The liturgical year, of course, ends with the feast of Christ the King. This particular cycle, the AA@ cycle, the King is portrayed as shepherd and judge. These images, of course, have to be made personal. That Jesus is our shepherd means He=s shepherding you and me and us together as well. The shepherd is observant about the flock, he pursues those who go astray. He strengthens the weak by sometimes carrying them on his shoulders. He finds places for feeding and so on. So he has initiative. But this has to be real, concrete and personal. So in the life of Rose Canada, she=s a single mother, she and her husband separated a number of years before, and she is taking care of two daughters and a grandson. And then one day she discovered that she lost her job. The daughters and the grandson were dependent on her both emotionally and economically. It began to really come home to her when she began to realize that she had no money to pay for the rent and that she would be evicted. Beside that she was thinking how could anyone possibly let her in another apartment, she had no job.

        She was a good Catholic and she was practicing trying to put the Scripture into effect in everyday life. The passage she was working on was: Seek first the kingdom of God and everything will be added to you. So she reflected on her situation and thought, well the Lord really wants me to take care of my daughters and so I will trust him. Then when she went out she decided she was going to be honest with whomever she engaged, landlords or landladies, depending on where she was going. So finally she went to the town and knocked on the door and this landlady shows up, here it=s a friend of hers from time passed, and so they basically got into a long conversation and she told her situation to her exactly as it was. Before they left her friend said to her, Aall you have to do is pay $100 a month.@ Well that was a great relief to her, of course. But then when she got home the following week she got a check from the government owing her money from her pay. Then within another week she got a part time job just to cover all that they needed at the time. Rose came out of that experience saying, Athe gospel is real.@ It may sound like this is an easy thing to do but obviously it=s not. Because we=re going through the book of Genesis in Bible study and Jacob goes east to Haran to look for a wife and trusting in God. In that process of twenty years the Lord not only provides a wife and family for him and children, but makes him prosperous. And yet Jacob does not call God his God. He still calls him the God of my father Isaac or the God of Isaac. And God has to remind him in one of the times that he encounters him that He=s the God of Bethel, that is, the God who encountered him before he went to Haran and who promised him that He would make him prosperous, that He would make him a family, and that He would bring him back. So Jacob in twenty years didn't realize, didn't take to heart, that God was his God.

        So, if we acknowledge Christ as shepherd then we have to look in our life and see where He is shepherding us. And thereby come to know that He is indeed shepherd of your life. But the second aspect is also very important. Because wether you like it or not, wether you even admit it or not, you have a unique freedom, a unique capacity to love. And you=re not going to be judged by what kind of Abbot you had. You=re not going to be judged by what kind of job you had in your community. You=re going to be judged, as I will be too, by wether or not I exercised that love as God intended it. Namely, first of all, to give yourself to Jesus and because of that to give yourself to the whole Jesus, to your brothers and sisters. It=s clear in the gospel. And yet this too, has to be ordinary. It doesn=t have to be extravagant. Sometimes the most important thing we do is simply pay attention to someone=s problems. That=s all. Just stand there, not with our feet moving, but really be there and listen to them and give a reflection back to them with the truth of their situation, maybe a word of encouragement that may be enough.

        I=m just thinking as I=m saying this of a couple that owned a religious goods store and they had in the window a beautiful crystal statue of the Blessed Mother and Francisco came in, he was a neighbor kid that they knew, and they knew he was on drugs. And he said, AI would like to purchase that crystal statue for my girlfriend." And they knew he was on drugs and they thought about it and said, AWell, we really can=t sell it to you it=s a display piece we don=t have it for sale but, well, come back tomorrow.@ So the two of them talked about it and they thought that this is a chance for them to reach out to Francisco. So he came back and they offered it for sale but then Francisco said he didn=t have any money. So they said, Ait=s o.k. We know you and we know you=re family we=ll put it on credit.@ Well as time went by, Francisco didn’t=t come back and pay. But then in about a month=s time his father showed up and paid the bill and said he apologizes for Francisco not paying the bill. It=s not that he didn=t want to. Since January he was in the hospital and he=s still there.@ Then about a week or so later they found out he died. And what was their reaction? Their reaction was they were so happy that the Lord allowed them to give him the opportunity to do something good for his neighbor. Ordinary. So we have plenty of ordinary opportunities to exercise our charity for each other. So if we want to really face this closure of the last year, the liturgical year, we need to really reflect on these two strong images the church gives us. That Jesus is in fact our Shepherd. The Shepherd of St. Andrew=s Abbey, the church, of course, but each of us and also our judge. He will ask us what are we doing with the great capacity of love that He has given us.

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