Fourth Sunday of Easter / Good Shepherd Sunday (Year C) - 11 May
11th May 2025
“If we only got to heaven, what a sweet and easy thing it will be there to be always saying with the angels and the saints, ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.’” - St Philip Neri
A reflection on today's scripture readings by the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen:
"In the Book of the Apocalypse we read of the great beauty of His [God’s] City, of the pure gold, with its walls of jasper and its spotless light which is not of the sun nor moon but the light of the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world. We also learn of the condition of entering the gates of that heavenly Jerusalem: "There shall not enter into it anything defiled, or that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie, but they that are written in the book of the life of the Lamb." Justice demands that nothing unclean, but only the pure of heart shall stand before the face of a pure God. If there were no purgatory, then the Justice of God would be too terrible for words, for who are they who would dare assert themselves pure enough and spotless enough to stand before the Immaculate Lamb of God? The martyrs who sprinkled the sands of the Coliseum with their blood in testimony of their faith? Most certainly! The missionaries like Paul who spend themselves and are spent for the spread of the Gospel? Most assuredly! The cloistered saints who in the quiet calm of a voluntary Calvary become martyrs without recognition? Most truly! But these are glorious exceptions. How many millions there are who die with their souls stained with venial sin, who have known evil, and by their strong resolve have drawn from it only to carry with them the weakness of their past as a leaden weight.
"The day we were baptised, the Church laid upon us a white garment with the injunction: "Receive this white garment which mayest thou carry without stain before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ that thou mayest have life everlasting." How many of us during life have kept that garment unspotted and unsoiled by sin so that we might enter immediately upon death into the white-robed army of the King? How many souls departing this life have the courage to say that they left it without any undue attachment to creatures and that they were never guilty of a wasted talent, a slight cupidity, an uncharitable deed, a neglect of holy inspiration or even an idle word for which every one of us must render an account? How many souls there are gathered in at the deathbed, like late-season flowers, that are absolved from sins, but not from the debt of their sins? Take any of our national heroes, whose names we venerate and whose deeds we emulate. Would any Englishman or American who knew something of the purity of God, as much as he loves and respects the virtues of a Lord Nelson or a George Washington, really believe that either of them at death were free enough from slight faults to enter immediately into the presence of God? Why the very nationalism of a Nelson or a Washington, which made them both heroes in war, might in a way make them suspect of being unsuited the second after death for that true internationalism of heaven, where there is neither English nor American, Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Free, but all one in Christ Jesus our Lord."
(The Moral Universe)
Easter Blessing Prayer for Families
Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. 🙏💖💐