As I ponder today’s gospel and the psalm following the first reading (Psalm 23, the Good Shepherd psalm), I am challenged to ask where I situate myself in the story, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. The gospel reading concludes with Jesus proclaiming: “I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10, 10). The life that Jesus speaks about and that John writes about in his Gospel is not the life which we envisage comes after we die. It is life right here and now, the life that our relationship with Jesus fills us with, the life we give to one another in our families, communities, friendships and work teams, it is the life we infuse into others as we encourage and affirm them.

We, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaeus, can be deaf and blind to what others, including Jesus, want to bring to our notice. Sunday’s gospel serves to remind us of that, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald..

If we look carefully at the Thomas we meet in today’s gospel reading, we will see ourselves, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. Each of us, if we are honest, will acknowledge that we struggle with unquestioning belief in Jesus’ resurrection. We would like the comfort of divine reassurance. But that is simply not available. In all four gospels, it emerges that all the disciples struggled to make meaning of the various encounters they had had with the risen Jesus. It was only after several appearances and repeated reassurances from Jesus himself that they grew into accepting that he had truly risen.

Holy Week begins and ends in drama. It starts with Jesus’ dramatic entry into Jerusalem, mounted on a donkey, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. The Gospel readings of Passion Sunday and Good Friday are extensive presentations by Matthew and John of the dramatic events that constituted the passion and death of Jesus. We are each invited to choose for ourselves the role or roles which fit or coincide with the way in which we are living out our lives. The liturgy invites us to choose our own parts, to identify in those three dramas with the players in whom we recognise ourselves. It invites us to be participants rather than observers who have paid for comfortable seats. What follows here is a series of scenes that might draw us into the drama and help us to make our own meaning of it, Let us allow the drama to unfold and let us take our part.

Br Julian McDonald CFC reflects that in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus invites us to be on the lookout for all those Lazaruses we encounter who are bound-up, oppressed, less than fully alive or yet to find the freedom needed for living wholesome lives. “Unbind them”, he says to us, “let them grow free.”