A commentary on John 10, 11-18, Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 26th 2015
We continue Reading Saint John’s Gospel. Today we read chapter tenth with the allegory of the Good Shepherd, a very meaningful image for ancient peoples, who used to live on cattle. The majority of us live now in big cities and do not have the direct experience of a shepherd’s work and life, but still the image is powerful and inspiring also for us. Let me offer you three points of meditation:
1.- People, more than a wages
Walking from town to town, in Palestine, Jesus could observe, as we do nowadays, that there were many authorities working just for the pay, not for the good of the people they were working for. Those “shepherds” were centred in themselves, their money, their prestige, their good name, with no real interest for the good of the persons they were supposed to serve, people who were really in need of guidance, like “sheep without a shepherd”: Many politicians were more interested in their own richness than in organizing a just society; many fathers and mothers were thinking on their own wellbeing more than on their children’s vocation; many religious leaders were acting, not according to the heart of God, but putting their search for money, power and prestige before the wellbeing of God’s children.
Before this situation, Jesus, Son of the living God, who has declared himself “the shepherd of his people” (Ezekiel 34, Psalm 23), presents himself with his real identity: an unselfish shepherd, that is, not centred in himself, but in the need of his “sheep”: sick people, sinners, friends, children of his Father. For Him people are not means to achieve personal, political or religious goals. People are not instrumental to anything, but the Father’s loved children. And He has no doubts about giving his life out for them in total freedom and generosity.
This leads me to two conclusions for my own life:
-Jesus is the only true Shepherd of my life. Nobody else. Certainly, all of us need others: friends, parents, teachers, doctors, politicians…They are, somehow, shepherds of our life. But one thing is clear to me: the only shepherd to whom I entrust my life is Jesus Christ. I allow myself to be guided by Him, loved by Him. In him I find the nourishment for my soul, the free and undisputed love… And that makes me free from so many pretentious shepherds who try to use me for their own interests.
-I am also called to become a shepherd. I am called to guide others, to give my life for others. Looking at Jesus I become a disciple-shepherd, somebody that looks at others, not as a means of “self-realization”, but as autonomous children of God, to whose fulfilment I can contribute with my words and actions, affection and testimony.
2.- To know and to be known: “I know my sheep, as my Father knows me”
The famous Uruguayan writer, deceased recently, Eduardo Galeano, told once a story about a young boy who was lonely in a hospital on Christmas eve. To the doctor who went to visit him before going home to celebrate Christmas, the boy said: “Tell somebody that I am here”… Maybe you have seen how people become “mad” when they see themselves on television; they rejoice at the fact of their public appearance, of been seen by others… That happens because we are made to “be in the eyes of somebody”, to be looked at, to be recognised by somebody. Without that we feel alone, “abandoned”, not taken into consideration, we are like “nothing”, as “sheep without a pastor”. Sometimes we may have the impression of being alone in live and that even the nearest people know us only from the outside, not what we really are in our inner self.
What Jesus is telling us today is that He knows us in our inner reality, that we are not lost in the mass, that we are SOMEBODY in his eyes. Jesus relates to me as the Father relates to him: with knowledge, love and mutual belonging.
3.- An inclusive community
The disciples of Jesus learn continuously how to build up a community, in which everyone is appreciated and accepted as He is with an absolute value in himself. People are not important because of their “instrumental” value but because they are God’s children. In this sense, how beautiful it is the custom we find in some Christian communities to stay over, after Mass, to greet around, to take a coffee together, to know more about each other, to be “somebody” among many other important “somebodies”.
This community of people known by Jesus and to each other is an open community, always ready to welcome other “sheep” that are for some time out of the “sheepfold”, not because we want to increase our numbers (for power and prestige), but because we want to share the marvellous gift of this unselfish shepherd, who wants (and we with Him) that everybody has “life and life in abundance” (Jn 10,10). The community of Jesus’ disciples is a missionary-shepherd community, who cares for the wellbeing of others, always ready to go out of itself and meet the needs and joys of the people of our time.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma
