 13 October 13, 1996 –
1st 13th – Fr. Carter leads this live rosary
Blue Book 12
Karol Movie
Pictures of Our Lady of Clearwater 8 x 10 and 4 x 6
Hard copy of October 13, 1996 Rosary
We will include this special rosary with this offer.$100 plus postage
while supplies lastThis is a limited time offer.
These statues may become scarce in the near future.
Bible Bash/Fatima
Package for May
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11" Fatima |
Your
choice of ONE |
Or Moses DVD |
8x10
picture of Our |
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| Or David DVD | Or Esther DVD | Or Abraham DVD | Or Jacob DVD |
$50 plus postage
while supplies last
Call Rosie – 1–888–211–3041
Package for the month of Mary and First Communion
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The Song of
Bernadette DVD OR |
The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima DVD |
11" Fatima |
Blue Book 12 |
8x10 and 4x6 |
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plus CD of October 13, 1996 Rosary
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Call 1–888–211–3041
The Wedding Rosary
Crystal Image Rosary
$40 plus shipping
Special First Communion Rosary with Image Center
in a gift box
white blue red
and an 8 x 10 picture of Our Lady of Clearwater
and a 4 x 6 picture of Our Lady of Clearwater
$10 plus postage
Original Image Rosary
8mm glass beads
in a matching gift box
$40 plus shipping
Given March 21, 2014
R. Pray for These Things
1) Pray for the priests, the Church and the world!
2) Pray for the spread of prayer chapters,
also for the spread of priests doing prayer chapters.
3) Pray for the spread of Blue Books.
4) People going to Florida and China.
5) Vocations to all 7 categories.
6) Pray for spread of Consecration and Rosary.
7) Pray for pope helping us.
8) Jeff and sales
9) Blue Book 13 cover; Blue Book 12, Blue Book 13 – all involved.
For our Publisher and all involved
10) All intentions on my list, Jerry's list.
11) Priests getting Fr. Joe's book.
12) Donors and members and their families.
13) Healing of the Family tree.
14) Dan & Melanie, Catherine & mom, Gary, Mary Jo,
Jim & statues, Fr. Ken, Monsignor, Tom & wife; Kerry.
15) All who asked us to pray for them.
16) All we promised to pray for.
17) Rita, John, Doris, Sheila, Jerry, Regina, Sanja,
Betty, Sophie, Lisa, Eileen, Fr. Mike, Louie,
2 Dons, Mary Ellen, Fr. Joe, all priests helping us,
Ed, Jimmy, a special couple,
Rosie & all involved.
18) 2 babies and moms.
19) Funds and insurance.
20) Special intentions.
21) Jerry's garage.
22) Spread the Blood of Jesus on all of us here.
23) Consecrate all hearts.
24) Cast the devil out of all of us here and all in Movement.
May 18, 2014
Galatians 5: 13-26
After all, brothers, you were called to be free; do not use your freedom as an opening for self–indulgence, but be servants to one another in love, since the whole of the Law is summarised in the one commandment: You must love your neighbour as yourself. If you go snapping at one another and tearing one another to pieces, take care: you will be eaten up by one another.
Instead, I tell you, be guided by the Spirit, and you will no longer yield to self–indulgence. The desires of self–indulgence are always in opposition to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are in opposition to self–indulgence: they are opposites, one against the other; that is how you are prevented from doing the things that you want to. But when you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. When self–indulgence is at work the results are obvious: sexual vice, impurity, and sensuality, the worship of false gods and sorcery; antagonisms and rivalry, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels, disagreements, factions and malice, drunkenness, orgies and all such things. And about these, I tell you now as I have told you in the past, that people who behave in these ways will not inherit the kingdom of God. On the other hand the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self–control; no law can touch such things as these. All who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified self with all its passions and its desires.
Since we are living by the Spirit, let our behavior be guided by the Spirit and let us not be conceited or provocative and envious of one another.
Galatians 5: 16-26
Instead, I tell you, be guided by the Spirit, and you will no longer yield to self–indulgence. The desires of self–indulgence are always in opposition to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are in opposition to self–indulgence: they are opposites, one against the other; that is how you are prevented from doing the things that you want to. But when you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. When self–indulgence is at work the results are obvious: sexual vice, impurity, and sensuality, the worship of false gods and sorcery; antagonisms and rivalry, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels, disagreements, factions and malice, drunkenness, orgies and all such things. And about these, I tell you now as I have told you in the past, that people who behave in these ways will not inherit the kingdom of God. On the other hand the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self–control; no law can touch such things as these. All who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified self with all its passions and its desires.
Since we are living by the Spirit, let our behavior be guided by the Spirit and let us not be conceited or provocative and envious of one another.
R. Dear God help us to be holy, help us to have greater faith,
we love You so much. We are vulnerable and we are so
dependent on You. We may think things are not too good,
but not realize things could be much worse. So we thank
You for what You do to help us when we don't even realize
how You are helping us. We pray for grace for the world,
God to be more and more what You want them to be.
Please help us spread the Blue Books, the Morning
Offering, how we help in the work of redemption.
Dear God, we love You so much. Please help us to do
this work, where You are telling us what to do
to help the world and help souls. Dear God help us
not to ignore You.
We see the Pascal Mystery of Death/Resurrection –
It is a mystery – Christ died, but He rose and His
Body was glorified. We know healing in our own
lives. We can have a sickness or a cut and be
healed. We know how this works. Can we focus
on the death of Jesus, in the tomb and then really
see the glorified body of Christ come forth from
the tomb?
Can we see the world so sick in sin and then see
how the world can be transformed through
prayer, through God's grace, through the Mass?
Can we see members of the Body of Christ – realizing
what it is to be a member of the Body of Christ and living
Christ's mystery of Death/Resurrection in their lives?
Can we see how men can understand living united
to the Mass all day and loving God and their
brothers can help in the work of redemption.
We are here on earth and You want us to live
the mystery of Christ in our lives – dying and
rising in Him and through our lives united to
Him – living out the Mass in our
lives, living the Pascal Mystery we help
in the work of redemption –
Christ shed His Blood for our sins and
Christ rose from the dead, Victorious, Glorified –
Easter Joy – Christ died on the Cross – shedding His
Blood – Giving Himself
and He rose with glorified wounds on the
third day –
Christ is our Redeemer. He came He lived
the quiet life, He died and He rose on the
third day –
Can we not see how healing for this world in
their sinful ways can only come through
Christ?
We in the Church, are the body of Christ,
we are suffering, we are bleeding from our
sins.
Christ is calling us to live as He wants us
to live – to be united to the Mass all day –
The Mass is the sacrifice of Calvary sacramentally
made present.
Christ wants to outpour His grace, like a fountain
on this troubled world. As members of the
mystical body of Christ we need to be united
in all we do all day, deeply offering our lives,
united to the Mass. Spread the Morning Offering.
Spread these prayers Jesus gave us –
Spread the Mass Books
Blue Book 9, Blue Book 10, Blue Book 11,
Blue Book 12 and the Mass Book –
We know in the Old Testament how God left them
in the desert and then led them out –
we know the Passover –
We know how God warned them and they were
rebellious. From slavery to freedom!
Romans 6: 3-23
You cannot have forgotten that all of us, when we were baptised into Christ Jesus, were baptised into his death. So by our baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious power, we too should begin living a new life. If we have been joined to him by dying a death like his, so we shall be by a resurrection like his: realising that our former self was crucified with him, so that the self which belonged to sin should be destroyed and we should be freed from the slavery of sin. Someone who has died, of course, no longer has to answer for sin.
But we believe that, if we died with Christ, then we shall live with him too. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and will never die again. Death has no power over him any more. For by dying, he is dead to sin once and for all, and now the life that he lives is life with God. In the same way, you must see yourselves as being dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.
That is why you must not allow sin to reign over your mortal bodies and make you obey their desires; or give any parts of your bodies over to sin to be used as instruments of evil. Instead, give yourselves to God, as people brought to life from the dead, and give every part of your bodies to God to be instruments of uprightness; and then sin will no longer have any power over you—you are living not under law, but under grace.
What is the implication? That we are free to sin, now that we are not under law but under grace? Out of the question! You know well that if you undertake to be somebody’s slave and obey him, you are the slave of him you obey: you can be the slave either of sin which leads to death, or of obedience which leads to saving justice. Once you were slaves of sin, but thank God you have given whole–hearted obedience to the pattern of teaching to which you were introduced; and so, being freed from serving sin, you took uprightness as your master.
and what did you gain from living like that? Experiences of which you are now ashamed, for that sort of behaviour ends in death. But, now you are set free from sin and bound to the service of God, your gain will be sanctification and the end will be eternal life. For the wage paid by sin is death; the gift freely given by God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.I am putting it in human terms because you are still weak human beings: as once you surrendered yourselves as servants to immorality and to a lawlessness which results in more lawlessness, now you have to surrender yourselves to uprightness which is to result in sanctification.
When you were the servants of sin, you felt no obligation to uprightness,
R. Christ is our Redeemer –
Christ has conquered sin –
We in the Church as we live the Mysteries
of Death/Resurrection we are dying to
our sinful ways to live the life of
resurrection in Christ. We are to live
the graced-life.
Romans 8: 19-27
for the whole creation is waiting with eagerness for the children of God to be revealed. It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it—with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God. We are well aware that the whole creation, until this time, has been groaning in labour pains. And not only that: we too, who have the first–fruits of the Spirit, even we are groaning inside ourselves, waiting with eagerness for our bodies to be set free. In hope, we already have salvation; in hope, not visibly present, or we should not be hoping—nobody goes on hoping for something which is already visible. But having this hope for what we cannot yet see, we are able to wait for it with persevering confidence.
And as well as this, the Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness, for, when we do not know how to pray properly, then the Spirit personally makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words; and he who can see into all hearts knows what the Spirit means because the prayers that the Spirit makes for God’s holy people are always in accordance with the mind of God.
R. We unite to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, all
day - The Mystical Body gives Christ to the Father –
The Father gives Jesus to the priest
and to us in Communion.
The Mass is the Sacrifice of Calvary, sacramentally
made present.
We share in the meal, the feast –
this is a great sign of unity for us as
members of the Mystical Body of Christ.
We are one body in Christ!
Christ walked on the water –
Can you imagine this?
R. I see Christ showing us so much and we are
blind –
We don't even take the time to stop and
meditate on the gift of the Mass – Dear God
give us the grace to be wanting this union
with the Mass all day in our lives.
Wanting to unite our lives as an offering
to help bring down grace for ourselves and for the
sake of souls.
God is so good to us and we hold onto foolish
things we ponder (a coupon deal, a cheaper price,
a T.V. show, a movie actor, foot-ball star)
and we don't seek to know more about
the Mass, the sacrifice of Calvary, sacramentally
made present –
We don't seek to unite our lives with the
Morning Offering every day to the Mass –
R. Isn't it serious the state of slavery, the world
is in
enslaved to their own gods and
oh how they ignore God for their selfish
pursuits –
Why do they ignore such a gift given here –
Jesus and Mary, the New Adam and the New
Eve are speaking to us.
19 Years Ago
June 26, 1995
The Pain - Naples, FloridaR. He spread His arms, He gave His all, Jesus, the Son of God, the greatest sacrifice, He gave Himself entirely for the good of all men. He opened His arms, He died on the cross.
His arms were covered with blood, His arms so weak and filled with pain, wounded. His arms, the pain shot up His arms and the final blow to each arm a nail through each precious hand.
All the agony He experienced, all the pain, and the crown, to each arm, a nail hammered into the hand.
All the nerves cut and severed by the nail, the pain shooting up His precious arms, the final blow given to His most precious members.
The legs that carried Him, that carried the heavy cross, the legs that were forced and cajoled, that continues to Calvary - the legs weakened, skinned, bleeding, beaten, burned, the legs that knew patience and perseverance, the legs connected to a sore foot that was rubbed and gashed and bleeding, the members of Jesus, filled with such pain and exhaustion, now is crowned with the final glory. The nail that was driven into the foot, the pain shot up this already weakened leg, covered with blood and wounds and pain, the final blow, the nerves severed by the hammered nail.
A blow to each hand, a blow to each foot, a blow to the head, a stamping that pressed down and continued in excruciating pain.
Jesus: They numbered all My bones. They gave Me vinegar and gall to drink. They gave Me a cloth to wipe My blood-covered flesh.
What did they give to Me? Love is giving, My dear ones. How many of you are wounded when you are not given things by your brothers you love?
My members were in such pain, the pain shot up My arms. My legs were so weak I could scarce move them. I was filled with pain within them.
To all who watched, they saw a man, weakened and covered with blood and wounds. They did not see the pain inside that shot up My legs and arms, the nerves inside My body that sent signals of deep pain to My central nervous system. They did not see the nerves inside sending pain signals everywhere.
The final blow being to each hand and foot, the severing of My nerves by the blunt and rusted nails.
An arm extended. A final blow. I beheld a nail pounded into My hand and the pain shot up My arms, unbearable to a human mind.
Do you know of the pain within My body? Signals sending messages of deep pain everywhere. I knew all of these sufferings in the garden. So great were the sufferings to My mind, I sweat blood.
My flesh was covered with wounds. My arms were stretched from their sockets. My body was beaten and bleeding, every inch of My body covered with deep wounds. But, My loved ones, you miss the depth of My love. My wounds were so deep, but the final wound, the pounding of the nails in My hands and feet, a severing of the nerves, an ending of the deepest pain, to experience even deeper pain, beyond your human comprehension, it was done to the Almighty God, a Divine Person, I suffered the final blow to each member.
The pounding in the hands and feet, the crown to each member, and they numbered all My bones. My nerves a network of pain running throughout My entire body.
The pain within the body, the pain recorded in My loving head, the pain sent by a network of nerves in My body, now records the final blows, the nails in the hands and feet, the pain being recorded from every thorn that pierced My skull, every gash to My body, the pain, the pain, the pain - a network of signals and pain, running through My body and the final hour, the pains recorded on the cross, arms outstretched - a surrendering to all pain. I surrendered to a body laden with pain.
You focus on your little problems, your little aches and pains. You discuss them and show the world your pin pricks and sufferings.
Do you want to know holiness and love? They gave Me vinegar mixed with gall. This was their offering. They gave Me a cross. They crowned My head with a crown of thorns.
This, My dear ones, is suffering, My beloved souls, I gave My life for and this is their return.
A severing of My nerves, the final blows to all the aches and pains recorded in My nervous system. This was one of the final blows - the rusted nails pounded into My hands.
You will feel little aches and pains in your hands and feet to remind you of this message. Your understanding of the immense pain within will deepen. What was visible to the eye on My battered body was nothing compared to the pains within. I gave My all. I gave My insides, My mind, My Heart, wounded for the love of men.
All functions in the body were stopped.
The final curtain, blood and water pouring out from My Heart, show that all functions of the body had ended.
R. All signals that carried messages of immense pain had ended, the final act of surrender for God to die to this human body and surrender His flesh.
Jesus: And end, a beginning, the water and blood flowed from My Heart, the beginning of My life in the Church, life flowing into your spirit.
R. Come give me life, abundant life. I thirst to be with Thee.
Jesus: My blood was spent. My human flesh and blood offered as the sacrifice, the sacrifice of Calvary is now made present at every Mass.
An end, a beginning, and the grace and life flow through the sacraments in the Church. My life flows to you in the Mass. Mary, the Mediatrix of all grace, stands by the side of the altar and the grace flows from the Father, through My body offered up as a sacrifice in the Holy Spirit, given through the Mothership of Mary to you in the Church.
You stand under the cross with My Mother and you receive the gift given, My Body, My Blood.
R. Man is reconciled with the Father through the Divine Person, Jesus Christ, and you receive His life poured out to you as Calvary is made present in the unbloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Do you feel the graces poured out to you at this sacrifice of the Son of God at every Mass? Do you feel the presence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and Mary, all the angels and saints, and the souls in purgatory? Do you feel united as one at the sacrifice of Calvary sacramentally made present upon the altar through the priest? The priest who now puts on Christ and through Him the dispenser of this life given to man.
Jesus: Oh, My beloved ones, love so dearly your priest. Give him such reverence. He is the chosen instrument of God and you treat him with such ordinariness. You are so blind and so dumb in your ways.
And they numbered all My bones. Each nerve carrying a message of My love of mankind, each member in My Church carrying a special message, all united as one working in harmony according to the Father's will, each carrying a message of love to one another.
The body is many members, you are the messengers of My love. Christ is the head. The message does not flow as it should when some are cut off from the Head.
They nailed My hands and feet and My nerves were severed by the nails, such pain, undescribable in words, the severing of My nerves from the body, the severing of many members from the body of Christ.
My Body given for all on the cross, the network of nerves within carrying the messages of My love to all mankind. My body covered on the outside with blood and wounded, the pain recorded within.
Your Church, covered with blood on the outside, the slaughter of innocent babies, the homosexuality, the sins of the flesh, the members that have severed themselves from the source by their sins, but the pain is carried in the nerves inside. The blood of the Lamb shed for each and every soul, the real pain carried within. The life is weakened in your Church because the love of God is so weak in many members. The messages of love are not being transmitted as they should be. Your body shows the wounds, but your pain within is the root of the problems. The pain is from the messages of love that are not being transmitted.
Unless you seek to fill your priests and sisters with the fire of God's love, fill their hearts with burning love for God, your Church will continue to show the marks of the blood shed without. I give to you these letters as a mighty medicine for this world, directed to make men's hearts burn with love of God and love of one another. The rosaries are meditations and messages given from the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
These messages will make men's hearts burn with fire for love of God.
You have ignored the importance of these letters.
I send to you the mighty medicine to heal a hurting world.
My priests and religious need these messages. The love of God will be transmitted to the Church from these messages when you circulate these letters.
The devil has blocked the minds of men involved in these messages because of their importance to the world and the Church.
I am speaking to you Fr. Carter to help to get these messages published and circulated as soon as possible. I give to you a mighty medicine for a sick world.
Read St. Thomas Aquinas about the medicine for the sick Church.
You know what these messages have done for you. I am Jesus. I give to you the mighty medicine for a sick world, for a sick Church, rosaries and letters from the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Your Church shows the wounds of bloodshed, abortion, homosexuality, sins of the flesh, murder of little children's minds with sex education in Catholic schools and you hold back the gifts of God's love I am giving to the Church and this world.
My arms were weak and wounded but the final blow as the nail put in My hand. It severed the nerves.
The final blow is the bloodshed in the Church, the slaughtering of children's minds in Catholic schools. My children are pure and innocent. They are not being taught messages of God's love, they are being taught messages of sick sex and coldness.
Men's hearts have turned cold. They have been severed from the life of the body. The body is decaying from within. Only with the love of God enkindled in men's hearts will this bloodshed stop.
I beg you to publish and circulate these messages in the Church. I am Jesus. I am giving you the mighty medicine for the world. Your body wears the marks of the bloodshed, only with messages of My on-fire love will it stop.
Mary leads you to Jesus. Never is she the end. The Father has a plan. Mary's messages have led men and will lead men to Jesus. Satan has tried to stop all efforts to publish and circulate these messages. I am the Almighty God. The funds will come when you circulate and publish these messages and rosaries under the Shepherds of Christ Publishing. I am working with Fr. Carter and Rita as messenger to renew the Church and the world. Each messenger has a very vital role in the Father's plan. The significance of these messages are being overlooked. You are not studying the messages as a whole and their content. There are five unpublished Blue Books and more than four Rosary Books which I and My Mother have given to this world in the last 14 months. I have also given 15 songs of My love. I am begging you to see to the recording and publishing of this music. I beg you to listen. This is the mighty medicine for the Church and the world to draw men to the burning love of Jesus. Please harken to My call. I will send you the money. You must study and read these messages. This is a fulfillment of Fatima - these messages were given to bring priests to the burning love of Jesus. I am Jesus, your beloved Savior.
end of June 26, 1995
From Bishop Sheen
Third Effect: Communion with the
Mystical Body of Christ
No one was ever so wrong as the professor who said: "Religion is what a man does with his solitariness." If man is solitary, he is like a cell that is isolated from the body. The body can live without an individual cell, but the cell cannot live without the body. No man can live the divine life without some incorporation either in fact, or in desire, with the Mystical Body of Christ which is the Church. But the Mystical Body of Christ can live without an individual member. Our Blessed Lord described our union with Himself the night He gave the Eucharist, as that of the "vine and the branches." St. Paul speaks of us, too, as being many and yet one because we all eat the one bread. There is no autonomic individualism in the Scriptures or in humanity. The whole historical existence is transformed; that is to say, both humanity and the visible creation. The first was transformed through the Incarnation; the second, through the sacraments and its symbols which animate personality.
As there is a lymph which passes through the human body, each cell drinking of that life; so too, the Eucharist is the Divine lymph of the Mystical Body of Christ on which every member feeds. The members of the Church as not little spiritual islands each cherishing its own isolation. What blood plasma is to the physical body, the Eucharist is to the Mystical Body—the bond of its unity: "The one bread makes us one body, though we are many in number" (1 Corinth. 10: 17).
Sunday's Readings
1 Kings 19: 16b, 19-21
You must anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king of Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat, of Abel-Meholah, as prophet to succeed you.Leaving there, he came on Elisha son of Shaphat as he was ploughing behind twelve yoke of oxen, he himself being with the twelfth. Elijah passed near to him and threw his cloak over him. Elisha left his oxen and ran after Elijah. 'Let me kiss my father and mother, then I will follow you,' he said. Elijah answered, 'Go, go back; for have I done anything to you?' Elisha turned away, took a yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He used the oxen's tackle for cooking the meat, which he gave the people to eat. He then rose and, following Elijah, became his servant.
Psalm 16: 1-2, 5, 7-11
[In a quiet voice Of David]
Protect me, O God, in you is my refuge.
To
Yahweh I say, 'You are my Lord,
my
happiness is in none
My birthright, my cup is Yahweh;
you, you alone, hold my lot secure.I bless Yahweh who is my counsellor,
even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep Yahweh before me always,
for with him at my right hand, nothing can shake me.So my heart rejoices, my soul delights,
my body too will rest secure,
for you will not abandon me to Sheol,
you cannot allow your faithful servant to see the abyss.
You will teach me the path of life,
unbounded joy in your presence,
at your right hand delight for ever.
Galatians 5: 1, 13-18
Christ set us free, so that we should remain free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be fastened again to the yoke of slavery.
After all, brothers, you were called to be free; do not use your freedom as an opening for self–indulgence, but be servants to one another in love, since the whole of the Law is summarised in the one commandment: You must love your neighbour as yourself. If you go snapping at one another and tearing one another to pieces, take care: you will be eaten up by one another.
Instead, I tell you, be guided by the Spirit, and you will no longer yield to self–indulgence. The desires of self–indulgence are always in opposition to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are in opposition to self–indulgence: they are opposites, one against the other; that is how you are prevented from doing the things that you want to. But when you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.
Luke 9: 51-62
Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem and sent messengers ahead of him. These set out, and they went into a Samaritan village to make preparations for him, but the people would not receive him because he was making for Jerusalem. Seeing this, the disciples James and John said, ‘Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?’ But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.
As they travelled along they met a man on the road who said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus answered, ‘Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.’
Another to whom he said, ‘Follow me,’ replied, ‘Let me go and bury my father first.’ But he answered, ‘Leave the dead to bury their dead; your duty is to go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.’
Another said, ‘I will follow you, sir, but first let me go and say good–bye to my people at home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 1, 2007INTRODUCTION - Today’s gospel reading brings us to a critical point in St. Luke’s gospel. St. Luke tells us at this point in his gospel that Jesus turned his face toward Jerusalem. From this point on in Luke, everything that Jesus said or did took place while he was on his way to Jerusalem. This part of Luke’s gospel is referred to as the “Journey narrative.” When Jesus decided to go to Jerusalem, he knew what was ahead for him, nonetheless, he started his journey with courage and determination. He warns those who would follow him that following him would require sacrifice, and there wasn’t time for second thoughts or to be indecisive.
Our first reading may seem to be a strange one, but it was chosen to correspond with the idea of total commitment to one’s call. It tells about two Old Testament prophets, Elijah and Elisha. Elijah is getting old and his life is coming to an end. At God's command he chooses Elisha to replace him. Placing his mantle on Elisha’s shoulders symbolized this call. Having 12 yoke of oxen to plow with would indicate that Elisha must have been a prosperous farmer. His sacrificing the animals and burning his equipment indicates a total commitment to his vocation. He broke completely with his former way of life and did not look back.HOMILY - The gospels have one objective, to lead us to Christ. Christ has one objective, to lead us to God. And God has one objective, to bring us to eternal happiness. Today’s gospel, in its desire to lead us to Christ does not picture Christ as “an easy going, do whatever you want, you’re all going to get to heaven anyway” kind of person. Jesus is the most loving person who ever lived, and at the same time, when it comes to eternal life, he is a non wishy-washy, ambivalent person. With regard to salvation he is no nonsense. Some people might even consider his words hard.
Let us consider some of these hard sayings. We hear first of all about an encounter with the Samaritans. Most of us probably think of the Samaritans as nice people, because of the parable of the good Samaritan. But there was considerable animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans. A Jew could risk his life traveling through Samaria and as we see in today’s gospel, Jesus is prudently sending messengers ahead of him to see if a particular town would receive him. They wouldn’t. James and John were all for calling down destruction upon that town. Not only did they want bad to happen to those people, they wanted to be involved. They asked Jesus, “Do you want us to call down fire from heaven upon them?” Jesus just rebuked them and moved on. Jesus did not come to condemn but to save. He was a man of peace. You are possibly thinking, how is what Jesus said here a hard saying? Well, consider who are the Samaritans in your life, the people you would like to get rid of if you could? Can you have the same attitude as Jesus, willing to avoid vengeance, willing to forgive, looking for ways to find peace? It’s not always easy.
The other two or three sayings are hard ones too. There is someone in the gospel who comes up to Jesus and wants to follow him. Jesus describes the sacrifices that might be involved, especially the sacrifice of not even having a place to call home. Those who lived in the early Church had many sacrifices to make to stay faithful to our Lord, even to the extent of maybe having to sacrifice their lives. People still do in other places of the world today. But in our country so many people find it hard to sacrifice an hour for Sunday Mass or time to pray during the week, not to mention the sacrifice involved in keeping the commandments. Being a Christian is not just a matter of saying we are. It is living the way Christ wants us to.
“Let the dead bury their dead” is one of the hardest to understand. I have always understood this as the situation of the young man who wouldn’t be ready to follow Jesus until his father died which may have been years away. Jesus was saying there wouldn’t be time. How many times do we say when I get this done or that done, then I’ll begin going to Church more or spend more time praying? We’re all busy today. Where we choose to spend our time tells us what’s important to us. The devil’s biggest temptation for many of us is to tell us “you have lots of time. You can pray later. You can do that good deed later. Just relax for a little while. You owe it to yourself.” (Of course we need to relax at times, but we also need to make time for the Lord.)
The last statement is very similar. “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” Our following Christ has to be serious. We can’t be indecisive and uncommitted. We can’t let feelings alone guide us, deciding to pray when we feel like it and putting our faith aside when we don’t feel like it. Our faith is too important for that. I remember all the new faces I saw in church after 9/11. I’m glad people came but for many the enthusiasm didn’t last. God deserves better than a passing thought or a spurt of piety when we happen to feel like it.
Hard sayings! They sure are. Are they meant to accuse us or put us down or depress us? No. Our Lord’s words to us come from his love and his objective is to lead us to holiness and eternal happiness.
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