Just like in our Gospel yesterday, our Gospel today talks about Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Jesus as our Good Shepherd is juxtaposed to the message we hear in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, which addresses the issue of the Gentiles being excluded from God’s plan of salvation. This was a big issue facing the Early Church, one that perhaps we don’t quite understand today. It is easy to make judgments against certain groups of people, isn’t it. We sometimes think that the group we are in is blessed or chosen by the Lord in a special way. We can view God’s mercy in a similar way, in wanting the rules enforced when they apply to other people and other situations, but wanting mercy when the rules are applied to us and to our situations. The psalmist states today: “Athirst is my soul for the living God.” Can that apply to everyone, or just a select group of people? Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, states this: “The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” May we open our hearts to God – to his presence in our lives and to his love and mercy – both for us and for others.
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