Afleveringen
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This is how our lives as Christians is to be described. The Gospel today tells us so much about it. We need to be loyal, hardworking, honest, charitable to those it is difficult to love, be diligent when everybody wants to waste time and so forth. It is much easier to do evil. We only need to succumb to the temptations. It is much simpler to destroy than to build. But there it is! The consequences of destroying in horrible and perhaps very expensive. But to build, this is our task as Christians. Karl Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. His characterization of Christianity is unfair. Someone challenged Marx--to bad Marx was already dead at this point--to live as a good Christian for one day and then he will see that Christianity is no drug of the people to put them to hallucinate or render them intoxicated.
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The Gospel for the Sixth Sunday of Easter tells us about Jesus' invitation to remain in His Love by following His Commandments, just as He remains in His Father's Love by following His Commandments. His Father wanted Him to die on the Cross to save mankind from sin and death. The acid test of whether we truly love God whom we don't see--it is so easy to claim we love Him--is by checking on how we love the others. Loving the others is crucial because God loves them too. He died for all of us. How is our struggle to love the others?
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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The Lord forewarns us of what we will face if we are truly followers of His. Persecutions! If we become worldly, then we would not expect these attacks on religion and on the Catholic Faith. What Our Lord taught us in the Beatitudes, for example, sets us in collision course with the values of worldliness and evil. Hence, our sufferings are compounded together with the given difficulties of ordinary life itself. This sad and frustrating state of affairs here in earth should not discourage us. Our hope is enlivened to look forward to that day when we go to see God face to face, for eternity!
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Jesus taught more than in the manner of Moses. He taught with personal authority. He did not cite any other authority to back up his teachings and claims. The other teachers of Israel taught quoting scriptures or venerable rabbis or traditions. But Jesus had an authority totally unheard of in the land. He spoke with personal, first-person singular, authority. He had no need of any backing. On top of that, He spoke with total integrity of life. People could see that He first lived what He taught and only then would He teach the people. He declared He was the Way, the Truth and the Life. There was no need to look for another for the truth or the life. No need to go elsewhere. He was the total package.
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Since He is Love, He cannot but love us. We do not need to do anything to deserve His love for us. He simply loves us. We are able to love the others when we have been loved first by God. We love God in return by following His Commandments. His Commandments are a gift to us. This gift is a guide for us to blossom as human beings. When a trainer trains his dog to do certain tricks and the dog does them well, the trainer is happy. Something like that is what happens between God and us. We please Him when we follow His instructions.
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The Church presents again for our reading and contemplation the allegory of the vine and the branches. We underscore the statement of Jesus that without Him or without being connected to Him as a branch is to its vine, we can do absolutely nothing. Hence, we should appreciate the importance of maintaining heroically our prayer life, which is the same as maintaining a relationship with Him. This is the universal reply He makes to any of our petitions. He affords us a relationship with Him. This is extraordinary!
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Jesus tells His followers that He pray for peace for them. This is a peace that the world cannot give. The peace it offers is so shallow and temporary. God's peace is not simply the absence of war. It is deep and life-changing. It makes one confident, secure, ready to die, generous and very happy.
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We celebrate today a great saint in the Church. In fact, we recall St. Catherine of Siena who was declared by St. Pope Paul VI in 1970 a Doctor of the Church. Only a few women enjoy this distinction in the Catholic Church. We admire her for her availability to the purposes of the Lord in the politics and state matters of 14th century. The Gospel reveals to us two revelations: Our love for God is measured by how much we adhere to His Commandments; The Advocate or the Holy Spirit will be sent by the Father.
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The Gospel of the Fifth Sunday of Easter presents us with the teaching of Jesus regarding Him as the Vine while we are the branches. We are connected to the Vine. A vine is alive with life-giving sap flowing through the branches. We are alive with God's life in us. Cut the branch off and it withers. The allegory includes the Father as the vinedresser Who cares for the Vine. If a branch does not bear fruit, it is useless and cut off. For a branch that bears fruit, the Vinedresser prunes it so that it bears more fruit. We can only be alive with the Life of God in us if we remain in touch with the Vine. For us to become more productive of fruit, we are subjected by God to suffering and pain so that we can grow more fruit. So, let us maintain contact with Jesus to continue to live in Him via prayer life. We can also expect God to send us difficulties so that we can grow in our faith.
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To go to Heaven, it is not enough to simply do good. We also need to follow what He taught us. All of what He taught us. Just believing a part only, only shows we do not believe that He is divine. The Gospel also reveals to us that He is the Son and therefore He has a Father. Both are one! This means that they are of one substance. The Son is the Word according to St. John's gospel's prologue. The Word is Logos in Greek. Logos means concept or idea. We can form an idea of ourselves. God looking at Himself, then forms an Idea of Himself. Such Self-concept is so perfect that such Logos would also be as divine as the One who has an Idea of Himself. In the process of knowing, we constitute an idea of what we know. We become one with what we know in an intentional manner. Intentional here means we do not actually become the object we know but only in a conceptual manner.
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Jesus asks His apostles not to be troubled. This is the trouble that brings us away from God. Jesus was troubled, especially in the Garden of Gethsemane during the Agony in the Garden. Mary, His Immaculate Mother, was troubled at the celestial greeting of the Archangel Gabriel during the Annunciation. If our troubles bring us to God, then such troubles are fortunate. If our troubles bring us away from God, then we are at fault. lt is worthwhile to handle our troubles adequately by trusting Him and His arrangements of things for us.
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With St. Mark's feast day today, we may learn about interpreting the holy scriptures. First off, we need to understand the place of scriptures have in our faith. Having sola scriptura of the Protestant reformation of the 16th century cannot be accepted because the bible did not fall on our laps from nowhere. It was the Church who gathered the different books and put them together according to the Canon. The Canon referred to the official list of divinely inspired books. What determines this is not Sacred Scriptures alone. This last does not account for itself. It is the living teaching authority of the Church, as mandated by Jesus Himself. He said that they go out and preach. He did not say that they write down things. There was a time for the writing, but only in the context of Sacred Tradition, that is, the transmission of the faith by word of mouth.
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The Gospel today tells us Jesus explaining that all who listen to Him is actually listening to the One Who sent Him. Jesus is God in the Flesh. He explained to Philip that He and the Father are one. The unity between the two Persons--God the Son and God the Father--is absolute. It is the strongest union possible in reality. They are identical as God. The only thing that distinguishes them is the relation between them. The Father cannot be the Son and vice versa. The relationship of Filiation and Paternity, or the Son to the Father, and the Father to the Son, respectively, are opposites. We need to get used to kind of vision. Behind the Son is the Father. How can there be the Son if there is no Father? We see beyond what the senses tell us. This is a supernatural vision or outlook. This kind of of seeing is proper of Faith.
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Jesus had established His being the Good Shepherd because He laid down His life for His sheep. Added to that is that He is one with the Father. That means that He is as God as the Father is God.
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The Gospel today provides us with more characteristics of the Good Shepherd. He enters the sheepfold through the gate and gatekeeper. Others who enter through other ways are thieves. He is up to no good. He is a threat to the sheep. The Good Shepherd goes ahead of His sheep as He leads them to pasture. He foresees problems, that the sheep may face and leads them to safety. He calls out the enemy to warn him. He has the best in mind for His sheep.
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Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us today in the Gospel of the fourth Sunday of Easter that He is the Good Shepherd. He immediately defines what the Good Shepherd does. He lays down His life for His sheep. We need such a shepherd since we are limited in knowledge and virtue. We need to learn from those who can guide us. This trip to Heaven is full of strange paths, unknown bends, turns, and so forth. The one who can guide us must be the one who has gone there and has been there. Jesus is God who became Man. He comes from Heaven. He knows the way.
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Today, the issue of Jesus giving His Flesh as Food to eat and His Blood to be taken as a drink comes to a head. Jesus does not adjust or modify His daring teaching and requirement to go to Heaven. He lets those who thought that way leave Him. He asked His apostles too whether they'd want to forsake Him as well. Together with Peter, we need to respond, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” What we cannot do is pick and choose how we will follow Our Lord's teachings. It is either we accept everything He teaches and try to follow them and ask for help or pardon when we fail in them, or we leave Him. Believing Him only in some things is the same as not believing Him in anything He teaches.
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The Gospel today continues with Our Lord Jesus Christ revealing more about His earth-shaking teaching about His Flesh and Blood being eaten and drunk, respectively. They need to be received to reach eternal life. He is categorical about it. There is no way around it. It is by faith that we arrive at accepting this astounding doctrine of Our Lord's Flesh and Blood being taken.
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Today, we read in the Gospel the role of God in the act of faith. These past days we saw the importance of external signs as motives of credibility, like the miraculous multiplication of bread and fish, and walking on the sea. God also works on us from the inside. Through His grace, God moves us, respecting our freedom, of course, to give the assent and agreement of our intellect and our will, respectively, in believing whatever God reveals. All this hinges on the authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Hence, we need to believe Him and His revelation.
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Our Lord continues today in the Gospel of the Mass to elucidate on the bread of life that will satisfy us. There will be no more need to eat more. But to eat this bread of life, one must first believe in the Lord Jesus from Heaven. This Jesus is the one who died and was resurrected. He obeyed His Father's Will. We should do the same! And we would also be raised from death!
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