Mary, Star of the Sea 

   Church

The Gospel is from John 14:23-29. In the first reading at today's Mass, we were given the story of the first General Council ever held by the Church authorities. There we saw that a vital decision was reached through the guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit. "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and ours" (Acts 15:28) was how the authorities announced the conclusion they had reached. In this Gospel which we have just read, Christ promised his Apostles, the night before his death, that when he returned to the Father, the Holy Spirit would be sent to them. He would teach them all things and recall to their minds all that Christ had taught them. In other words, the Church, through the Apostles, was promised the direct assistance of the Holy Spirit in preserving and interpreting what we call "the deposit of faith" or the sum total of the divine revelation given to us for our sanctification.

The Gospel is from John 13:31-33a, 34-35.We are disciples, followers of Christ, but how many of us would pass the test that Christ himself lays down for deciding who are his true followers? The word "charity" unfortunately has come to have a very restricted meaning in our present-day vocabulary. It signifies giving an alms, a gift of money to a needy person. This is but a very small part of the true charity, true love of neighbor which Christ made the distinguishing mark of the true Christian. He who truly loves his neighbor must be interested, first and foremost, in those things which concern that neighbor's most important purpose in life, his eternal salvation.

The Gospel is from John 10:27-30. This Sunday is often called "Good Shepherd Sunday." Jesus intended the beautiful parable of the Good Shepherd with its many consoling truths and promises for men of every century, including the twentieth. We are all too prone to evaluate the words of the Gospel in an exclusively historical sense. The liturgy's primary aim is to portray the present, not the past, to give grace and life along with history. You must, therefore, give the parable a present day context, apply it personally. After each sentence stop and say: Christ is doing this today — and to help me. The parable brings to our attention three consoling truths: Christ gives His life for His sheep; He remains with them constantly through the bond of grace; He will not rest content until there be but one flock and one shepherd.

The Supreme Court is ready to make a major landmark decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. Jackson Women’s Health Care is an abortion clinic in Mississippi challenging the Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act (2018) that limits abortion at 15 weeks. Modern science has proven that a fetus at 15 weeks is capable of feeling pain, has a fully formed nose, lips and eyebrows and is able to suck their thumb.

The Gospel is from St. John, 21:1-19, The primary purpose in recounting this appearance of the Risen Christ to his Apostles, was to stress the actual conferring of the Primacy on Peter. From this very first meeting with Christ at the Jordan (Jn. 1:42) the Savior had told him that his name Simon bar-Jonah would be changed to Cephas, which means Rock. Some year or so later, at Caesarea Philippi, this change took place when Christ said to Simon, "You are (Peter) Rock. and upon this Rock I will build my Church . . . and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 16:18-19).

The Gospel is John 20:19-31, doubting St. Thomas. It may surprise and amaze us that the Apostles were so reluctant to believe that Christ had risen from the dead, to live forever in glory with his Father in heaven. But we must remember that during their two or three years with him they saw nothing in him but a mere man, one with divine powers, but yet a man; certain prophets of the Old Covenant had some such powers also. Christ had "emptied himself of his divine nature, and he had foretold his resurrection many times. But that he could be really God, as well as man, was something they could not then grasp, and if he was a mere man death had to be the end.