IV Sunday PT
Text
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. The mercenary – who is not a shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong – sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away, and the wolf kidnaps them and scatters them; because he is a mercenary and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that do not come from this pen: I have to lead them too. They will listen to my voice and become one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I give my life, to then take it back again. Nobody takes it away from me: I give it from myself. I have the power to give it and the power to take it back again. This is the command I received from my Father (John 10:11–18).
Comment
The passage of the Gospel that this Sunday’s liturgy offers us is so immediate and so scandalously simple that it creates difficulties for anyone who wants to risk explanations or for anyone who, considering themselves more intelligent than the evangelist, wants to offer insights into the Word of God. Everything would seem obvious, everything would have a hint of things already said.
Yet when reading the Word that the Spirit seasons with the flavors of different seasons, it should never happen that we can passively dredge up boring and old sensations, the same ones that for centuries have filled the cloying void of so many sermons. And, if this happens, it means, unfortunately, that it is the sleepy and tired imagination of the preacher that is unable to grasp the different flavors that the times, marked by the Spirit, offer at every turn. Today, for example, the phrase “The good shepherd offers his life for his sheep” cannot leave me indifferent any more than a monument looked at in the same way a thousand times could leave me indifferent, because, in the last year, too many things have happened in the my life and in the history of the community I frequented. Therefore I cannot afford to keep the image of the Good Shepherd unchanged, who for two thousand years has been offering his life for his sheep. In fact, today, compared to other times, I find this image catapulted in a different way to the reality in which I live. It’s as if my boredom were his boredom, faced with the immobility of a flock that bleats without enthusiasm; it is as if my certainty about the futility of those prayers that ask for vocations was also his certainty; it is as if my embarrassment were your embarrassment in having to answer that the times of the fat cows are no longer the same, since society, which is not stupid, no longer sees virtue in voluntary castration, but in the generous dedication of ‘apostle, who does not disdain being enveloped and sometimes conditioned by the normal conduct of a normal existence. And don’t tell me that it is my lack of faith that leads me down these strange paths, because, if that were the case, it would have to be explained to me, and precisely by someone who thinks he believes more than me, why on earth, despite his (the them) so many prayers, the number and quality of priests continues to decline inexorably.
And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; these too I must lead.
I recommended to a young parish priest to dedicate more time to caring for the “distant”. . . He replied to me a little awkwardly: “I can’t, because there are too many commitments… the youth group, the scouts, the choir, the ladies of Caritas”. I dropped the subject and, without excessive interest, I found myself observing the nuances of his voice which went from mystical with ease to the simple calibration of a normal conversation. It is not easy for those who have mastered the absurd art of doubling during their formative years, to repent and finally discover, perhaps at their own expense, that outside the fold of the privileged, there are other sheep, less willing to mumble prayers, but more authentic in their intentions.
Tags: Sheep sheepfold Velletri Life
