Fr. Anastasius Li 李達修神父

Trappist monk (大嶼山聖母神樂院) Fr. Anastasius Li celebrated Mass in Chinese at Camperdown.

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (C) 21 April 2013

 Fr. Gerard Kelly

We are now at about the halfway point of the Easter season.  Today we have left behind those we met over the last few Sundays – those who were filled with surprise and eventually recognition as they encountered the risen Jesus.  The focus is now on living in the Spirit of the risen Jesus.  We see the community taking shape as it moves from surprise, through fear and persecution, to a deep sense of mission – going out of itself to the world.

For us, this Easter season is an opportunity to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ, and to embrace the life he offers.  He presents himself to us today as a shepherd, promising eternal life to those who listen to him.  I think that the gospel today is inviting us to see him in broader terms than simply protecting the sheep.  If we think a little more deeply about it, we recognise that the shepherd works hard.  The first thing he does is gather the flock.  The sheep are often inclined to wander away and to get lost, so the shepherd has a role of gathering the flock.  This tells us something about the meaning of eternal life that he offers us.  We can easily limit our understanding of eternal life to that life we are promised after death.  But the eternal life Jesus is speaking of is something that we already possess because we share in his resurrection through baptism.  It is a life that is shared with all those the shepherd has gathered into his flock.  The shepherd, then, leads the Christian community so that it might be a sign in the world of what sort of flock God is gathering.

This does not mean that the sheep of this flock should be seen as people who are huddled together in a sheep pen, afraid to move very far.  If we were that sort of church, we would quickly die.  That isn’t the image we see in the life of the early church, especially as we hear it recounted in the Acts of the Apostles in the first reading.  This is a church that takes the word of the Lord to ever wider groups of people.  With the true image of the shepherd and his flock the sheep wander far and wide, and are busy with what they are doing – but always under the watchful eye of the good shepherd.  It is in this sense that we speak of the shepherd protecting the sheep.  Let me use a different image to illustrate what the shepherd is doing.  Think of how a parent protects a child.  If the child was never allowed outside to play for fear that he or she might hurt themselves they would probably not grow to healthy adults.  But if the child can play with others, and maybe even sometimes fall over and hurt themselves, or even end up in a fight with other children, then the parent is there to patch up the wounds and to give the child the courage to go back out and play again.  The shepherd is like this: the shepherd bandages the sheep that have come to grief.  When people find that living the gospel brings them into conflict with those around them, then the shepherd gives them the courage to continue to seek out and live this eternal life that is already upon them.

The church itself is a model of this.  At times in history when the church has become more focused on itself rather than on taking its message to the world, it has moved into a decline.  In fact, the church has always been at its strongest when it has been under threat or facing difficulty.  It has become strong not because it retreated into itself, but because at precisely that moment it looked beyond itself and focused on the mission of God.  Apparently there is an old wisdom in monasteries: that if the monastery is having troubles then it sends some monks out to found a new monastery, to bring something new to birth.

So when we speak of the shepherd protecting the sheep and offering them eternal life, we need to see this as something that is bold and dynamic.  The shepherd is calling us to be bold in the way we live our faith.  I believe that this is perhaps the reason why the world has been fascinated by Pope Francis.  With all of the talk of a church in crisis before his election, he has shown that the best way to face a crisis is for the church not to focus on itself.  Surely the gesture on Holy Thursday of washing the feet of those juvenile prisoners said more about the good shepherd protecting the flock than all the lengthy analysis of the problems.  This is not to say that analysis of problems is not important.  Rather, it reminds us that our first priority is to live the gospel and to be a witness to that eternal life which we already share.

That, I believe, is why the shepherd also speaks of the sheep listening to his voice.  We listen to his voice so that we might know what eternal life looks like.  The gospels are full of his teaching and miracles to show us how to live eternal life even now.  His voice calls us back to that mission.  When we are inclined to settle back and think we are here and that is all that is necessary, he calls us to look beyond ourselves and to connect our faith to the rest of life.

Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  Today we need young people who can hear the voice of the shepherd – not so that they can become saviours of the church or the world, but so that they can be fired by the gospel and be excited by the eternal life that the shepherd offers and desire to be shepherds like the good shepherd.  Let us, as a vibrant community of faith, pray for vocations today.