APOSTOLICITY, TRUTH AND TENDERNESS FOR SHEEP WITHOUT A SHEPHERD

However, they are apostles, alongside but in a distinct way compared to the priests, religious and lay people as well. They too in the vocation to the consecrated life and in marriage, they undertake to bring the caress of Jesus to their neighbor in need. This is why Jesus tells everyone: "You received, freely give ".

 

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Dear Readers of The Island of Patmos,

in this summer time let us try to take the Bible more and more and read it; especially the Gospels can become a road companion for hot and muggy days. Indeed, in the Gospel, Jesus walks with us, he offers us so much tenderness and affection and thus asks us to give freely what we have received from him. Jesus chooses tenderness because as the German writer Rudolf Leonard said «Tenderness is the secret language of the soul».

We see. In Today's Gospel let's read:

"During that time, Jesus, seeing the crowds, he felt sorry for it, because they were tired and exhausted like sheep that have no shepherd".

Jesus walks with the crowds and realizes that they feel lost and without a point of reference. The existential difficulties and the political disagreement between Jews and Romans must have brought them much suffering also from an emotional and moral point of view. Jesus decides to treat them with compassion, in Greek splanchne, which indicates the tenderness of the mother who welcomes her children with visceral love. So let's imagine a mother who welcomes her children who are crying and feeling desperate.

The same thing Jesus does with us today. In our existential solitudes he gives us his tenderness and compassion, makes us feel that despite the general instability, the many spiritual difficulties, material and economic we can find He is with us. Every time we communicate, he offers us a caress and an intense embrace, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

This caress is offered to us in a concrete way. In a certain sense it is an apostolic caress. Indeed, Jesus himself called the twelve apostles by name and set them up to continue his mission over the centuries. The twelve apostles then set up their successors, and therefore the bishops and with them Jesus wanted priests for a large harvest of people in need of God. For this that the bishop and the priest, despite their personal limitations, tend to give us the Eucharistic caress of the Lord. Their presence and response to this priestly vocation is important.

However, they are apostles, alongside but in a distinct way compared to the priests, religious and lay people as well. They too in the vocation to the consecrated life and in marriage, they undertake to bring the caress of Jesus to their neighbor in need. This is why Jesus tells everyone:

"You received, freely give ".

The way we all clergy believers, religious and laity we are sent by the Lord is the dimension of self-giving. Just like without any rights, we have received the gift of love and tenderness from the Lord, so we can bring it to everyone else. So when we meet our neighbor who doesn't feel loved by anyone, and indeed perhaps he feels abandoned and isolated from everyone, then in that moment we will be able to give him the gift of the Lord's tenderness and charity. That is, a love that is not dull and worthless, but which precisely communicates to those who feel desperate that God loves them and is doing something concrete for them.

We ask the Lord to enter ever more strongly into his Trinitarian heart to bring the whole world into God's embrace, and offer meaning and joy even to those abandoned and isolated from the culture of the world.

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 18 June 2023

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