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Today O Lord we go to the polls to cast our votes for the next group of national and local leaders of our nation; we have long been praying for these elections to be peaceful and orderly. Most of all, a matured and intelligent one. That we finally learn to vote according to our informed and guided conscience, carefully and prayerfully evaluating every candidate, listening more to the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd. But for us to be able to listen to Jesus, let us first pass through him, our only door.
Jesus said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.” So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep.”
John 10:1, 7
To pass through Jesus our gate requires our own conversion to him; and not just a conversion like that of unbelievers and Gentiles in the first reading but to be converted like Peter himself and the rest of his fellow believers who were of Jewish roots:
Peter began and explained it to them (Apostles and brothers in Jerusalem) step by step, saying, “If then God gave them the same gift he gave us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?” When they heard this, they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, “God has then granted life-saving repentance to the Gentiles too.”
Acts 11:4,17-18
To pass through you, dear Jesus, is to be one in you which calls for our daily conversion to you; so many times we feel complacent, resting on whatever we have achieved or reached in our relating with you; it is in our daily- conversion in you that truly leads us to communion in you. Amen.
