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Gospel Reading for April 5, 2025 – John 7: 40-53
DATA GATHERING
Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, “This is truly the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?” The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.” So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.” Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” They answered and said to him, “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”
Then each went to his own house.
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The DATA GATHERING was very poor during Jesus’ time. Had they done everything to find out his roots, they would have known he was born in Bethlehem. They got stuck in Nazareth so they never discovered.
A lot of us Catholics are also poor in DATA GATHERING. When our teachings are criticized and we do not know why we have such teachings, we tend to move to another religion or sect, or just remain indifferent.
Let’s take for example, a poster on Facebook saying that Catholics worship Mary. Do we really worship Mary? If you scroll down to see the comments, you will find so many funny and absurd comments, some in defense of the poster, some against the poster and some commenting just for the sake of commenting. This is not something to be debated upon as all religions have the right to their beliefs, but if we are Catholics, we have to do some DATA GATHERING and check ourselves. Do we really worship Mary? Maybe, some of us do. Does the Catholic Church teach us to worship Mary? Of course, it doesn’t. For us Catholics, worship is for God alone. Christ is central to all Christians, but we give Mary the honour due her for accepting to be the mother of Jesus, thereby playing a very important role in God’s plan of salvation. We also acknowledge the suffering she herself had to go through for accepting this role. We continue to ask her to intercede for us because when Jesus was dying on the cross, he gave her to us. Thus, Mary is our mother too and forever will be. Catholics cannot be faulted for giving Mary a special place in the Church. She is the mother of Jesus, the Son of our God!
Lord Jesus, thank you for giving Mary to us to be our mother too!
