The Unmistakable Voice of the Good Shepherd

Gospel of the Fourth Sunday of Easter

I – New Division Among the Jews

This Sunday’s Gospel is called that of the Good Shepherd, the fourth of the Easter Season. It contains the words Our Lord spoken during one of His last journeys to Jerusalem. We are in the tenth chapter of St. John and, therefore, at this point the Redeemer has already multiplied the loaves, walked upon the water, and operated many cures. In short, He has performed countless and indisputable miracles, and is known by everyone. His fame has spread, and throughout Israel there is uneasiness regarding Him. The Apostles have already acknowledged Him as the Messiah, but Our Lord has ordered them not to tell anyone. Meanwhile, public opinion is adopting contrasting positions regarding Jesus: some like Him and believe in His Messianic mission; others dislike and reject Him.

A parable that divides the waters

Before the verses chosen for this Sunday’s Liturgy, the Evangelist narrates the miracle of the cure of the man blind from birth (cf. Jn 9), after which the Divine Master engages in a heated polemic with the Pharisees and employs, for the first time, the figure of the Good Shepherd and the sheepfold, clearly applying to His opponents the image of the thief and the mercenary (cf. Jn 10:1-13). The use of parables, such as the one just mentioned, enabled Our Lord to make Himself understood by His own, while leaving His enemies in doubt as to the meaning of His words. Upon hearing Him say “I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know Me” (Jn 10:14), the evil ones conjecture with disdain: “They say that this Nazarene was a carpenter. Could it be that now He has also become a shepherd?” But those who had adhered to Jesus thought: “I need to be part of this flock!” Thus, “There was again a division among the Jews because of these words” (Jn 10:19). It marked the setting when the Saviour appeared in the Temple for the feast of the Dedication, during the somewhat harsh winter in those regions.

“If You are the Christ, tell us plainly”

We can imagine Him walking in Solomon’s Porch on a cold morning, His mantle covering His head. Knowledge of His presence in the Holy City had spread quickly and, in light of the situation created, His enemies plotted to take advantage of the occasion to put Him against the wall and oblige Him to declare if He were truly the Messiah. “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly” (Jn 10:24), the Jews asked as they surrounded Him. Knowing their evil intent, the Divine Master simply replied: “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness to Me” (Jn 10:25). And He ended the dispute explaining the deepest reason for this refusal: “You do not believe, because you do not belong to My sheep” (Jn 10:26). Thereby He very clearly demonstrated that there was a division in humanity: on one side the sheep of the flock of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who truly give themselves over to God, ready to conform their lives to Him; and on the other the sheep of satan, who, so to speak, seek a god according to their caprices, so as to continue undisturbed in the terrible state in which they live.

“Good Shepherd”, Pio Clementino - Museum, Vatican City

II – The Voice of the Good Shepherd

Having these foregoing presuppositions are indispensable for more readily comprehending the key to the Gospel for this Fourth Sunday of Easter, which aims to teach us what it means to be Jesus’ sheep.

Figures idealized from all eternity

Perhaps the reader has never witnessed pastoral scenes and, therefore, finds it hard to imagine how a shepherd is “heard” by his sheep, whether in indicating the plan for the day or the path to follow, or giving them a rebuke for straying. But, for those who have such scenes in their memory, it is a touching example. Sheep know the timbre of voice of their shepherd very well and, while clustering around him, they show signs of “understanding” what he says to them. If, on the contrary, someone else attempts to fill this role, the flock pays no  attention. Why does this happen? From all eternity, God idealized the figure of sheep and the shepherd to symbolize Himself, so that we would better understand Him. Thus, the relationship between these two creatures can help us to contemplate Our Lord Jesus Christ as the Shepherd of those who believe in Him. In this sense, the example of pasturing explains well the attitude of the Jews toward the Redeemer. The voice of the Divine Shepherd could not penetrate into those hearts because, to distinguish the unmistakable timbre of His voice, faith was needed!

The distinctive sign of the true sheep

Let us imagine a shepherd who, by a mere act of the will, could make myriad sheep from nothing, in accordance with his wishes. The exact notion that this hypothetical shepherd would have regarding his flock would be a pale image of the knowledge that Our Lord Jesus Christ has of each one of us, for He created us with His infinite power. From all eternity, the Divine Shepherd knows each one of us sheep, even those who do not belong to His flock, and He knows those who will accept His preaching and those who will reject it. Therefore, in the completion of this verse Our Lord affirms regarding His sheep: “and they follow Me.” In what does this following consist? Those who listen, understand; those who understand, believe; those who believe necessarily love. And, when one loves, it becomes easy to discern the way required to remain in this love. It may be the renunciation of an illicit pleasure that draws one away from the Shepherd, or the charitable disposition to lead others to Him, or… so many other things! But those who do not believe, do not understand, and moreover, construct a false reasoning to justify the erroneous path they have chosen. In this case they were those enemies of Our Lord, sheep who did not belong to His flock, but of that other who is not worthy to be called shepherd… This is the distinctive sign of the true sheep: upon hearing the voice of Jesus, they follow Him! Those who hear but do not follow are outside the flock. In face of this alternative, we clearly see that there is no third choice, for only two loves move souls: love of God taken to the point of forgetting oneself, or love of self, taken to the point of forgetting God. Thus, a sheepfold is comprised of those whose love for God supersedes self-love; the other consists of those who let self-love supplant love of God. The first are led by faith, which enlightens the reason; the second, by pure reasoning, stripped of faith. This is the battle, with no possibility of a truce between the two sheepfolds, but only defection from one side to the other.

Created participation in the Trinitarian life

Once the difference between the two flocks has been defined, Our Lord goes on to show the reward given to His sheep: “I give them eternal life.” This gift means participation through grace in divine life itself, a supernatural gift that makes us capable of understanding and loving God as He understands and loves Himself. We can neither understand nor love ourselves entirely, for the Creator has so ordained things to facilitate our relationship with Him and others. If we were not in need of mutual support, we would think ourselves self-sufficient and tend to isolate ourselves. However, in God, the reality is altogether different. As an infinite Being, with neither beginning nor end, the Father understands Himself with such precision that in this act He begets from all eternity a Person identical to Himself, the Son. In contemplating one another, They love one another with a love that is so profound and fruitful that from it the Holy Spirit proceeds. This is the Blessed Trinity: three Persons in one God, an ineffable truth that our intelligence cannot grasp and can only accept through faith in Revelation. Therefore, grace consists in a created participation in this Trinitarian life, and is the complete adherence to it, by means of the rejection of sin and the practice of faith and good works, which prevents the sheep from being lost. This is the reward reserved by the Good Shepherd for those who give themselves entirely to Him: eternal life, the seed of which, received on this earth, will fully blossom in glory.

The Blessed Trinity - Cologne Cathedral (Germany)

No one can take them out of His hand

Our Lord continues: Although we may be sheep of Jesus, the devil, the world and the flesh constantly seek to deceive us, saying that happiness is in the ways of pride and sensuality; but we should not fear. Once we have heard the voice of the Shepherd and adhered to Him by following His teachings, no one can take us from His hand: the Word Incarnate has promised this and His word is law. Even if every means at hand are engaged for our perdition, He will always give us the strength needed to resist and save ourselves. From this affirmation of the Divine Master one also concludes that when someone escapes from His hand, this is not His desire, but rather because the sheep in some way refused association with the Shepherd, giving over to that which is contrary to Him. Those who lay the blame exclusively on one or another circumstance for their own decadence are sadly mistaken. Even if assailed by calumny, hatred and persecution, if the person does not abandon Our Lord, He will never let him go. In this sense, the importance of faith in this life is similar to the situation of a survivor of a shipwreck on the high seas who is thrown a lifeline; he will be saved as long as he grasps it tightly. Our lifeline is faith.

Following the voice of the Shepherd is to be in God

Accentuating even more deeply everything that He had said with respect to eternal life, a treasure reserved for the sheep of His flock Our Lord, shows that the link between Shepherd and sheep is not solely with Him. Through the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, this link extends to the First and Third Persons. Jesus Himself offers the theological explanation of this sublime truth. Due to the intimate union between the three Divine Persons, previously covered, everything that the Father wishes, the Son also desires; everything that the Father does, the Son also does. It is the same with the Holy Spirit. Now, if no one can take the sheep from the hands of the Son, they can ever wrest them from the hands of the other two Persons. The sheep that hears the word of the Shepherd is, therefore, united to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Despite the desire of the enemies they will never leave the bosom of the Blessed Trinity, unless of their own volition. This doctrine constituted something new for the Chosen People, who considered God as Lord, but not as Father. Having reached the end of His public life, the Son revealed to them in the Temple the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, at the same time that He declared Himself to be God.

A naturalist vision of the Messiah

The Jewish people who rejected Our Lord did so because they considered Him from a merely human perspective. They awaited a Messiah in accordance with their worldly criteria, entirely dedicated to resolving the political, social and financial problems of Israel. In seeing the portentous miracles of Our Lord, they believe that the one who would assure their supremacy over all other nations had finally arrived. They accordingly saw in the Divine Master a justification for their egoistic and delirious yearning for temporal dominion, they would delight with the expectancy that He would declare Himself the Messiah; however, not if they heard Him preaching a spiritual kingdom, that would demand of them a change of customs and mentality. In other words, they desired to build a bridge between the evil in which they lived and the good that is God. Therefore, it was a problem of faith, not reasoning. Despite their intelligence, they had become incapable of understanding things from on high, for they lacked the virtue of faith. Naturalism had obscured them to the evidence of an entirely uncommon Man, so extraordinary that He could not be a mere Man!

No one lacks the grace to believe

Once again, it is clear that when the sheep put themselves into the hands of the Shepherd with faith, they are in some sense confirmed in grace. On the contrary, from the moment in which they refuse to believe and escape from divine love, they put themselves at risk. This is what happened with those Jews, who chose to neither hear nor understand His voice, despite being invited. This is a fundamental theological principle: no one lacks the graces necessary to adhere to the truth. Even a savage, who has never met a missionary, just by contemplating the order of nature will receive the graces to understand the existence of the God who created him and, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches,¹ can be saved, for those who encounter something superior to themselves and love it more than themselves, are justified at that moment. The crux of the matter lies in the acceptance or rejection of these graces and the eternal destiny of each one after death depends on this. In the presence of the Author of grace, the Son of God Incarnate, those sons of Abraham rejected the graces that were given to them and a few days later crucified Him. However, others, seeing the many signs He performed, accepted them and acknowledged that He was the Saviour, thereby joining His flock!

“The Good Shepherd” - Blessed Sacrament Church, Bronx, New York

III – Jesus Convokes Us to Follow Him

This Sunday’s Gospel contains a serious warning for us. Can we say that we have given ourselves entirely to the Good Shepherd? Or do we act like those Jews who actually wanted a Messiah who would justify their vices, without demanding any spiritual progress on their part? We should take the care to ask ourselves if we want God to adapt Himself to our defects, or if we seek to eradicate them in order to be sheep who hear Jesus’ voice and follow Him? The point is that when we recognize the divinity of Our Lord, we must to change our life!

Pressure to lead a life divorced from eternity

In this twenty-first century how much pressure is applied to good Catholics to reject this invitation of grace! Pressure from the world, television, the internet, and social interaction… always geared on leading a life without faith; divorced from eternity, a life from which Our Lord Jesus Christ is absent. If we were to attempt to list all of the modern habits that support this there would not be enough paper in the world! However, aided by the promise of the Divine Shepherd that no one will take the sheep from His hands, I must decide. If, for example, I like watching inappropriate television programs, I must stop doing this! If I socialize with those who lead me to sin, I have to avoid them! If I am not used to keeping custody of the eyes and I make concessions to the immorality so rampant on the streets, I must change now!

Let us be sheep of the Good Shepherd!

God desires, He has always desired and will always desire to save everyone and to grant them the eternal life of which Our Lord speaks in this Gospel. But, for this to happen, He imposes a law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37). All the other Commandments derive from this, and the fulfilment of it makes our daily actions similar to the divine model. This is the gate of Jesus’ sheepfold and we must enter by it; on the contrary, we will not be numbered among His sheep. The voice of the Good Shepherd calls us today to listen to and follow Him like docile sheep, wishing to be instructed in Catholic doctrine, to receive the Sacraments, to avoid sin, in short, to take another step toward the goal that He has set for each of us which is holiness! Let us, then, be sheep of Christ’s flock! ◊

Flock of sheep on the outskirts of Avila (Spain))

Notes

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¹ ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiae. I-II, q.89, a.6.