EASTER SUNDAY IV
GOOD SHEPHERD SUNDAY
Jesus Has Some Little Lambs
Every year, on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, we worship Jesus under one of His most appealing titles, the Good Shepherd. Even though we do not live in a pastoral setting around here, the imagery is enticing and people respond.
However, as people in a pastoral setting know, apparently sheep are not the most lovable of animals. They can be very cantankerous and smelly and willful. It could only be a good shepherd that would really love them.
The image of God as the Shepherd goes back into the Hebrew Scriptures. Usually, Psalm 23, the most beloved of all the psalms, comes immediately to our minds. “YHWH is my Shepherd.” In today’s responsorial psalm, which apparently was an entrance hymn to liturgy in King Solomon’s Temple. Although the citizens of
In our Gospel today, from John 10, viz., the Good Shepherd chapter, Jesus Self-identifies with His Father’s nickname. Jesus speaks of how His sheep hear His Voice.
There is room for reflection here as well for us. First of all, each individual sheep hears the Voice of the Good Shepherd. Second, the flock as a flock responds in unison to the Voice of the Good Shepherd. Third, the individual sheep of the flock have a relationship with one another.
It is for this reason that Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, who resides at Fordham University, down in the Bronx, has referred to the Little Flock of the Good Shepherd as one of the ways in which Catholics identify their relationship to God and to Christ and to one another. Writing thirty years ago, Cardinal Dulles said that because of the development of various lay movements with USA Catholicism, such as Marriage Encounter, the Cursillo Movement, the Charismatic Renewal and other lay ministries, it was a unique gift of the American church to world Catholicism.
The Catholic scene was much different thirty years than it is now, sad to say. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the post-modern phase that so many traditional institutions encounter after the pivotal year, 1968. Most traditional institutions have undergone what has been called “de-construction”. New ways of viewing government, church, education, family have come into conventional wisdom with the result that many do not take traditional values promulgated by established institutions as givens anymore.
Sadly, the growth of Catholic Communities as Little Flocks of the Good Shepherd has waned sadly in the recent past. With two of the basic traditional institutions undergoing scrutiny, the church and the family, the traditional symbiotic relationship between family and church has weakened. We have generations now of good-hearted Catholics, who do not know very much about what their faith is all about. Sadly, too, many are so hard pressed for time that it is seen as a burden to require people to do anything more than the attendance at Sunday Mass (and keep it under an hour, please!!)
Every sheep in the flock, at one time or another, has to walk through the dark valley. We call it the Paschal Mystery, when we experience the painful realities of life, (one’s mid-life crisis is only one predictable event!). If there has not been sufficient grounding in faith by both church and family when the going is good (as it is for so many of us in our setting around here), then when the shadow side of life confronts us, then, it might be too late to look for the answers that one should have been gathering earlier.
The image of the Good Shepherd is always appropriate. However, these days, Cardinal Dulles probably would not use it as readily since so much has changed in our Catholic social setting. Still, it is a reminder to us that when we do walk through the dark valley, the Good Shepherd has been there all along. On good days as well as bad, many each of Jesus’ sheep and the entire flock listen in unison to His Voice and respond accordingly. It is then that He will, indeed, lead us to the verdant pasture. He is doing it all along, but most of us are too busy to realize it. 042907AD jfq
