Until Jesus Christ came I would be considered a gentile. Not that I am uncircumcised but that I would not have been accepted by the Jews. But as Jesus says in today's Gospel reading:
He is "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. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.”
This is a truly important Gospel reading for those of us Catholics who don't descend from the house of Abraham. We are only taken into the fold by the Grace of Lord Jesus Christ. He decided we were worthy. He placed our salvation at the same importance as the people of Israel. We are accepted by the Lord God, through the Son. We only need to believe and be true to God's Commands and the Jesus's Commands and we will be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
God didn't say the Jews weren't worthy, they were and are. He just decided that because of the great example that the Jews had given that all men could be worthy.
We Catholics owe so much to the Israelites, for if not by their steadfast belief in the Lord God, we might never have had the chance of knowing Jesus and being accepted by Him.
I feel too many Christians place blame on the Jews of Jesus's time for His murder. Jesus was the only one who was capable of allowing His death. He did so freely for us, and to lay blame upon men for His death is to take away the Glory of God. We should consider, even Judas was playing the role God set out for him. What choice did he truly have in any of it. I honestly believe Judas is in Heaven and is loved by God. The pains would have been excruciating for him to turn his back on the Lord, whom he loved. But what choice did he have when it was all by God's design.
Monday, April 14, 2008
God is Love
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1 comments:
Your view on Judas only erupts in our time though which is a time in which our sermons also rarely mention hell. But Christ Himself spoke very severely of Judas even when Christ was speaking to not us...but His Father: "those whom those gave me I guarded and not one of them perished but the son of perdition."
Be careful that you are not finding a way around what Christ said of Judas in several places...none of which were hopeful... "but woe unto him through whom the son of man is betrayed for it were better for that man had he never been born."
That last one cannot be said of someone who eventually reaches Heaven...because if you are eventually going to reach Heaven, it is better that you were born.
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