Today, the fifth Sunday after Easter, the gospel reading at Traditional Catholic Mass continues on from last week — Jesus explaining to his disciples, at their Last Supper together, what will soon happen.

* * *

Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.

Until now you have not asked anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but I will tell you clearly about the Father.

On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.

I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.

His disciples said, “Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of speech. Now we realise that you know everything and that you do not need to have anyone question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God.”

* * *

Jesus reminds them that he will soon leave them because he belongs in heaven and is merely visiting this earth.

This is a message for us. We, too, are just visiting this place. Soon enough we’ll be gone — simply pilgrims passing through.

Saint Teresa of Avila was one person who never forgot where she really belonged. In her characteristic terse fashion she described our time on earth as “a night spent in a bad inn”.

* * *

About prayer:

Think of a happy family where a child grows up surrounded by love. He is welcome to ask for whatever he wants.

His requests are always answered.

He may ask for sweets and be given vegetables.

But he still knows he is loved.

We ask God for things and do not always receive them. This can be very puzzling and even seem unfair.

The Christian faith reassures us that we are loved nonetheless.

Today is traditionally “Good Shepherd Sunday”.

Last Sunday’s gospel was about difficulties in believing, as exemplified by the “doubting” apostle, Saint Thomas.

This Sunday’s theme is how those who do believe are completely dependent on God.

* * *

Today’s gospel reading:

“Jesus said, ‘I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd, and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine, and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.’” (St John’s Gospel, chapter 10)

* * *

Sheep tended by shepherds in Bible times – and flocks droved by drovers today – nothing has changed.

Sheep are notoriously stupid. They don’t know where to go. They follow each other into danger . . . .

They are only safe if they go where the shepherd guides them. Sheep wandering off on their own are liable soon to be dead sheep.

We are like that. Our only hope is to be totally obedient to God, our Shepherd.

* * *

That’s why Mary MacKillop was so great.

She gave her life generously in obedience to God and his Church. Obedient herself, she demanded obedience from the Sisters in her Order.

Those who label her a “rebel” are calling a good person evil.

Don’t do that.

When the enemies of Christ accused him of being in league with the devil, he warned that such talk is a sin God will never forgive. (St Mark’s Gospel, chapter 3)

Those who today teach “religious freedom”, encouraging others to wander away from Catholic tradition – can they expect God to forgive them?

They are in strife, no matter whether they are celebrities, or members of the Church hierarchy, or whoever they are.

Today is called “Low Sunday” — in contrast with the high drama of Easter, celebrated last Sunday.

Last Sunday’s gospel readings described the rising of Jesus from the dead.

Today’s gospel describes the difficulties one believer had in believing it.

The apostle Thomas, absent when the risen Christ first visited the disciples, said he would not believe “unless I see in his hands the print of the nails . . . .”

The gospel continues, “After eight days, his disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being closed, and stood in their midst, and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Bring here thy finger, and see my hands . . . and be not faithless, but believing.’ Thomas answered, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.’  (Saint John’s gospel, chapter 20) 

* * *

Poor doubting Thomas.

And aren’t we like him – tempted by doubts?

It is a sin to actively doubt, but it is not a sin to have difficulties with belief.

Our responses to such difficulties must be to pray, asking God for the supernatural gift of faith — and to spend time in the company of those who do believe.

* * *

We must strive to make Australia a place where faith is encouraged, and doubts defeated.

Mary MacKillop devoted her life to this.

Blessed Mary hated those aspects of Australia which made faith more difficult.

She told Pope Pius IX in 1885 how her Josephite Sisters were “daily more and more convinced of the evils to their faith to which Australian children are exposed on account of the wicked secular education that is now general.”

What would she say about today’s Australian government schools, where teachers are forbidden to mention God?

And today’s Australian “Catholic” schools where students learn that one religion is as good as another — and that one can find salvation outside the Church and without its sacraments?

Her response would, one suspects, blister this page.

Edmund Burke, 18th century Scottish philosopher and politician, famously said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Those words have recently been quoted again in the context of a young American girl, so taunted and bullied by fellow students, that she was driven to suicide. (www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=371163&src=)

Sometimes it is so easy to turn a blind eye to evil until it is too late. Our motives are often too mixed.

Our desire should be always to see all things, persons and events in the light of Almighty God . . . to see them as God himself sees them.

* * *

Read Saint Mark’s gospel, chapter 14: Jesus is praying in the garden the night before his crucifixion.

Picture it in your mind as you read.

Never again will you doubt that those words were written by an eyewitness, actually present when it happened.

But none of us can appreciate fully what Our Lord went through that night.

He was pure goodness — for us, evil lives at the very starting-place of our every thought and action.

If you or I were the only person ever to have lived, Christ’s suffering would have been necessary to redeem us from our sin.

No other man ever understood the world’s evil as Jesus, God-incarnate, did.

* * *

That is what salvation means — seeing the world as Christ sees it — seeing, as he did, the horribleness of evil and sin.

Once we see that, we’ll be able to take that first and most vital step in fighting against the evil in the world – getting rid of the sin in our own lives.

God will give the necessary strength.

If you went to midnight Mass last night, you have been through a very meaningful experience.

First a fire was lit and blessed — in the dark outside — creating light where there was no light.

The Mass readings  included the full-length Genesis account of the Creation, when the light was switched  on in our universe.

At Creation, man was given light for his soul, God’s grace. Within days, the Bible says, disobedience took over, and that light was gone.

* * *

Anyway, the fire at the church was used to light a candle to be venerated because it represents Jesus Christ, “the Light of the World”.

The light of the world is the Sun, you say? Clang. That’s wrong. The Sun will be a black hole soon enough, sending out no more life-giving rays.

Human beings are immortal, soul-wise. We need a light for our souls that will be there forever.

That means God.

* * *

God is an interventionist God. What other kind of God could there be? He intervened by entering our world in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.

But Christ isn’t here now, you say?

Isn’t he?

At Mass, we can receive the Body and Blood, the Soul and the Divinity of Christ.

The Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, is the continuing incarnation of God upon earth. We must be careful when we feel tempted to criticise the Church.

Yes, people in it have molested children. Yes, there are others who could have done more to stop it happening, and didn’t.

The fact remains that it is God’s will that we come to him through that same Roman Catholic Church. If it is an unworthy Church in many ways, that should just suit us. We ourselves are unworthy of God’s goodness.

* * *

The Christian gospel is perfect. The Sacraments are perfect.

If you think the Church is not good enough for you because of appalling things happening in it, then you are suffering from a disease called “pride”.

You would do well to get down on your knees and stay there until God has removed it from your heart.

Is Holy Saturday merely a breathing-space between intensely emotional Good Friday highlighting the murderous degeneracy of our human nature — and the Resurrection joy of Easter Sunday?

No. Holy Saturday has a unique message of its own.

* * *

Holy Saturday is a day to spend, if possible, in recollection and silence in the presence of Our Lord’s lifeless body in the tomb.

A day to remember that Christ’s willingness to die, and the way he died, was a victory in itself — even before he rose victoriously from the grave.

A spiritual victory:

 *  remember how, amidst the worst that the devil and his greedy, power-crazed human servants could do — he had forgiven.

 *  Our Lord forgave his executioners — also his cowardly denier, Saint Peter.  

 *  he would willingly have forgiven his betrayer — but Judas was already dead.

 *  although surrounded by so much evil, Jesus had still thought of others — especially his mother.

* * *

From the gospels:

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him . . . and Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”

When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold thy son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold thy mother.”

* * *

 O good and gentle Jesus, you gave yourself to us as a ransom for our redemption . . . .

 Grant that we, unworthy though we be, may come to resemble you in your grace, your forgiveness and your love.