Guard

The WORD today (See http://usccb.org/bible/readings/032815.cfm) reminds me that God guards his people.

Bodyguards or protective agents as they are called nowadays are very important to high value people. They protect their subjects from danger and harm at all cost, even ready to take a bullet for them. That is why people feel secured when they have good and loyal protective agents guarding and protecting them. This is also how we should feel with God protecting and guarding us.

God will guard his people.

In the first reading, we see the great plans God has in store for his people. Then the psalmist says that the Lord will guard his people. It probably is a prelude to what Jesus will go through. We see in the gospel that there are already plots to kill him. It is assuring that God will guard him from harm, aside from the passion he was to experience. No human is powerful enough to harm Jesus to prohibit him from doing God’s work. No matter how powerful leaders were back then, their evil plans could not stop Jesus from proclaiming God’s kingdom and doing God’s work.

No matter how powerful or influential people are, they are not powerful enough to disrupt God in using you to do his work.

God protects his people, and as we continue to love and serve him, we should be assured that his power is greater than anyone or anything. Nothing happens without his permission, and we need not fear others as we live and serve him. We can hold on his word and promise of love and protection.

Father God,

Thank you for today. Thank you for another day to live. Thank you for another weekend. Thank you for all the blessings. Lord, thank you for your promise of protection. I ask that you continue to remind me of how powerful and loving you are. May this lead me to live brave, knowing that the most powerful God is protecting me all the way. Amen.

Blessed day!

In Christ,

-g-

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March 28, 2015

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Lectionary: 256

Reading 1 Ez 37:21-28

Thus says the Lord GOD:

I will take the children of Israel from among the nations

to which they have come,

and gather them from all sides to bring them back to their land.

I will make them one nation upon the land,

in the mountains of Israel,

and there shall be one prince for them all.

Never again shall they be two nations,

and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms.

No longer shall they defile themselves with their idols,

their abominations, and all their transgressions.

I will deliver them from all their sins of apostasy,

and cleanse them so that they may be my people

and I may be their God.

My servant David shall be prince over them,

and there shall be one shepherd for them all;

they shall live by my statutes and carefully observe my decrees.

They shall live on the land that I gave to my servant Jacob,

the land where their fathers lived;

they shall live on it forever,

they, and their children, and their children’s children,

with my servant David their prince forever.

I will make with them a covenant of peace;

it shall be an everlasting covenant with them,

and I will multiply them, and put my sanctuary among them forever.

My dwelling shall be with them;

I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Thus the nations shall know that it is I, the LORD,

who make Israel holy,

when my sanctuary shall be set up among them forever.

Responsorial Psalm Jer 31:10, 11-12abcd, 13

R. (see 10d) The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.

Hear the word of the LORD, O nations,

proclaim it on distant isles, and say:

He who scattered Israel, now gathers them together,

he guards them as a shepherd his flock.

R. The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.

The LORD shall ransom Jacob,

he shall redeem him from the hand of his conqueror.

Shouting, they shall mount the heights of Zion,

they shall come streaming to the LORD’s blessings:

The grain, the wine, and the oil,

the sheep and the oxen.

R. The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.

Then the virgins shall make merry and dance,

and young men and old as well.

I will turn their mourning into joy,

I will console and gladden them after their sorrows.

R. The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.

Verse Before the Gospel Ez 18:31

Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the LORD,

and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

Gospel Jn 11:45-56

Many of the Jews who had come to Mary

and seen what Jesus had done began to believe in him.

But some of them went to the Pharisees

and told them what Jesus had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees

convened the Sanhedrin and said,

“What are we going to do?

This man is performing many signs.

If we leave him alone, all will believe in him,

and the Romans will come

and take away both our land and our nation.”

But one of them, Caiaphas,

who was high priest that year, said to them,

“You know nothing,

nor do you consider that it is better for you

that one man should die instead of the people,

so that the whole nation may not perish.”

He did not say this on his own,

but since he was high priest for that year,

he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,

and not only for the nation,

but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.

So from that day on they planned to kill him.

So Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews,

but he left for the region near the desert,

to a town called Ephraim,

and there he remained with his disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was near,

and many went up from the country to Jerusalem

before Passover to purify themselves.

They looked for Jesus and said to one another

as they were in the temple area, “What do you think?

That he will not come to the feast?”