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St Pachomius is remembered more for what he did than for what he said. He was the one who provided a solid foundation for cenobitic monasteries. He organized large communities with shared rules, manual labor, and prayer in common as well as in the cell. The other Desert Fathers often shared their wisdom in short sayings, but Pachomius focused more on practical governance, foundingmonasteries with up to three monks per cell, meals in common, and structured prayer schedules. His teachings were often embedded in his Rule rather than in standalone quotes.

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, it makes me think back on my own experiences of being a shepherd, and what sheep are like. I don’t know if I was a good shepherd, but I sure had a lot of love for my sheep. I probably wouldn’t have been willing to lay down my life for them, but I was happy to make a lot of sacrifices.

On this day when the College of Cardinals is meeting in Rome to elect a successor to Peter, we are reminded that sometimes the papacy needs a course correction. The first pope, Peter, was a world-class hypocrite, eating anything with Gentiles one day, and only kosher food with Jews the next. He might be the prince of the apostles, but somebody had to administer a little fraternal correction on this point.

There was a time in the fourth centurywhen “the whole world groaned and was amazed to find itself Arian,” as St. Jerome put it. The phenomenon should be familiar to us in the 21st century, when the whole world groans and is amazed to find itself under the tyranny of the woke. In the 4th century God raised up one man, Athanasius, to be the defender of the Catholic faith, and he is capable of doing it again today.

When the leaders see the “boldness” of Peter they are “amazed”…that he is not intimidated by them…and in this they recognize him as “a companion of Jesus.” They don’t want Peter’s strange new teaching to spread further among the people. They claim, paternalistically, that they want to protect the people from being misled, “confused” by this teaching… but in fact they only care about their own prestige and influence. The people, however, are not confused; “everyone in Jerusalem” has seen the healing power at work through Peter.

In Genesis 22, we find the story of Abraham being asked to offer up his son, Isaac. We read there: Some time after these events, God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham!” “Ready!” he replied. Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.

This evening’s Gospel comes just after Jesus has instituted the Eucharist in the words of today’s Second Reading, and then went on to foretell his betrayal. And at the mention of betrayal the Apostles began to debate among themselves as to which of them might do this thing. Then today’s Gospel begins: “An argument broke out among the Apostles about which of them should be regarded as the greatest”. But Jesus has a different idea of what greatness is. He says “Your greatest must become like a junior and your leader must be a servant... just as I am the one who is the servant among you”. Jesus goes on to promise them: “It is you who have stood by me in all that I have gone through; and I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father has conferred one on me”. The Apostles will “sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel”, signifying their share in his authority, but also their share in Christ’s suffering as they serve God’s people.

Jesus went up a high mountain with Peter, James and John and was transfigured before them. It was a moment of exaltation for Jesus openly confirmed and embraced by the Father “...this is my beloved Son, listen to him.” It was an experience of utter awe for the prostrate disciples prohibited by Jesus to tell anyone because as He said to His Mother “My hour has not yet come” and they obeyed in great wonder.

In this morning’s Gospel we hear that the Jewish authorities tried again to arrest Jesus, but he withdrew from them. They didn’t want him to escape from their power, but he got away from them anyway, and they couldn’t stop him from leaving them. Here St John is giving us another hint that Jesus would not have been crucified unless he had willingly consented to it.

​“The hour is coming”, Jesus says, and he doesn’t mean that this “hour” is in some distant future, because he quickly adds, “and is now here”, meaning “now while I am living among you” - “when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God” and, hearing, will come alive. Jesus is referring to the dead whom he will soon raise up: the widow’s son, the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, Lazarus, and others.

In the Prologue of his Rule, St Benedict uses a striking phrase about the monastic life, and it’s something that can apply to every Christian life. We even sing it in our liturgy. It begins like this: “As we go forward in our monastic life and in faith, let our hearts be enlarged”. When Benedict talks about going forward, he’s talking about a process of continuous conversion, of letting our hearts be enlarged. And our hearts can be enlarged if we continuously listen in faith to the Lord, just as the people listened to Moses in the first reading, when he said, “Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live”.

Moses appears in our first two readings this morning, and also in our Responsorial Psalm. His name is also attached to the first five books of the Bible, The Pentateuch, as sort of an honorary author. Last Sunday the gospel reading recounted the Transfiguration. The two people who appeared with Jesus were Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets – two big portions of the Old Testament. Our veneration of Moses is shared by Islam. “Musa” is “Moses” in Arabic, and is a very common name among Muslims.

Monks have a lot of company out there with the prodigal son, feeding the pigs. All of suffering and sinful humanity is there, and monks are the worst of the lot. The Russian monk Fr Zossima puts it this way in Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamázov. Addressing his monks, he said: “We are not holier than the laity because we have come here and shut ourselves up within these walls, but, on the contrary, everyone who has come here has, by the very fact of his coming here, acknowledged that he is worse than all the worldly and than all people and all things on earth....And the longer the monk lives within the walls of his monastery, the more deeply must he be conscious of that, for otherwise he would have had no reason for coming here at all.

Trust is defined as firm reliance on the integrity, ability or character of a person. What does such firm reliance look like? All we need do is to look around us here, to those next to us, those across from us; assembled here for this liturgy we are icons of living trust. Graced by God we come because we trust the redeeming love of the Lord Jesus is celebrated, made present in this Mass; we are here because we trust the Lord Jesus will be present in a piece of unleavened bread which we receive and embrace. Even though this occurs everyday for us, this grace of living trust is momentous.

In Homily 48, St Isaac the Syrian wrote: “He who accuses his brother on account of his evil deeds has God for his own Accuser. A man who corrects his brother in his private chamber cures his evil; but a man who makes accusation against another in a public gathering worsens his wounds. He who cures his brother in secret makes manifest the strength of his love; but he who puts his brother to shame in the eyes of his companions gives a proof of the strength of his envy.”

After a night in prayer on a mountain Jesus selected twelve disciples as His apostles. We can imagine the wonder and joy of these men as they began to realize what had taken place. St. Luke recounts, in today’s Gospel: Jesus coming down with the Twelve stood on a stretch of level ground and although surrounded by a very large crowd, looked directly at the Twelve and began to instruct them, the first of many teachings.

They will offer due sacrifice to the Lord, said the prophet Malachi in the first reading. Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, said St Luke in the Gospel for today. And when the parents of Jesus make their offering and present him to the Lord, Simeon sees the salvation which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles.

In the Gospel of St John, the passage we have just heard begins with the phrase, “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana”. The fact that the wedding took place on the third day is not just a minor detail which we can ignore. It gives us a hint as to how to interpret this morning’s Gospel. The meaning of this passage seems to be the spiritual transformation of human life which Christ brought about, and the mention of the “third day” to any Christian who knows the Creed, would be a reminder that Christ “rose again on the third day”. If we look at the wedding feast in the light of the resurrection, there is a wealth of meaning to it, and the Church herself seems to suggest the connection by having this Gospel read on a Sunday, the weekly commemoration of the resurrection.

In my opinion, one of the biggest blessings of being a Catholic is the liturgy. Catholic liturgy is not only a collection of symbolic gestures, the reenactment of a divine drama or a mere aesthetic experience. In the liturgy, two things happen: 1) the mystery of our salvation that is being celebrated is made present again, today; and 2) we are being included, with our present lives and circumstances, in this same mystery. Both things are fundamental. We are celebrating today the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. We heard in the Gospel the narrative of Jesus’ circumcision and the adoration of the shepherds. As Catholics, we believe that these facts helped to form the pathway for our salvation. The way Jesus was born, lived and died has something very important for every Christian, for every human being to learn.