4th. Sunday
of Easter (B)
(Acts of
the Apostles 4:8-12; 1st. John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18)
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I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays
down His life for the sheep.
In
the oldest parts of the Bible the word ‘shepherd’ is bound up with the idea of
nomadic life. Nomads lived above all as shepherds, moving their flocks or
herds from one pasturage to another. The prophets of the OT always tended
to look back on Israel’s early years when the people were nomads as the ideal
period in her history as God’s Chosen People, because – like nomads – true
seekers of God should never be settled, fixed, attached to any particular place
or situation, but be always in search of God, ever listening for His voice and
prepared to follow wheresoever it might lead them.
Jesus
presents Himself in today’s Gospel as the true shepherd sent by His Father to
lead His flock of believers on their journey through life to the rich pastures
of eternal beatitude before His Father in heaven. Let me quote a passage from H. V. Morton
about shepherds in Palestine:
Everything
(The shepherd’s work) is done by word of mouth – not by our principle of
droving. The sheep dog is used not to drive sheep but to protect them
against thieves and wild animals. One reason why the sheep and the
shepherd are on such close terms in the Holy Land is that the sheep are kept
chiefly for wool and milk, and therefore live longer and exist together as a
flock for a considerable time. Also, the shepherd spends his life with
them. He is with them from their birth onwards, day and night, for even
when they are driven into a cave or sheep-fold for the night he never leaves
them.
We
can understand from that picture just how absolutely important and
quasi-personal is the relationship between the shepherd and his flock:
the sheep have to be in the flock and in tune with the
shepherd in order to find food and protection, because the shepherd not only
leads the flock in search of fresh pastures but he also guards it from animals
which would slaughter and men who would steal.
With
that, therefore, in mind we can recall the following words from the Song of
Solomon (1:7):
Tell me, You Whom my heart loves, where You
pasture your flock, where You give them rest at midday, lest I be found
wandering after the flocks of Your companions.
Those
who love Jesus, cannot be loners, they have to be members of His flock, members
of those fed by His Word and His Flesh and Blood, members of His Church:
Tell
me, O You Whom my soul loves, where do You pasture Your flock?
Jesus
is the ultimate, the sublimely unique Good Shepherd, Who, as the letter to the
Hebrews tells us (10:12s.):
Offered one sacrifice for sins and took His
seat forever at the right hand of God; now He waits until His enemies are made
His footstool.
Knowing
that He was indeed soon to leave His disciples and go back to His heavenly
Father at Whose right hand He now makes constant intercession for us:
Jesus, when they had finished breakfast, said
to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” He said
to him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Feed My
lambs”. He then said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you
love Me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” He said to
him, “Tend My sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John,
do you love Me?” Peter was distressed that He had said to him a third
time, “Do you love Me?” and he said to Him, “Lord, You know everything; You
know that I love You.” (Jesus) said to him, “Feed My sheep.” (John 21:15s.)
That
three-fold repetition of the same question and answer was Jesus’ SOLEMN
CONFIRMATION of Peter as leader of the
Apostles and head of His Church on earth, so that there will be one
flock, one Catholic and universal Church, belonging to the one Good
Shepherd; under the leadership of a shepherd who is himself also a sheep,
but one expressly appointed and endowed by the Risen Lord to bear the
Keys of the Kingdom, one whose supreme privilege and most solemn
duty it is to lead the flock in such a way that it might become God the
Father’s chosen instrument to:
Make
all His (the Lord Jesus’) enemies a footstool for His feet.
And
when that will have been achieved, Peter himself, the leader chosen for that
work, tells us (1 Peter 5:6):
Humble yourselves under the mighty
hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety
on Him, because He cares for you.
for
Peter knows himself to be shepherd of the flock only to glorify the Chief
Shepherd and -- in the power of the Spirit -- to prepare a people for His
coming in glory.
Why,
however, are so many nominal Christians apparently content to be found where the
Woman -- in the Song of Solomon -- says she could not bear to be, alone and
self-satisfied; or, in her own words (1:7):
Wandering (here and there) after the flocks of your
companions?
The
answer, People of God, is: the mystery of sin; and that involves ourselves in
both personal fault and public failure.
For sinners though we all are, as believers and disciples we are called
into Mother Church and chosen there to form the instrument which the Father
specially intends to:
Make
all His (Jesus’) enemies a footstool for His feet.
Despite
that glorious vocation we are not allowing the truth of Jesus to shine clearly
in and through our lives; with the result that some of those apparently content
to be separated from the flock of Jesus shepherded by Peter, are not able to
recognise the fullness of the truth about the Jesus because of our
continuing failure to bear right witness to the truth and beauty of His
Name. For Jesus said quite unequivocally:
Everyone
who belongs to the truth listens to My voice. (John 18:37)
Let
us therefore pray most urgently, People of God, that we ourselves may be
able so to listen to the voice of Our Lord that it may penetrate into and
resonate ever more deeply within us, transforming our personal lives so
that, His voice, His truth, may become more
persuasively perceptible in our proclamation of, and daily witness to, His most
Holy Name.
I
am not speaking here about any dramatic endeavours, certainly no histrionics; I
am not even thinking of deliberate efforts to witness -- of set purpose -- before
others, certainly not of publicly arguing with anyone. For
the essence of Christian holiness is that we have to receive before we
can give, we can only give what we have humbly received. I am just, therefore, thinking of our
receiving, thinking of our daily-increasing heart-felt love of Jesus, of our humble
and eager obedience to His will, and our most sincere gratitude to God the
Father for His great goodness to us in Mother Church… because THAT is the
‘ammunition’, so to speak, that the Spirit wants us to provide for Jesus our
Lord, with which to ‘footstool His enemies’, and bring those sent to Him by His
Father into the glorious oneness of
the Spirit of Holiness, guiding the Body of Christ, for glory of God and the
salvation of His People.
To
that end, we – His witnessing disciples -- must have
ever-greater desire and ever- deeper longing to personally re-discover, hear
afresh, and respond more faithfully to, the Person of Jesus abiding in the
teaching and the Sacraments of Mother Church; that Jesus Who constantly seeks
to communicate and share with us:
First
of all, through our conscience: ‘when he listens to his conscience, the
prudent man can hear God speaking’ (Catechism 1777). People of God,
seek to consult, learn to listen to, and try to follow, your conscience in
simplicity and humility, and gradually you will come to hear and more clearly
recognize, appreciate, and more lovingly obey, God thus speaking most
intimately with you and to you.
Secondly,
through our intimacy with the Scriptures of Mother Church, as, with
Mary, we ponder them, lovingly and frequently, in our heart:
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful
for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in
righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for
every good work;
Jesus said, “It is written: ‘One does not live
by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God;’”
So shall My word be that goes forth from My
mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but shall do My will, achieving the end
for which I sent it.
(2 Timothy 3:16-17; Matthew 4:4; Isaiah
55:11)
And,
finally and most fully, the voice of Jesus the Christ our Saviour to be heard
in the sacramental worship of Mother Church as she communes directly
with her God and Lord, above all in the Most Holy Eucharist; and, in no small measure,
through Christian fellowship in Mother Church:
Behold, I am with you always, until the end of
the age. (Matthew
28:20)
Whoever listens to you listens to Me. Whoever
rejects you rejects Me. And whoever rejects Me rejects the One Who sent
Me.” (Luke 10:16)
That great mystery of human sinfulness -- which does not only occasion, more or less unwittingly, the obstruction and/or distortion of the beauty of Jesus’ ‘Good News’, but can even provoke and lead to the deliberate rejection of God’s great goodness and mercy contained therein -- is the reason why our blessed Lord Himself had to die: His supreme sacrifice alone could save us.
And
that brings me to a complementary aspect of our Gospel reading today:
This is why the Father loves Me, because I lay
down My life in order to take it up again.
Just
recall words from our second reading:
See how great a love the Father has bestowed
on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. Beloved,
now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We
know that when He appears, we will be like Him.
It
is, therefore, absolutely important for us to fix our hope on Jesus: not just
for our own selves, but for the whole world. For, as you heard, Jesus, risen
from the dead said:
I have other sheep, not of this fold; I must
bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock
with one shepherd.
Therefore,
if we are indeed sheep who rightly belong to His fold, then “hearing His
voice” we must recognize that His words, “I must bring them also”,
mean therefore for us, “we must bring them also”. How? By living
out to the full our ultimate and most sublime vocation by fixing our hopes on
Him and allowing His most Holy Spirit to form us in His likeness, for:
We know that when He appears, we will be
like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
That
work will only approach completion to the extent that we Christians and
Catholics become humble enough to allow the Spirit of Jesus to rule in and shine
through our lives, that we may thus give authentic witness to Him before the
many who are now in the flocks of those ‘companions’ of Jesus mentioned in the
Song of Songs; the many who, indeed, have not yet come to any spiritual awareness
of and responsiveness to Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and are to be found
consorting -- unwittingly perhaps -- with those who do not know Him or even
oppose Him.
All
that demands a deeply serious, loving and committed, spirituality: a continuous
walking with Jesus in all the steps we take, the decisions we make, the
thoughts we entertain, and the hopes we treasure. We, His disciples, have
to learn from Jesus’ Spirit how to sacrifice ourselves with Him in Mother
Church: not, generally speaking, in His sacrifice of body and blood, but, most
certainly and not less importantly, in His sacrifice of loving obedience and
trust in His Father’s loving Providence, His daily praise and thanksgiving, His
patience and strength under trials and temptations, together with our very own
humble contrition. Note however, that all such efforts at personal
sincerity and spiritual commitment to Jesus in all the nooks and crannies of
our life will gain for us who make them the most wonderful blessing of the
Father’s special love even here on earth:
Jesus answered and said, “Whoever loves Me
will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and
make Our dwelling with him. (John
14:23)
Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, to quote Peter (Acts 4:12):
There is no salvation through anyone else, nor
is there any other name (than
that of ‘Jesus’) under heaven given to the human race by which we
are to be saved.
Isn’t
it wonderful, therefore that we, simply by whole-heatedly rejoicing at the
presence of Jesus and the Father within us, can contribute so much to salvation
of those who are called to become true children of God?
