Jesus washes Judas' feet

    In John:12 we witnessed Mary, the contemplative sister of Lazarus, anointing the feet of Jesus with a costly perfume which she no longer needed for her brother's corpse. In the next chapter of this gospel Jesus washes the feet of Judas knowing full well what was in Judas' heart. 

    A story is told along a simular vein about the great Rabbi Gamaliel, who was head of the Sanhedrin and defended the disciples ( Acts 5:34-40) and became an influential figure in later Judaism as well. At a banquet, he got up and served food and drink to several rabbis who were of much less stature than he, which shocked them. A debate ensued about whether the great rabbi could set aside his own honor and serve the others, with some initially rejecting his service, just as Peter rejected Jesus' offer to wash his feet. But then they considered how Abraham, who, even though he was the greatest of his generation, ran to serve what looked like three lowly wanderers (Gen. 18:8); and how God during the exodus from Egypt, walked in front of the Jewish people. (Ex. 13:21). Ordinarily a king would walk or ride in the rear of the party. Given these precidents they determined that Gamaliel could do table service for those of lesser stature.

    Then there was Paul, a disciple of Gamaliel, who expounded on the humility of God in the very person of Jesus. “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, although being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but rather made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Phillipians 2:5-11) There is a reflection of the incarnation and redemption of mankind in Jesus' washing of Judas' feet.

Spiritual Exercises for Lent

On Ash Wednesday a couple of Jesuits will launch a blog that will run through about Divine Mercy Sunday. On it, they plan to post daily reflections based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola so that by the end, one who reads it regularly will have gotten a basic introduction to the whole of the Exercises. For those looking to deepen their prayer life over Lent, this might be a good site to visit. You can find it at the link below. http://sedaily.wordpress.com/   


You can get  general information about lent at http://marysaggies.blogspot.com/2010/02/lent-2010.html

Good Shepherd

Wonderful pictures as well!

The Shepherd is the Lamb

As often happens, the current of Sunday's conversation carried me into morning mass where Christ revealed Himself in a new, unexpected way. The Good Shepherd becomes the Lamb of God. He lays himself down to be devoured by wolves, not in the form of a shepherd, but as one of the flock -- the smallest, most vulnerable, most innocent among us. I was more horrified by this than I have ever been before in contemplating Christ's sacrifice. As sheep myself, in my imagination, I watched in helpless anguish as the lamb was torn to pieces and died.

The flock is spared. The flock is free to live without fear. But we can't forget the crisis that brought us our salvation -- neither the danger we were in nor the price that was paid. It seems to me that knowing the enormity of our Shepherd's sacrifice we can't help but live in a state of mourning that is at the same time grateful, relieved, jubilant. In other words, as Ron noted in his posting last week, a state of paradox.

The Mystery of Faith also took on new meaning when contemplating Christ as Shepherd:
"The Shepherd has died, the Shepherd has risen, the Shepherd will come again."

The same for Christ as Lamb.

The Shepherd as Gate

    A Shepherd' s  life was exposed for all to see.  They literally gave up large portions of their lives for their flocks. Sheep are near-sighted and eat constantly. The shepherd has to live out in the wild,  protecting them from harmful terrain and from predators as they ate, mated and played.
  At night he herded them into stone enclosures that were open only on one side. Since there was usually no fixed gate for these pens, the shepherd would lay his body across the entrance. He became the barrier against harm, putting his life on the line for the sheep.

 St.Augustine's homily on John 10 can be found here http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf107.iii.xlvi.html

The Good Shepherd

     When Father Damien in a sermon used the memorable phrase, “ We lepers,” his listeners knew that the membrane of health that had hitherto divided him from them was gone, and that he was now one of them indeed. [They began to appreciate the incarnation of the Pascal Mystery happening in their midst.] Robert Louis Stevenson and thousands of others  have been awestruck by such devotion.  A not quite comparable event might be an oncologist addressing his staff and patients by saying, “Those of us with cancer.”
         It is easy to forget that the drama of human existence arising from Original Sin is aimed at curing death.
      Among the humbling satisfactions of aging is that one realizes truths he has been uttering all along. We can know things without, for all that, realizing them. The words are there, but the meaning, the connection  has been dulled by repetition and habit. And then, surprisingly, the penny drops.  The transition from notional to real knowledge is in many senses the essence of the intellectual life. Getting to know what we already know, but for real.
       Imagine Father Damien saying, “We mortals.” Where would be the drama in that, the sense of a new companionship?   Notionally, mortality is a pretty dull fact. But it is a feature of life that certain poignant situations bring home to us its reality. It is no longer notional. What then?
       Like Damien, we go on doing what we were doing. Yet everything is different.  We are then, hopefully,  in some true and final sense,  in the arms of that Good Shepherd.    - taken from We Lepers by Ralph McInerny