One Shepherd, one people!

WORD 2day: Monday, 4th week in Easter time

May 9, 2022: Acts 11: 1-18; John 10: 1-10

We have been reflecting throughout last week, that people listened to the Word, they were touched by it and they joined the disciples and they became a church. A very important point that we need to note in the history of the Church, the people of God is, that the real birth of the Church was only when the Gentiles listened and accepted the Word.

St. Paul declares in his letter to the Galatians, "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28). It is when the whole people are made heirs to the promise made to Abraham, it is only when every one was made into one fold, under one Shepherd, Christ Jesus - the real Church was born.

The challenge is alive until today, to remain one flock, one fold, one people. To stay clear of all discrimination within the Church, to choose not to conform to the standards of the world but to be renewed in the Spirit of the Lord and to put on the mind of Christ - constantly, on a daily basis we are invited to renew our faithfulness to the One shepherd and be transformed more and more into worthy members of His flock. 

This would mean that we grow up from our tendency to discriminate, from our prejudices, from our insensitivity to the other and from our mindset of looking at diversity as a difficulty. Positively, it would mean that we grow in love, not as an act or attitude of condescension, but as a genuine sense of solidarity and fraternity in the One Lord, One Shepherd, One Christ our Saviour.