Good Shepherd Catholic Church Rib Lake

06/18/2026

Friends, today’s Gospel (Matthew 6:7–15) gives us the Our Father. It asks that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven,” but biblical cosmology sees these two realms as interpenetrating fields of force. Heaven, the arena of God and the angels, touches upon and calls out to earth, the arena of humans, animals, plants, and planets.

Salvation, therefore, is a matter of the meeting of heaven and earth, so that God might reign as thoroughly here below as he does on high. Jesus’s great prayer, which is constantly on the lips of Christians, is distinctively Jewish in inspiration: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

This is decidedly not a prayer that we might escape from the earth, but rather that earth and heaven might come together. The Lord’s Prayer raises to a new level what the prophet Isaiah anticipated: “The earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea.”

The first Christians saw the resurrection of Jesus as the commencement of the process by which earth and heaven were being reconciled. They appreciated the risen Christ as the one who would bring the justice of heaven to this world.

06/18/2026

06/17/2026

Friends, today’s Gospel (Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18) asks us to do three things: pray, fast, and give alms. Let’s focus today on prayer. Studies show that prayer is a very common, very popular activity. Even those who profess no belief in God pray!

What is prayer, and how should we pray? Prayer is intimate communion and conversation with God. Judging from Jesus’s own life, prayer is something that we ought to do often, especially at key moments of our lives.

Well, how should we pray? What does it look like? You have to pray with faith, and according to Jesus’s model, you have to pray with forgiveness. The efficacy of prayer seems to depend on the reconciliation of differences.

You also have to pray with persistence. One reason that we don’t receive what we want through prayer is that we give up too easily. Augustine said that God sometimes delays in giving us what we want because he wants our hearts to expand.

Finally, we have to pray in Jesus’s name. In doing so, we are relying on his influence with the Father, trusting that the Father will listen to him.

06/16/2026

Friends, today, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:43–48), the Lord commands us to love our enemies.

What is the test of love? Jesus couldn’t be clearer in the discourse he delivers the night before he died. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). If love is willing the good of the other as other, this has to be the fullest expression, the final word, of love.

There is another way to test love: the love of enemies, those who cannot or will not pay you back. This also takes place in the cross of Jesus. Jews, Romans, Pharisees, Sadducees, his own disciples—everyone betrays him, runs from him, denies him, actively arranges for his death. And yet these are the very people that he loves, the very people for whom he gives his life.

The final test is what Jesus does when he returns from the dead. To the very people that contributed to his demise he says, “Shalom.” This is how we are loved; this is how we must love. Everything else is commentary.

06/16/2026

A reminder that our annual Wedding Celebration Mass is coming up next month! This Mass is celebrates all couples whom are celebrating anniversary years ending in 0 or 5. Registration closes soon!

To register, visit: https://catholicdos.org/wedding-anniversaries-jubilees

06/15/2026

Friends, today, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38–42), the Lord exhorts us to nonresistance to evil. Martin Luther King Jr. was deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s techniques, and Gandhi learned them, largely, from the Sermon on the Mount.

Both Gandhi and King appreciated that the text dealing with the nonresistance to evil has nothing to do with passivity in the face of injustice, but rather with a new and distinctive type of resistance.

Consider the Lord’s injunction “When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.” I realize that this sounds like mere passivity, fleeing before evil, but the truth is anything but. In Jesus’s time, you would not have used your left hand for any type of social interaction, since it was considered unclean. Therefore, to strike someone on the right cheek is to strike him with the back of your hand, the way a master might treat a slave.

By turning the other cheek, one neither fights back directly nor flees, but rather stands his ground and declares, “You will not treat me that way again.” It thereby effectively mirrors back to the aggressor his aggression. It is the declaration that the aggressed person refuses to cooperate with the world of the aggressor.

06/14/2026

A few years ago, I met a woman in my parish who was a successful lawyer. Yet in her free time, she poured her energy into a nonprofit she founded to advocate for children with special needs. When I asked what inspired her, she spoke of her niece, who was born with disabilities. Her niece was both a glorious gift and a constant challenge. Out of that painful, beautiful experience, she felt called to create something lasting for other children and parents. The nonprofit thrived, not because she had mapped it all out, but because she was deeply moved to act.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is “moved with compassion” for the crowd, for they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36) So he calls his disciples, ordinary men with no special qualifications, and sends them to heal, preach, and cast out demons. Their mission flows not from their skills but from his authority and the Spirit’s gifts.

The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Spirit continually pours out charisms, special graces for the good of the Church and the world (cf. Lumen Gentium 4 & 12). These often arise from the unfolding of our lives: from what breaks your heart, what fills you with hope, what suffering has shaped you. The Spirit works through those very experiences to equip us with gifts that build up others.

What is your charism? Well, what needs around you call you to loving action? This could be where Christ is sending you. Allow your heart to be moved like Christ’s. Then get to work.

— Father John Muir

©LPi

06/14/2026

06/13/2026

Friends, in today’s Gospel (Matthew 5:33–37), the Lord teaches his way about oaths and vows.

Although Jesus prohibited oath-taking, the tradition of the Church has allowed oaths “made for grave and right reasons”—for example, in court. But the Church has traditionally employed vows to sustain the commitments of priests and religious so that they may, as the Catechism puts it, “conform themselves more fully to the obedient Christ.”

For example, vows have sustained the holiness of many women religious who have become saints, including St. Katharine Drexel, a philanthropist who shows us what justice looks like when it is invaded by love; St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a Doctor of the Church whose “little way” demonstrates a prudence radicalized by Christ; St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), a philosopher and martyr who is an icon of evangelical courage; and St. Teresa of Kolkata, who embodies the power of poverty and asceticism when placed in the service of Jesus.