Acts 13: 14, 43-52 + Psalm 100: 1-2, 3, 5 + Revelation 7: 9, 14B-17 + John 10: 27-30
Click here to listen to today's homily
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, OK
Last night we celebrated with Archbishop Coakley the
confirmation of 29 of our high school students. Part of their preparation toward
the end was to come and interview with either Deacon Paul or me to share with
us what they had learned in this two-year process of preparation. One of the
questions that I would always have for them is: “Who is Jesus for you? Tell me
about Jesus.” And, most of them would simply begin naming some facts about Him.
You know, “He is the son of Mary. Joseph is his foster father. He worked miracles.
He died for our sins.” But then I would ask them, “I want you to tell me who He
is for you.” Because there is a difference between knowing things about Jesus
as opposed to knowing Jesus. It is a
difference that emerges from a vital life of prayer, a daily conversation with
Him, a getting to know Him and allowing Him to reveal Himself to us. Really, it’s
all about relationship. And, as it is with any solid, life-giving relationship
in our life, any good friendship. It means spending time with the One you love.
It means listening to them. It means taking the time to be attentive to them.
This is how you get to know someone. And that’s why, for those students
confirmed last night, for all of us, the gift of the Spirit is so vital.
This Season of the Spirit, the fifty days of the Easter
Season, are given to us to remind us that the Holy Spirit is given to us in
order that we might come to know Jesus. Not just know things about Him, but to
know Him. And the gifts flowing from the Spirit, especially Wisdom,
Understanding, and Knowledge, are meant to help us in that growing relationship
with the Risen Lord. I remember one of those students when I was asking about
those gifts mentioned desiring them so they could do better on their exams and
I pointed out the gift of Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding is not about
acing your Chemistry exam, it’s about gifts that enable us to know the Lord, to
know Him, to be drawn deeper into a relationship with Him and that one of the
most powerful ways we do that, of course, is by praying with Sacred Scripture,
especially the Gospels — Coming to know the Living Lord through His word given
to us in the Scriptures.
Today we come to know Him in a very special way as The Good
Shepherd. Every year on the fourth Sunday of Easter is Good Shepherd Sunday. The
Church gives us selections every year at this time from the tenth chapter of
John’s Gospel. We are in Cycle C and the selection this year from that tenth
chapter is very small, only four verses, but it speaks about how the Good
Shepherd knows His sheep. He calls them and they follow Him. This Good Shepherd
that we’ve come to know in a very powerful way is the one who leads us through
the Valley of Death and to Eternal Life, and the one who even know leads us
through any sort of Valley of Tears or trials into a new life.
The context of this Gospel reading from the tenth chapter of
John today is a setting in the Temple where Jesus is just being interrogated by
some of the Jews about whether He is the Messiah or not. They want to know,
they want Him to tell them, that He is the Promised One. These interrogators in
the Temple, they know lots of things about Jesus. They know He is from Nazareth.
They know that He’s got a huge following, that He’s been teaching and healing
and doing mighty deeds, but they do not know
Him. They do not know Him. In fact, in the verse immediately preceding today’s
Gospel, Jesus says to them, “You do not believe in me because you are not my
sheep. My sheep listen to me, they know my voice. You are not my sheep.”
It is interesting also on this Good Shepherd Sunday that we
have another image that seems to be the opposite of the shepherd. If you listen
closely to the Second Reading from the Book of Revelation, the Scripture writer
tells us about this glorified Lamb of God sitting on the throne, and he says “The
lamb will shepherd them.” Imagine that! The lamb
will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water. The Good
Shepherd in the Gospel and the lamb in the Second Reading, the very Lamb of
God, He is one of us, one of the flock. In fact, He first becomes one of us,
one of the sheep, in order that we might come to know Him as The Good Shepherd.
In our tradition, the Church teaches that He is both lamb and shepherd, He is
both priest and victim, He is both human and divine – human and divine. So this
image of the lamb who shepherds us kind of takes us back to the Mystery of
Christmas when the very Son of God became one like us in all things in order to
listen to the human condition, to know our lives from the inside out, from
birth all the way to death, all of our joys, all of our sorrows. The Son of
God, the Good Shepherd, becomes the Lamb, like us, in order to know us that we
might come to know Him.
So, we have reason for great joy, great joy, because we have
a God who has pitched his tent among us, who has lived among us, who wants to
be known, who longs to be known by us, a God who spends time with us in Jesus,
His Son, the Good Shepherd, and who has listened carefully to what it means to
be human. He calls you and me, therefore, the Good Shepherd today, to become
more fully a part of His flock and to find in this communion we have with Him
and with one another the power to overcome this rampant individualism that
seems to penetrate every part of our society — to recognize that we do not find
out who we are alone, but rather, we find out who we are together as members of
the flock of the Good Shepherd. As we hear His voice and come to know Him, we come
to know we are members of a family of God. We are brothers and sisters to one
another. And as He continues to lead us, we have this desire growing in our
heart as we know Him better to care about the things He cares about, to do what
he wants us to do with our life. And, in following Him, to know what life is all
about, what the gift of abundant life He shares with us is, and to know the
call to everlasting joy.
— Father Joseph Jacobi
