Cycle (B) 6th Sunday of Easter

 Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 Jn 4:7-10 ; Jn 15:9-17

In 1941, the German Army began to round up Jewish people in Lithuania. Thousands of Jews were murdered. But one German soldier objected to their murder. He was Sergeant Anton Schmid. Through his assistance, the lives of at least 250 Jews were spared. He managed to hide them, find food, and supply them with forged papers. Schmid himself was arrested in early 1942 for saving these lives. He was tried and executed in 1942. It took Germany almost sixty years to honour the memory of this man, Schmid. Said Germany's Defence Minister in 2000, saluting him, "Too many bowed to the threats and temptations of the dictator Hitler, and too few found the strength to resist. But Sergeant Anton Schmid did resist."

This is the central theme of today's Gospel. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." The hero Schmid went beyond what even Jesus encouraged. He laid down his life for strangers. (Fr. James Gilhooley). 

We are chosen to be the ambassadors of God's love. But, we live in such a way that we declare that we are sent out into the world to compete with one

Cycle (B) 5th Sunday of Easter

 Acts 9: 26-31; 1 Jn 3: 18-24; Jn 15: 1-8 

The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde is a touching short story. The first character is a boy. This boy is sad because a girl promised to dance with him on condition that he brought her red roses, but he did not find any red rose; there were white roses and yellow roses.

A Nightingale understood the feeling of the Student started to fly until she saw a Rose-tree. She told him to give her a red rose, and she promised, in exchange, to sing her sweetest song, but the Rose-tree told her that the winter had chilled his veins and the frost had nipped his buds, so he could not give her a red rose.

The Rose-tree gave her a solution: he told her that if she wanted a red rose, she had to build it out of music by moonlight and stain it with her own heart's blood. She had to sing to the Rose-tree with her breast against a thorn; the thorn would pierce her heart and her life-blood would flow into the Rose-tree veins.

At night, the Nightingale went to the Rose-tree and set her breast against the thorn. She sang all night long. She pressed closer and closer against the thorn until the thorn finally touched her heart and she felt a fierce pang of pain. The

Cycle (B) 4th Sunday of Easter

Acts 4:8-12; 1 Jn 3:1-2; Jn 10:11-18

 There is the story of a particular census taker who went to a poor home in the mountains of West Virginia to gather information. He asked the mother how many children she had. The woman began, "Well, there is Rosie, and Billy, and Lewella, Susie, Harry, and Jeffrey. There's Johnny, and Harvey, and our dog, Willie. The census taker interrupted her aid said: "No, ma'am, that's not necessary. I only need the humans. "Ah," she said. And began to pronounce the names of the children. Once again, the census taker interrupted her and said, "No, ma'am, I just need the numbers." The old woman replied, "But I don't know them by numbers. I only know them by name." In today's gospel Jesus the good shepherd says that he knows his sheep by name.

It is something alien to the thought and practice of the modern man. The modern man's approach to his fellow beings is depicted well in the poem