Monday, April 27, 2015

The "other" sheep in Christ's Flock: Daily Mass Homily--Monday, April 27th, 2015


(Listen to this homily here).

            I hope the Gospel sounded familiar this morning—it was the exact same one we heard yesterday.  I preached about the Good Shepherd yesterday—today I would like to focus on another line.
            Jesus says, “And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice.  So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.”
            We can’t underestimate what Jesus was saying here.  If you subscribe to science, humans have been around for 200,000.  Thus for 198,000 years God was building up his chosen family through his chosen people—the Jews.  The Jewish worldview divided every person into Jew or non-Jew—Gentile.  What Jesus is saying is that there were others “not of this fold” and he was opening the doors of relationship with God to all humanity.
            I don’t think anyone here is of Jewish descent, so consider what this means for us!
            We see Peter experiencing this radical and novel shift: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane…As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon [the Gentiles] as it had upon us at the beginning…If then God gave [the Gentiles] the same gift he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God.”
            Thank God for Jesus’ mission to bring us all into one flock.  Had he not, most of us would be nothing more than Gentiles!
            We give God thanks and praise for sending us his son to be our Good Shepherd—may we continue to be faithful followers in this flock that crosses all humanity.

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