Peter has been instructed by Jesus as to his mission in life, and his destiny. Now he turns to see John approaching, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, who leant on Jesus at the Last Supper, and Peter asks Jesus about what will happen to him in his life. John is the one Apostle who not martyred. According to St Irenaeus, he lived into the reign of Trajan (AD 89-117), and rumours had circulated that John was not to die [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Friday Week 7 | Feed My Sheep | Peter’s Primacy
Jesus has told Peter that he is to be the chief among the Apostles, the primate of the Church. During the Passion, Peter denied Jesus three times. It is perhaps for this reason that Jesus now gives Peter three opportunities to declare his love for him, three times to atone for his triple denial. Each time, Jesus responds with the command to lead the Church: ‘Feed my lambs… Feed my sheep.’ Peter and his successors are to be shepherds of the whole Church, imitating Jesus as Jesus declared himself to be in the parable of the Good Shepherd [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Thursday Week 7 | Prayer For Christian Unity | The Priestly Prayer Of Jesus Concludes
Through these Bible verses, Jesus concludes his Priestly Prayer before his disciples. Through his prayer to his Father, Jesus is also saying goodbye to the disciples. He is about to endure his Passion. These words are Jesus’ last testament before he is glorified. Jesus has asked for the Father’s guidance and help for the disciples. They are called to be united in faith as they preach the Gospel and endure the hardships and hostility of the world. Now Jesus extends his prayer to include all Christians to come [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Wednesday Week 7 | They Are Not Of The World | The Priestly Prayer Of Jesus Continues
The Priestly Prayer of Jesus continues. In these Bible verses, Jesus asks his Father to guard the disciples. Jesus says that he himself has kept them safe while he has been with them. Only Judas Iscariot has been lost to him, and this was known in advance by God and foretold in Scripture; the other disciples have been prepared for the betrayal, in order to help them not to lose heart [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Tuesday Week 7 | The Priestly Prayer Of Jesus
The Priestly Prayer of Jesus concludes the discourse of the Last Supper. Immediately afterwards, Jesus will be arrested, betrayed. Jesus prays to his Father in a very moving way. He offers to the Father the imminent sacrifice of himself, praying that his sacrifice may be acceptable to the Father, that his holy human nature may be glorified. Jesus’ prayer is spoken aloud, so that his disciples and we also may receive his last testament, as Jesus intercedes on our behalf with the Father [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Monday Week 7 | Do You Now Believe? | Christ Overcomes The World
The disciples enthusiastically acknowledge the divinity of Jesus, proved to them in these Bible verses by Jesus’ knowledge of their thoughts, which only God could know. Jesus has indeed spoken plainly to the disciples. Now it may be with some reproachfulness that he asks them: ‘Do ye now believe?’ They have spent such time with Jesus, have witnessed signs and miracles, and now they accept his teachings and express their faith in him [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Sunday Week 7 | Ascension Of The Lord
The disciples receive the universal apostolic mandate, commanded by Jesus to take the good news to the whole world, to preach to everyone. This apostolic mission applies to the Church to this day. It applies to the whole Church, laity included. All members of Christ’s body share the Christian vocation to lead others to faith in Christ, to be instruments or vehicles of salvation for others. We are to take the good news to everyone, through our words, through our works, by example [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Saturday Week 6 | Ask And Ye Shall Receive, That Your Joy May Be Full
Jesus continues to prepare his disciples for the joy of his Resurrection and for the mission of the disciples, to evangelize, bringing to people all over the world the good news of Jesus Christ, of our salvation. Because they have believed in Jesus, they may ask what they wish of the Father in the Son’s name. In the Acts of the Apostles, we hear of the miracles worked by the disciples, these the signs and wonders which they are empowered to perform in order to help people to believe [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Friday Week 6 | Rejoice! A Pregnant Woman’s Labour Pains Bring Her Great Joy
In the Old Testament of the Bible, the image of a woman giving birth is often used to express great pain. It is also often used, especially by the prophets, to signify the birth of the new messianic people – see, for example, Isaiah. Jesus recalls both the pain of the Old Testament and the hope and fulfilment expressed through the prophets. The new birth is imminent. Through the sorrow and pain of the crucifixion, we are called to God [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Thursday Week 6 | The Fullness Of Joy | A Little While And You Shall See Me
We are presented in these Bible verses with a peculiar sense of our understanding of time, our human time, in relation to God’s great plan for our salvation, and to the fact of God’s encompassing all time, from which perspective we are born and pass on within the blink of an eye. ‘A little while… and again, a little while…’ The Greek word, micron, is so translated [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Wednesday Week 6 | The Holy Spirit Will Come To Glorify Jesus
We have heard Christ’s teachings, the clearest declarations of his divinity as God the Son, and his parables; we have witnessed his signs and miracles; and we have suffered and rejoiced through his death and resurrection. We know too that it is through the gift of the Holy Spirit that we are called to believe, and enabled to do so [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Tuesday Week 6 | Christ Will Send The Holy Spirit | This World Is Judged
Jesus continues to teach his disciples, presenting to them the true meaning of his Passion and crucifixion to come, and also consoling the disciples: Jesus tells his disciples that his imminent death on the cross is necessary; it is through the crucifixion that he returns to the Father, and will then send to the disciples the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Counsellor, the Comforter, to be with them forever [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Monday Week 6 | Action Of The Holy Spirit | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
The disciples who have consistently been with Jesus are charged to bear witness to Jesus. They have been with him from the beginning, have seen his signs and miracles and have heard his teaching, both public and to the disciples alone. In these Bible verses, Jesus continues to prepare the disciples both for the Passion and also for their mission, to bring the gift of Christ to the whole world, and he tells them of the hardships they must then endure, which for all but one of the Apostles, John, will result in martyrdom [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Saturday Week 5 | A Hostile World | Faith And Martyrdom
Through these Bible verses, we are called upon to consider the persecution of Christians. Jesus speaks both of his own time, and of the time of the Apostles, and of time to come, including the present day. The persecution of Christians is a live issue at present in the Middle East, through the intolerance of some people and their leaders. In living memory, we recall the oppression and murder of Christians by totalitarian regimes. As we look back through history, we find so many of our saints are martyrs [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Thursday & Friday Week 5 & Sunday Week 6 | The Law Of Love | The New Commandment
In our Gospel verses this Thursday and Friday, and also Sunday (B), Jesus develops on the parable of the vine and the branches with an injunction for us to be at one with each other, as with Jesus and the Father, through love. The love to which we are called is of a special quality. It is divinely inspired and a reflection of Jesus’ love for us, itself a reflection of the love between the Son and the Father. This is the new commandment [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Tuesday Week 5 | Peace I Leave You, Peace I Give You | King James Audio Bible | KJV
In these Bible verses, Jesus begins his farewell to his disciples, and the chapter closes with the words: ‘Rise, let us go hence.’ The natural continuation would then be the verse which opens chapter 18: ‘When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples.’ However, Jesus continues to teach his disciples through chapters 15 to 17. We are aware, then, of the rearrangements which seem to have taken place as John composed his Gospel [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Monday Week 5 | Promise Of The Holy Spirit
Chapter 14 of John’s Gospel gives us a beautiful example of the ways in which the disciples learnt from Jesus. There is clear, honest and responsive asking of questions on matters the disciples are confused about, which Jesus readily answers, guiding them as a friend and teacher toward truth and faith. The relationship between Jesus and the disciples is very beautiful, and stands as a guide to how we should understand our own relationship with Jesus. He is our Lord, he is our teacher. He is also our friend [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Sunday Week 5 & Wednesday | Parable Of The Vine And The Branches
In the Old Testament, the chosen people of Israel have been compared to a vine. We may think, for example, of Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-7 – Audio Bible Verses Spoken Word), in which God complains that, despite the care he has lavished upon it, his vineyard has only produced wild grapes [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Saturday Week 4 | Whatsoever Ye Shall Ask In My Name, That Will I Do
We have known the Father through the Son. Indeed, Jesus now tells the disciples that they have actually seen God the Father. This is the vision of faith, and of our knowledge, as Jesus tells us that he is in the Father and the Father in him. The unknowable, in this life to our natural senses, has become a knowable truth of faith [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Friday Week 4 | I Am The Way, The Truth And The Light | In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions
Jesus sees that what he has so far said to the disciples during the Last Supper has left them troubled. His speaking of Peter’s imminent denial must have been especially upsetting. In these verses, Jesus now reassures the disciples. They will come to heaven, just as we all may. ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ No matter our shortcomings, through faith we can find that there is a place in heaven prepared especially for us [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Thursday Week 4 | Know The Father Through The Son | Serve One Another
Jesus speaks of Judas’ treachery. The evil one has for a time been worming his way into Judas’ soul and Judas has given himself up to evil. Judas has ‘lifted up his heel’ against Jesus. The verse suggests a brutal act of violence, and so it is; this is the violent enmity of a friend; it is a terrible betrayal. The verse recalls Psalm 41/40 [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Wednesday Week 4 | Faith In Jesus | To See God The Father Through The Son
Today’s Bible verses conclude the first half of John’s Gospel, known as the Book of Signs. The verses mark the end of Christ’s public ministry. He will go on, through the Last Supper, to teach his disciples, and then to endure his Passion and crucifixion. The verses bring together Christ’s teaching to now. Key, fundamental themes are restated. Christ and the Father are one. To believe in Jesus is to believe in God. To see Jesus is to see God [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Tuesday Week 4 | Jesus And The Father Are One | The Gift Of Grace | The Parable Of The Good Shepherd Continues
The Feast of the Dedication commemorates the episode in Jewish history, as recorded in Maccabees, when, in the year 165 BC, after he had liberated Jerusalem from the control of the Seleucid kings of Syria, Judas Maccabeus cleansed the Temple of the profanations of Antiochus Epiphanes. Falling toward the end of the year, it is also known as the Festival of Lights, because it was the custom to place lamps, signifying the Law, in the windows of houses [ … ]
Parable Of The Good Shepherd | Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Jesus Is The Gateway | Who Are My Neighbours?
Jesus links the symbolic imagery of the sheep, the shepherd and the sheepfold with the Temple and the Jewish authorities, and with their abuse of the Jewish people. In Bible times, it was the custom [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Thursday Week 3 | He That Believeth On Me Hath Everlasting Life
The Jewish authorities have begun to take note of Jesus. While Jesus has attracted the people, now ‘the Jews’, a term which in John’s Gospel is often used to refer to the Jewish authorities, are beginning to murmur against him. Jesus’ relationship with the Jews is to become increasingly tense [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Wednesday Week 3 | The Bread Of Life | The Father’s Will Be Done
Jesus now gives to us a clear and ready way to salvation. We are to behold the Son of God, to believe in him, and then we shall be saved. These Bible verses for Easter continue to draw on the great miracle of the loaves and the fishes, when Jesus took a poor boy’s daily ration and fed the five thousand who had gathered to hear his word [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Tuesday Week 3 | Jesus Is The True Bread Of Life Eternal
The people who have looked for and found Jesus now ask for a sign. Notwithstanding the miracle of the loaves and fishes, which they have witnessed, they now say they require a sign in order to believe in Jesus. It is in some ways akin to Christ’s temptation in the desert, when Satan tempted him to prove his divinity [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Monday Week 3 | Spiritual Food | Bread Of Life
The people who have been fed through the miracle of the loaves and the fishes now seek Jesus and are mystified that he should not be near. They have seen that there was only one boat and that the disciples of Jesus have gone alone into the boat to pass across the Sea of Galilee. The events that have taken place overnight, as Jesus walked across the water, would have been completely beyond their comprehension [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Sunday Week 3 | Jesus Appears To His Disciples In Jerusalem
The disciples who encountered Jesus on their way to Emmaus have returned in haste to tell the disciples in Jerusalem what they have heard and seen. Jerusalem has long been a city special to God. It is the Holy City. The Church of Christ is described, in the New Testament, as the Jerusalem above, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the new Jerusalem [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Saturday Week 2 | The Miracle Of Jesus Walking On The Water
John’s account of the miracle of Jesus walking on the water differs in some significant ways from the accounts given in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The context is the same, the miracle of the loaves and fishes has taken place, and the disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee, while Jesus has remained on shore, going into the hills to pray alone. We understand, as well, in each of the Gospel accounts, the symbolic meaning of the disciples being alone and troubled on the waters, to which situation the Lord comes to help them [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Thursday Week 2 | Belief In Jesus Christ | God The Son
Today’s Bible verses flow from John the Baptist’s beautiful words, as he explains, speaking of Jesus, that ‘he must increase, but I must decrease’. John the Baptist reminds his disciples that he has told them he is not the Christ, but rather the one who was sent before to prepare the way of Christ. John the Baptist now rejoices that Christ’s time is come, that his own purpose is complete and it is time to relinquish to Christ the ministry that brings salvation. There is no competition between John the Baptist and Jesus. Rather, through faith and love, he is overjoyed that people are flocking to Jesus to be baptized by him [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Wednesday Week 2 | God So Loved The World | Deus Caritas Est
Our relationship with God is a call to love. Our Father loves us unsparingly. He gave to us and for us His only begotten Son. Christ gave himself to free us from sin and death, to reconcile us with God. All we are asked to do is to believe in Jesus and to respond to God’s immeasurable love with a reciprocal love, through faith in Christ. It is through love and faith that we discover our dignity [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Tuesday Week 2 | Jesus With Nicodemus | You Must Be Born Again
Jesus declares his divinity. No one, he tells Nicodemus, has yet ascended into heaven. Only Jesus knows heaven. Even while he is on earth as man, he is in heaven as God. Once Jesus has died and has risen from the dead, and then through the Ascension, then Jesus will be in heaven as man also. This is to be our gateway to heaven. Moses set the bronze serpent on the pole to cure those people who had been bitten by poisonous snakes in the wilderness (Numbers 21: 8-9). Jesus compares this to the crucifixion he must undergo [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Monday Week 2 | Nicodemus Visits Jesus | King James Audio Bible | KJV
It is a striking moment. Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, has come to visit Jesus. He does so secretly, by night, his whole reputation at risk. He must not be seen to be associating with Jesus, and yet he is compelled to seek Jesus and to ask him the questions he has. Nicodemus acknowledges Jesus as a teacher and master: Rabbi. He knows that Jesus’ teaching is truth and needs to speak with him more. Nicodemus would know every word of the teachings of Moses and the Old Testament [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Sunday Week 2 | Divine Mercy | Jesus To The Disciples | Doubting Thomas | King James Audio Bible KJV
Jesus visits the disciples, where they meet in a locked house, to bring them faith and reassurance, and to entrust them with their evangelical mission to spread the good news about Christ throughout the world. Christ’s is now a glorified body. A locked door is no obstacle to him. He is no longer bound by the limitations of space and time. In Luke’s Gospel, we are told how the disciples are, understandably, frightened by the appearance of Jesus. They think he must be a spirit. Now, to reassure the disciples and help them to know the truth of his resurrection, Jesus offers his body to them. This, he lets them see, is Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified and, as he promised, has risen from the dead [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Saturday Week 1 | Jesus Helps His Disciples To Believe | The Resurrection | King James Audio Bible | KJV
In his brief, summary account of Jesus’ appearances following his crucifixion and resurrection, Mark stresses the disciples’ disbelief and their reluctance to accept the fact of the resurrection. Mary Magdalene first tries to share the good news. The disciples do not believe her. The two disciples, who are probably the two who meet Jesus on the way to Emmaus (cf. Luke 24: 13-35), are similarly not believed when they tell of what they have witnessed. Finally, Jesus appears to the eleven apostles, upbraiding them for their lack of belief, before he goes on to command them to preach the Gospel to the whole of creation. The question of belief is closely tied to the mission to evangelize given to the apostles [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Friday Week 1 | The Miraculous Catch Of Fish | Jesus Appears To His Disciples In Galilee
This is an amazing encounter! The disciples have returned to Galilee, where their story with Jesus began. It was natural for them to return home, while awaiting further instruction from Jesus. It is natural also for the disciples to wish to engage in their old and familiar work. It seems a typically spontaneous gesture of Simon Peter when he declares: ‘I am going fishing!’ Things have changed, though. Through their time with Jesus, the lives of the disciples have changed [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Wednesday Week 1 | The Road To Emmaus | Jesus Walks Beside Us | King James Audio Bible
This is a dark time, and, as Luke writes his Gospel, it is a dark time for the Christian communities. Jesus has been crucified. Well then, so the logic of the Old Law states, Jesus could not possibly have been the Messiah. Except he was. Luke writes primarily for the communities of Greece, mostly pagan converts. There has been the great persecution of Nero. Jerusalem has been destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans [ … ]