REFLECTION

THE CALL TO BE SHEPHERDS

José Mario Nieto

This Sunday’s gospel talks about Jesus the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:11-18). We are very familiar with this image of Jesus. We have seen plenty of drawings in churches and others places of Jesus carrying a sheep on his shoulders. This image that seems delicate and adorable reflects a profound reality that entails a lot of effort and a constant care from the shepherd.

During the summer of 2013, I had the great opportunity of making my second trip to Holy Land. During my stay there I came to know people who worked as shepherds. They explained to us the difficulty of being a shepherd nowadays. The most difficult thing, they said, is to make the sheep hear their voices amidst all the noise that the busy city has. Even on the mountains some sounds can make the sheep nervous, because they are very sensitive to sharp and loud noises. In order to make the sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd and become familiarized with it, he has to take the sheep on his shoulders and sing or talk for a period of time while walking and carrying the weight of the sheep around. The shepherd will do that with those sheep that have a hard time following him or those who are less domesticated.

At the end of the day, the shepherd will be very tired and, of course, smell like the sheep. This is precisely the characteristic that Pope Francis mentioned two years ago in one of his homilies regarding what a good shepherd is. “This I ask you: be shepherds, with the ‘odor of the sheep’, make it real, as shepherds among your flock,” he famously said to priests during Holy Thursday.  Although he was speaking directly to priests, I wonder: Aren’t we all called to be shepherds? Aren’t we all called to take care of those around each of us?

Do you remember Cain’s answer to God’s when He questions him about his brother Abel; am I my brother’s keeper? Well, yes, we are! We are our bother and sister’s keepers. Therefore we are all called to “shepherd” those in need, to the point of “smelling” like them. As imitators of Jesus the Good Shepherd, we should ask ourselves: how do I take care of my brothers and sisters? And how much effort do I put in leading them to a safe place with Jesus? Am I willing to carry those who are in need even when this requires giving up my time and pleasures?

I hope this image of the Good Shepherd becomes an incentive for all of us, to follow Jesus and lead also others to Him.

MICHAEL WOLFE ORDAINED TO THE DIACONATE

On Saturday, April 18, Michael Wolfe (a member of the Community of Saint Paul) was ordained as a transitional deacon by Archbishop Jerome Listecki together with his two classmates studying for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and two members of the Conventual Franciscans.  Members and friends of the CSP, as well as Michael's family were present to support and celebrate with him. During the next year, he will continue his studies and formation to the priesthood, as well as continuing to serve at St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Racine, Wisconsin (his teaching parish as a seminarian). 

Congratulations to Michael, his classmates, and the Conventual Franciscans!  

REFLECTION

THE MAT

Martí Colom

In the second chapter of the Gospel of Mark we find the story of the paralytic lying in a mat who is being carried to Jesus by four men (Mark 2:1-12). Jesus cures him, saying that his sins are forgiven: the paralysis that prevented him from walking him was his own sin. Why, at the end of the story, once the man has been healed, does Jesus tell him to pick up his mat (Mark 2:11)? We might ask ourselves, why would he need it now that he can walk? What’s more, why does the reference to the act of picking up the mat appear not once, but three times (verses 9, 11 and 12)? It is obvious that Mark intends, with this insistence, to underline that when leaving the presence of Jesus, he who had been cured of his paralysis carried with him the mat on which he arrived. Why is this important?

Let us explore two responses: First (and this is a very speculative explanation) we can imagine that, implicitly, Jesus is inviting the person who had been paralytic to do for others what those four men did for him. As if he was saying: “Pick up your mat, so that it may be useful to others as it was to you, but now you can be one of those that carry it.”

On the other hand, to pick up the mat is the gesture that reveals that the former paralytic’s new awareness of his past is complete. He does not try to run away from the past by leaving the mat thrown in some corner. True healing is not about erasing every trace of our selfish pasts, nor about burying our errors in oblivion, it is about integrating them into our story. “Pick up your mat” means: be aware of who you have been. Knowing full well, however, that our sins do not define us anymore. That is why Jesus told the man to pick up his mat and the text goes on to narrate how he “took up the bed” (Mark 2:12): it is no longer his. Or perhaps it was, but only in the sense that it belonged to his past. In this sense it is good to carry our mats without misgivings; being aware that they do not define our present. Picking up the mat is to integrate completely our past experience – without making of its negative aspects the decisive factors of our present and future lives.

REFLECTION

 

 

EASTER: THE WOMEN, THE ROCK, THE WAY (AND A FLAGON WITH SPICES).

Martí Colom

 

            On the way to the tomb, walking under the first sunlight from Sunday’s dawn, the three women asked themselves who would roll back for them the huge stone from the entrance of the sepulcher.

            Yet, they kept moving.

            They brought with them a flagon with spices to anoint Jesus’ body. They knew that between them and the deceased there was a massive rock.

            But they walked on.

            They could have stayed in the city, mourning in resignation, telling each other: “It would be beautiful to anoint his body, but it is useless to go: a tremendous stone blocks up the access and prevents us from reaching him. Let us stay here, and cry.” But they did not. Dawn came and they left the city, on their way to the tomb.  In spite of the rock.

            They were not smarter or more spiritually shrewd than the rest of the disciples. All of them had heard from Jesus’ lips his foretelling of the Resurrection, but they carried spices for a dead man. They weren’t sharper, or holier. Maybe they loved him a bit more. And perhaps that is why they walked. Guided by an unspoken instinct made with a mixture of affection, hope and doubt.    

“What shall we do with the stone?”

They climbed the dusty trail knowing that they were approaching a large rock that they could not move, but they kept on nonetheless.

Maybe that is all they could do. If they had stayed still in the city they would have died of sorrow. They had more doubts than certainties, but somehow they understood that it is always better to walk amid doubts that to decide beforehand not to take the first step. The rock did not kill their wishes.

And it was because they went to the tomb, filled with hesitation, to look for one who was deceased, that they could see the stone rolled back. Then they were the first ones to hear, from that young man, that their teacher lived and lives. The Easter of Jesus sprouted in their hearts.

I bet that when they left, in love with life, they forgot somewhere in the dust the flagon with the spices. Maybe they left it half buried, useless and absurd, at the foot of the enormous rock.

 

Travesías y Sueños from Casa San José, Cochabamba (Bolivia)

Daniel, Rodrigo, Abraham, Juan Alberto, Luís, Pedro and Juan Daniel are the boys who created and star in Travesías y Sueños (Crossroads and Dreams), the new book that Casa San José introduces to you today. This is the third book that Casa San José has published.  The authors and illustrators of the several short stories in these colorful works are the children themselves.  

For the production of Travesías y Sueños, and so that they can share their lives with us in a subtle and creative way, we gave the floor to each of these boys, who before had been in the streets. This creative process was initiated by transforming their life stories into fantastic tales that were developed in a collaborative workshop in which the boys of la Casa became the creators and protagonists (main characters) of the stories.