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In this weekend’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of Himself as the gate to the sheepfold. He invites us to live in and through Him so that we can continue His mission of calling one another to embrace the lifestyle of Jesus. In doing so, we are empowered to call others to allow Jesus to establish an intimate relationship with Him, at the same time that our relationship with Him also develops. Through it all, we provide a loving community environment in which any and all will feel welcome, regardless of the circumstances of their lives. Providing an embracing environment, we walk with them in allowing the goodness of God to transform their lives at the very same time that ours likewise are enriched and renewed.

Some people wonder why Jesus does not present Himself to us as He did to His first followers. His followers had a unique ability they relied on while reflecting with one another about their experiences of Jesus. Their sense of consciousness was sharpened to the degree that through those experiences they also experienced Jesus’ presence. We have lost that ability for the most part. We tend to rely more on our minds and thinking capabilities. If we were able to focus more on what happens in our hearts and in the depths of our beings while we reflect on our lives, we can at least come closer to what the first followers of Jesus were capable of doing. It means that we need to be quiet and serene, eliminate as many distractions as possible, and allow ourselves just to be with our momentary glimpses of how Jesus is truly present.

Some of us wish we could experience Jesus the way the scriptures describe how His first followers did after His resurrection. Most likely, these followers talked about Jesus, how He had interacted with them and in the process revealed the unending love the Father and He had for them and for all people. True to Jesus’ promise that when two or three gather in His name, they experienced His Real Presence. They expressed their experience of Him the way it is described in the Gospels and other New Testament writings. How do we express our experience of Jesus’ Presence as we share with one another what emerges from the depths of our being as we talk about our experiences of the divine and the holy?

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Like the first followers of Jesus, we grow in our understanding of the Scriptures on a continual basis. Some people believe that in order for us to be forgiven of our sins, Jesus has to suffer and die such a horrendously painful death. We benefit greatly from shifting our focus from our sins to what the actual mission of Jesus was, and is ours to continue. Jesus’ mission was to build a new community on the basis of God’s loving all the people that God created. Love is what forgives us. Jesus suffered throughout His entire life as people tried to shame Him and get Him off the message of God’s love. During the time of His ministry, and during His excruciating suffering and death, He remained faithful to the mission the Father had given Him. His mission created so much resistance that the outcome was His suffering and death. To the end, in a fully nonviolent way, Jesus remained faithful to being the instrument of God’s love. We are called to continue that mission.