SHEEP For the hearers of John’s Gospel the image of a shepherd will have invoked a whole world of meaning. Being in charge of a flock of animals and making sure they survived was not just a job but a way of life. The well- being of your flock and your own well-being were intimately connected.
Today’s Gospel speaks to me of the closeness of relationship that Jesus wants with each one of us. Like a shepherd, he is prepared to go to any lengths to ensure that we are safe and well fed. At its very best this is also a metaphor which the Church uses for leadership. It’s easy to hear this Gospel and see the ways in which the Church has failed in her leadership.
Perhaps today we could apply the metaphor to ourselves.
How have we shepherded the people in our care? How have we ensured that people had the ‘food’ and ‘water’ that they needed? How have we brought them to safe pasture?
At our Easter Vigil service at Turvey Abbey we have always used John’s account of the Resurrection. The text is sung and, as a consequence, I almost know it by heart. The music swells when Mary reaches the moment of recognition and says ‘Rabunni’. It’s as if all time stands still in that moment of encounter. There’s a tangible stillness in our candle-lit chapel, while outside dawn is gently breaking.
Commentators draw our attention to the intimacy of the encounter between the Risen Christ and Mary. Her use of the Aramaic word for teacher or master speaks of the quality and nature of her devotion to Christ. I find myself drawn to this model of the interaction between disciple and teacher. It speaks to me of a dynamic which empowers.
As a Benedictine the master disciple relationship is familiar to me. St Benedict starts his Rule with the following verses:
‘Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice…’
Every single day I have the opportunity to open the ear of my heart and to live as a disciple of the Risen Christ and St Benedict.
How can you live as a disciple of the Risen Christ?
‘Let us give thanks to the Father, who has QUALIFIED us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.’
During Eastertide we are given the opportunity to explore the richness of our faith heritage. Central to the Paschal Mystery is the truth that it is through God’s initiative that we are redeemed. God has rescued us and considered us worthy to inherit every grace and blessing.
We can spend a lifetime trying to grasp that this is true. We are not accustomed to having something lavished upon us. It’s so easy for us to approach life in a transactional way where we calculate our own actions toward others and hope for something in return. These are not God’s ways.
Christ’s death and resurrection opens for us a promise that no one can take from us. Eastertide invites us to live in the full truth of this promise.
‘Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you.
‘Oh, sister, it’s so peaceful here in the monastery.’ We hear this very often and, of course, there is a good deal of truth in this. We are a low stimulus environment, with things ordered as well as they can be. The rhythm of the liturgy plays a very important part in creating the peace that people feel when they visit. Hail, rain or shine we gather to pray the psalmody. Monastics have this remarkable ability to carry on with the liturgy even if there has been some ‘outside’ disturbance; loud rain, a low flying aircraft or even a power cut won’t put us off. It’s almost as if we have a collective inner equilibrium.
St Benedict puts a great deal of store by the peace and good order of the monastery. In his Chapter On the Cellarer he urges his monks to make their requests to the cellarer reasonable and at the proper times. The job can be demanding and touches all areas of monastery life. St Benedict makes wise provision:
If the community is rather large, he should be given helpers, that with their assistance he may calmly perform the duties of his office. Necessary items or to be requested and given at the proper times, so that no one may be disquieted or distressed in the house of God.
What Benedict seems to be saying is that everyone has a part to play in creating a peaceful environment.
When Jesus speaks of peace, he speaks of it as a gift. This gift is to be internalised. You can’t force someone to receive a gift. A person needs to pick it up and make it their own in some way. Jesus waits for us each to do this. Much like Benedict’s monks, we can help each other ‘so that no one may be disquieted or distressed in the house of God.’
How can you bring Christ’s peace to others today?
(John 14:27-31, Tuesday, Fifth Week of Eastertide)
‘OBEDIENCE to God comes before obedience to men; it was the God of our ancestors who raised up Jesus, but it was you who had him executed by hanging on a tree.’
I have lived for more than 30 years in a Benedictine monastery. It’s impossible to live in a monastery without developing a sound understanding of obedience. Benedictine Life is a search for God where obedience to God, the Rule of St Benedict and your superior are all of a piece. As you take those first steps on the monastic journey you begin to learn how to distinguish your own will from God’s will. In fact, you never stop learning this. This learning can only take place if you are prepared to listen deeply.
This message in Acts has an uncompromising feel. This verse is of course very easily misused. Many things can be justified as obedience to God or faithfulness to Scripture. How we discern the right path takes us into the realms of conscience and the Church teaching of an informed conscience. This requires a level of maturity in our faith. None of this can be forced.
Where in your own life are you conscious of your obedience to God?
(Acts 5:+27-33, Thursday, Second Week of Eastertide)
I started writing this reflection in 2025, the day after Pope Francis’ funeral. I was struck at the time by how this short piece of scripture encapsulates the mysteries of our Faith and especially the hope of resurrection. That Pope Francis died when the whole Church was celebrating the Paschal mystery seemed very fitting.
Mercy was a leitmotif of Pope Francis’ preaching and his actions. This was a challenge to some and a huge blessing to others. Peter in this text shows us that our new birth begins with mercy. He does not say we earned it, discovered it, or built it. He insists it is given. For Francis, God’s mercy was a living force that recreates us. In this sense, new birth is not self-improvement; it is re-creation. We are born again not by trying harder but by allowing ourselves to be loved first.
How can you be open to God’s promise of new birth this Eastertide?
During Eastertide I always try to imagine myself into the world of the Early Church with all its enthusiasm and vigour. It doesn’t take long before I meet stories that involve some form of dispute:
It is obvious to everybody in Jerusalem that a MIRACLE has been worked through them in public, and we cannot deny it.
In these verses we are confronted with the reality that the disciples were very ordinary men, not part of the establishment and without any pedigree or lineage of learning. In this moment, the healed man, is standing beside Peter and John as a living testimony of their power. No theological debate or political pressure could change what people had seen with their own eyes. He was healed. And that healing didn’t just restore a body, it disrupted an entire thought world.
In our daily lives we are unlikely to encounter the miraculous as we find it in these stories. The power and work of God comes to us in altogether more subtle ways. These stories challenge me to open to the small ways in which God can make a change in my life. It’s easy for things to go unnoticed.
How can you be more open this Eastertide to God’s power to change and heal?
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
Few of us will be called upon to lay down our lives for our friends. Though we probably all hope that if a big sacrifice of some sort is asked of us we will have the courage to respond.
During the pandemic and now in the ongoing areas of conflict in our world, we witness the love that is prepared to put others first. Some people are capable of showing incredible bravery and risk their lives in order to save others. Every great act and every small act shows us a new dimension of love.
At the heart of our Christian story we have not a philosophy or a set of principles, but a human being who embodied selfless service and self-emptying love. Christ is our pattern for every part of our lives. Often on the feast of a martyr we sing ‘The Martyrs Living Now with Christ’, a hymn written by Stanbrook Abbey. This verse always stands out for me:
No one has ever measured love Or weighed it in their hand, But God who knows the inmost heart Gives them the promised land.
It’s God who knows the depth of our love and our willingness to give. It’s God who sees the bigger picture of our lives and how we try to image Christ.
Let us always remember the people in our lives who quietly and unobstrusively have shown us this self-emptying love.
When we pick up and read any of the four Gospels we are being drawn into the world of the Kingdom of God. There’s an inbuilt dynamic of something which is here already, but not yet fulfilled. In Jesus we see what is means for a human being to fully embody the values of the Kingdom. Every word Jesus speaks, every story he tells, every personal encounter he makes and every stand he takes tells us something about the Kingdom.
When Luke tells the story of the Early Church in the Acts of the Apostles we are once again invited into the world of Kingdom.
They put fresh heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in the faith. ‘We all have to experience many hardships’, they said ‘before we enter the KINGDOM of God’.
As we read through its pages we learn that the Kingdom is not some distant utopia that we stumble into by chance. It is a promise. One that comes with a journey marked by trials, choices, and perseverance. These verses reminds us that when hardships come they are not a detour from God’s Kingdom but often part of the very road that leads to it. These words are not a warning but a shared truth and a unifying call.
The Kingdom then isn’t just something we’re waiting to enter at the end of life, it breaks into our present reality every time we choose love over fear, hope over despair, faith over doubt. It’s our hope that every hardship we endure with grace shapes us more and more into people who reflect the values of that Kingdom.
Who are the people whose words can give you a ‘fresh heart’? Who are the people in your own life who model the Kingdom for you?
‘If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete.’
During Eastertide we hear a good deal of John’s Gospel. The themes of keeping Christ’s commandments and remaining in his love weave in and out of each other. In today’s text the element of ‘joy’ is added.
I associate pure joy with small children and this in turn reminds me of this passage from the Tales of the Hasidim:
Said the maggid to Rabbi Zusya, his disciple: “I cannot teach you the principles of service. But a little child and a thief can show you what they are:
From the child you can learn three things:
— He is merry for no particular reason; — Never for a moment he is idle; — When he needs something, he demands it vigorously.
Being merry for no particular reason is one of the special gifts of childhood. The joy of one young child spreads so easily to others and to adults too. I remember as a child feeling that I might burst with joy and excitement. When you reach adulthood that joy takes on a different shape. It isn’t nearly as frequent and there might be some foreboding mixed in too. The idea Jesus might find his joy in us is something that I don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about. That Jesus wants our ‘joy to be complete’ speaks to me of the depths of the Paschal mystery: every joy and every sorrow that we experience unites us ever closer to Christ.
