Hello Everyone,
1. Happy Cinco de Mayo!
2. Just a reminder that online giving is available at: https://ourladyvt.org/online-giving
3. Work is now well underway for clearing a way for a drainage system to be installed around the rectory in Bethel. If you notice the piles of dirt and rocks, that's what it's for. The drainage pipes will go in, we'll backfill with rocks to allow maximum drainage, and then top everything off.
Reflection:
(http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050520.cfm)
The Gospel today finishes off the section on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. It beings, however, with the Jews presenting a pressing question. They say, How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. But, in his typical fashion, Jesus does some conversational jujitsu. He sidesteps the question. He gets around to it after a while, but in a fashion that feels evasive. Throughout my years growing up and in seminary, this evasiveness of Jesus has always struck me. It always seemed a bit odd. Why not respond plainly, if they are asking directly?
Just the other day I received a very helpful contribution to the question. It was written by Dr. Austin Farrer, a cleric in the Anglican church in the mid-1900's. His insight is that the Jews only seem to ask, and Jesus only seems to evade the same question. In fact, however, they are getting at slightly different questions, and so talk past each other. When the Jews ask Jesus who he is, they are wondering about his independent status. Who does he claim to be? Who does he make himself to be? Was this power of his divine or not? That's their question. But when Jesus seeks to clarify who he is, he's after something different. He would rather insist that he does not have an independent status, that he does not make himself, that his power is not really his own. Rather he emphasizes that he has received everything from his Father, He must do the Father's will, speak the Father's words, gather the Father's sheep. His point is that he is "God from God, light from light, true God from true God" as the Nicene creed declares. He receives everything from the Father.
It seem to me that this goes a long way to understanding the reluctance Jesus shows in response to his Jewish inquisitors. To answer their question directly would be to confirm their erroneous presupposition. To answer directly would be to confirm their error that he is something on his own, that he seeks to independently establish his own status. Nothing could be further from the truth. And so he cannot answer directly. He needs to bring them around to the deeper truth, the Trinitarian mystery. He must tell them, in a word, that he is the Son. He is God from God. Jesus is who he is because of the Father. Outside of the Father He is not. The Father and I are one, he says at the end of the Gospel today.
What does any of this have to do with any of us? Well, we constantly say that Jesus is our model. We are disciples or followers of Jesus. What does that mean? It means that who Jesus is should be the pattern for who we are. And Jesus tells us that he is the Son. He is from the Father. He receives everything from the Father. So too our walk of faith, hope, and love, is receptive. We receive everything from the Father, or else we are nothing at all. Or better, we receive everything from the Father, because we are nothing at all. Without me, you can do nothing. Jesus' unwillingness to claim anything of his own apart from the Father points to our own path to true holiness, true Catholicism, true religiosity: to claim nothing on our own apart from God, and to receive everything that we are and accomplish from Him.
God bless you all!
Fr. Rensch