FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (25TH APRIL 2010)
THE GOOD SHEPHERD

“I divide the world in three classes, the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen,
The overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens” - Nicholas Murray Butler-

“I have made you light of the nations, so that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth” Act 13:4-7

Dear my beloved at heart,
After the fall of man, God in his wisdom decided on a plan of restoration. The history of salvation leaves no doubt that the people of Israel were the few whom salvation was to come first, and from them and by them it was spread to the rest of the people of the world.
It was a free choice, a free gift of God. The Israelites were destined to be a light for the nations, so that salvation might reach the ends of the earth through them.

Theologians sometimes ask themselves these questions:

a) Was God obliged to create man? Whatever the answer may be, it’s further asked
b) Given that God had created man, was he obliged to give him higher life than the life connatural to his nature? The third question crowns it all: When man lost the higher life God had given him, was God obliged to redeem him?

These questions are interesting, they mostly concern speculative minds. We know for certain that God created man, elevated him to a higher and nobler life of grace, and redeemed him, purely out of his own goodness. There could not be any obligation whatsoever. All these are gifts gratuitously given to man.

The consideration we pick out of today’s lessons is that man can refuse God’s gifts; man can reject salvation and abandon himself to his own whims. The Jews are a shocking example of this: Time and again God had sent prophets to them, to remind them of their unique privilege and of their privileged position. The same prophets had kept on reminding the Israelites of the Messiah. He was to rise from among them, to bring salvation to them, and from them to bring it to the entire world. They heard the message, but refused to accept it.

Then the promised redeemer did at last come. He lived in their midst. He taught as one having power, he supported his teaching with signs, i.e. miracles. He too even him: the Israelites rejected and put him to a shameful death. Finally the Apostles came to the Jews with arguments, new proofs of the messiah. They appealed to them to repent of their sins and return to their God in sincerity of heart. The Jews only “blasphemed and contradicted everything Paul said” (Acts 13:46).

Dear brethren, the lot of the Jews can be ours also. What happened to them can happen to us now. Like them we also have been chosen. We are the chosen people of the New Law and our choice is purely a free gift of God.

It’s he who gave you those parents who brought you up in this faith. It’s he who gave you those conscious teachers who continued the work of the parents, who watered the seed planted in your Baptism, who inculcated in you the truth of your faith.
It’s God who in his providence placed you in the various places, schools, parishes etc. and placed you in the hands of various people, to help you, not only to preserve that faith but also to grow in it.

Often we may appreciate daily more and more the gifts of Faith which God has gratuitously given us. Let us pray that we may grow in our faith and preserve in love, so that we remove further away the danger of rejecting our Lord and being rejected by him.

“To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than give it” – Churton Collins


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Padre Joseph Nyamunga Mubiru
P.O.BOX 15318-00509
NAIROBI-KENYA
BLOG: http://nyamusus.blogspot.com
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