FOLLOWING THE GOOD SHEPHERD

SUNDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE   

Acts 2:14,36-41; Ps 23; 1 Pet 2:20-25; Jn 10:1-10

I Am the Gate of the Sheepfold

We celebrate the fourth Sunday of Easter as the Good Shepherd Sunday. By this celebration, the Church leads us deeper into the Messianic role of the Son of Man. The Eternal Word assumed our human nature in order to save us from sin, death, and evil, and to restore us to the eternal dwelling that God prepared for us. This is the core content of the celebration. The celebration presents this content using the analogy of the Shepherd and the sheep. The illumination of this analogy is important for our understanding of the celebration. The fact that we are rational creatures of God makes us his own in every ramification. Though he made us rational, we are conceived and born in ignorance of God and the divine truths necessary for our eternal well-being. The disobedience of our first parents placed additional stumbling blocks or difficulties on our path to acquiring knowledge of God. Lost in the maze of life, and surrounded by forces of evil and darkness, we stand in need of a guard and guide to travel safely to God, our ultimate end. God the Father, understanding our situation, sends us his Only Begotten Son to be our Saviour. To save us, he needed to come as one of us and live among us. His coming among us, visibly seen as one of us, constitutes him our Shepherd in addition to his complete knowledge of the Father’s will for us.

The Eternal Word of God is always among us as God. But he is not our Shepherd in his divine form, for we do not see or know him. The sheep must see the shepherd and be familiar with him. Hence, the Son of Man claims to be our shepherd, not as God, but as a man like everyone of us; for in that form, we recognise him as one of us. Further, he is not our shepherd as a mere man like each of us, but as possessing the knowledge of the Father, which all of us lack. He possesses this knowledge, not through his nature as man, but through the original gift of the beatific vision granted him when his human nature was united to the Eternal Word. So, what the Eternal Word did not have from the beginning, he acquired at his Incarnation by the will of the Father, which made him available to human persons as their guide and guard. By this union willed by the Father, the Son of Man became the way leading into the eternal Godhead. In this one sense, he is the gate of the sheepfold. The other complementary sense in which he is the gate of the sheepfold is his possession of the true and complete knowledge of our nature. His union with the Eternal Word completely illuminated the human nature, giving him primacy over every man. So, anyone seeking knowledge of our nature must pass through him. These two senses are contained in our Lord’s words. “I tell you most solemnly, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold through the gate, but gets in some other way, is a thief and a brigand. The one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the flock; the gatekeeper lets him in, the sheep hear his voice, one by one he calls his own sheep and leads them out.”

Born as the shepherd of the flock of God that is in bondage to sin and evil, the first work of the shepherd is to deliver the flock of God from whatever holds them bound or captive. As the Son of Man stated, some came before him to hijack the flock and imprison them. “All others who have come are thieves and brigands, but the sheep took no notice of them. I am the gate.” The sheep that belong to God are distinguished by their faithfulness to the rationality that distinguishes our nature from lower creatures. By the same rationality, they recognised the light of God when he appeared. Though oppressed and persecuted by evil, they maintained their humanity, which they recognised in the Shepherd when he came to save us. Saint Peter made this point. “The merit, in the sight of God, is in bearing punishment patiently when you are punished after doing your duty. This, in fact, is what you were called to do, because Christ suffered for you and left an example for you to follow the way he took.” The sheep recognises the Shepherd by the common humanity and the light which shines through his human nature.

The difference in our sufferings and those of the Son of Man is that we suffer because of our sins, but he suffered innocently. Hence, this light of uprightness and innocence shines in the Saviour as a powerful attraction for the sheep. He speaks our human language with such power that every true sheep hears his voice deep within. “He had done nothing wrong, and there had been no perjury in his mouth. He was insulted and did not retaliate with insult; when he was tortured, he made no threats, but he put his trust in the righteous judge.” His uprightness and innocence were his weapons against the oppressive forces of sin and evil. His innocent voice and cries were not only heard within each of us, but in the heaven of God. “He was bearing our faults in his own body on the cross, so that we might die to our faults and live for holiness; through his wounds you have been healed.” He healed our sinful wounds not as a mere man like us, but, coupled with his innocence, his merits belong also to the Eternal Word, to whom he united himself firmly by obedience of faith. Thus, the Son of Man received the glory of the Son of God, and the Son of God received the merit of the Son of Man in his divine Person. These describe our Good Shepherd. “You had gone astray like sheep, but now you have come back to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” His powerful testimony of God’s goodness and love for us not only rescued us from the forces of sin and darkness but also gathered us into the heavenly kingdom of God.

Saint Peter’s speech on the day of Pentecost presented these mysteries before the people for the first time. By our sins, we have betrayed God and his goodness to us. But God sent his Son to be our shepherd and save us from the damnation that is our due. “The whole House of Israel can be certain that god has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.” Our vocation is to prayerfully understand these mysteries and represent them in our lives and before the people we meet every day. Saved through our profession of faith in baptism, we must never lose sight of our Shepherd. We must live daily in the pastureland of heaven he made accessible to us in his person. “The promise that was made is for you and your children, and for all those who are far away, for all those whom the Lord our God will call to himself.” If we faithfully listen and follow the Shepherd, His Holy Spirit will transform us into shepherds for the flock of God. Let us embrace our vocation as the shepherd wholeheartedly and pray with the psalmist: “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose. Near restful waters he leads me, to revive my drooping spirit.”

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, lead us to a share in the joys of heaven, so that the humble flock may reach where the brave Shepherd has gone before. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.