Sunday 24: Jn 13:31-35
Monday 25: Jn 14:23-29
Tuesday 26: Jn 14:27-31
Wednesday 27: Jn 15:1-8
Thursday 28: Jn 15:9-11
-20 May - 5th Sunday of Easter
3 – 9 May 2015: 5th week of14
Eastertide
Feast days: 18th St John I, 20th St Bernadine of Siena
Gospel John 14:1-12
Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God still, and trust in me.
There are many rooms in my Father’s house;
if there were not, I should have told you.
I am going now to prepare a place for you,
and after I have gone and prepared you a place,
I shall return to take you with me;
so that where I am
you may be too.
You know the way to the place where I am going.’
Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so
how can we know the way?’ Jesus said:
‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No one can come to the Father except through me.
If you know me, you know my Father too.
From this moment you know him and have seen him.’
Philip said, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be
satisfied.’ ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to
him ‘and you still do not know me?
‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father,
so how can you say, “Let us see the Father”?
Do you not believe
that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself:
it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work.
You must believe me when I say
that I am in the Father and the Father is in me;
believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason.
I tell you most solemnly,
whoever believes in me
will perform the same works as I do myself,
he will perform even greater works,
because I am going to the Father.’
‘Have I been with you all this time… and you still do not
know me?’
It is so easy to forget these fundamental things.
Jesus has developed such a large following, and the twelve,
including Thomas and Philip, were especially close to him. We
often think that they would have been ‘in the know’ the entire
time, and yet, it seems that even right up until his death, they
continued to misunderstand him – or perhaps they continued
to fall back into modes of being that failed to account for the
reality before them.
All that they had experienced, as astonishing as it was at the
time, seemed to wear off all too quickly. Their ongoing
encounter with the LORD, as incredible as it was, would
quickly became mundane. Jesus, despite the extraordinary
things that would happen in and through him, is so easily
thought of for them as really just one of the lads.
This is often our own experience. Even though we may have
experienced significant encounters with the living God, through
the gaze of a loved one, through the kindness of a stranger,
through a graced moment of an experience of beauty in the
created world, or through exposure to a profound work of art;
even though we are able to encounter God everyday through
the Body of Christ on earth, the Church, we are all too easily
lulled into a sense of the mundane. Our astonishment wanes,
and we think to ourselves, ‘if only I could have been there to
see Jesus perform these miracles, to experience Him first
hand, this would be a memory that forever changed me, this
would be the impetus to forever amend my life and follow him
closely always.’
If the example of Philip and of Thomas in today’s reading is to
teach us anything, it is that we are often fickle creatures, who
struggle to really remember - not simply by calling to mind the
things that have happened in the past, but by living out the
promises which have been made to us.
Humanity’s encounter with the living God in the person of
Jesus, while occurring in a particular way, at a particular time
and in a particular place is, and remains ongoing.
Our struggle is to continuously live in the memory that all of
existence remains forever changed because of the fact of the
Incarnation.
Friday 29: Jn 15;12-17
Saturday 30: Jn 15:18-21
www.valyermo.com/ld-art.html
Psalter Week 1
Sunday
6.00pm
Monday
11am – 12noon - Confession
12:35 Mass
Tuesday
8:30 Mass
9-10am – Confession
Wednesday
11am – 12noon - Confession
12:35 Mass
3pm – Bible Study
4.30pm – Evening Prayer
Thursday
11am – 12noon - Confession
12:35 Mass
Friday
11am – 12noon - Confession
12:35 Mass