There is a great difference between something that is real and authentic and comes to us with a guaranteed quality, and something that is fake, a poor copy or knockoff, that is offered to us by some thief that is operating in some shady alley. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, offers to us an authentic life that is full, abundant, grace-filled and eternal. Only Jesus can give to us the “real deal” when it comes to life. Only Jesus, the Good Shepherd, can lead us to the rich and green pastures where we can be fed and have life. He offers this out of love. The gate of the shepherd leads us into the Church and to the Eucharist where we find the bread of life to feed us. Jesus says in John, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day…Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” (Jn 6,53f.57)
All of us at one time or another may have wandered away from the flock of Jesus and from the life of grace. The world has a tendency to scatter us, to confuse us and to offer false pathways that promise everything but deliver nothing. Out of our foolish pride and our quest for autonomy we go our own ways and we wander down backroads of alternative life-styles but all we find is that we have been deceived and we are hopelessly lost and alone. St. Peter made his own share of mistakes in his lifetime and he shares with us, “For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” (1Pt 2,25)
The Risen Christ who now is seated at the right hand of the Father, continues to be our shepherd and the guardian of our souls and he never ceases calling us to a more beautiful and abundant life. This life of abundance, beauty and grace is a divine life, a life of holiness, an eternal life and a new life that we are given in baptism so that, as St. Paul declares for us in Romans, “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” (Rom 6,4) Jesus is “the shepherd and guardian of your souls”,(1 Pt 2,25) as St. Peter reminds us. Only he truly loves us and cares about the salvation of our souls. It is the Lord who is our shepherd and leads us even through the dark valley of death (Ps 23,4). He is able to lead us safely through this dark valley because he himself has already traveled there and conquered death forever.
Pope Benedict in his encyclical entitled, “Saved in Hope”, spoke to us of the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd: “The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death: one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through…this was the new “hope” that arose over the life of believers.” (Spe Salvi, 6) Together with Jesus, the Good Shepherd, we can find our way through the darkness.
In this Easter season of the resurrection, we are reminded of our hope for eternal life. We do not need to fear the evil of death because we will never be alone in the darkness of death. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, walks before us and leads us safely to the far pastures of the Father’s house where we may be fed at the table of plenty on food that gives us eternal life, our heads anointed with oil and our cups overflowing. This is the abundant life that is promised and that Jesus has come to give to us, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (Jn 10,10)
Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. If we follow his voice and are known to him in a personal way, as friends, then we may pass safely into the house of the Father. Jesus assures his apostles, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that were I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way…I am the way.” (Jn 14,2-6) Jesus is the gate that leads to the Father. No one can come to the Father except through Jesus and no one can enter into the kingdom of the Father without passing through the gate which is Jesus. This excludes no one for Jesus himself says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (Jn 10,16)
Our hope has a solid foundation for we already possess the means of salvation in Christ Jesus. We already are assured of a way which leads us surely and safely to the Father and eternal and abundant life: Jesus, the Way, the Gate. Our hope is not just wishful thinking that we might attain a good outcome in the end but rather, it is a certainty that we live even now as sheep following where he leads. We pass even now in and out of the gate, experiencing a foretaste of eternal life in the abundant life of Christ that we share now in the Eucharist and in our own personal relationship of prayer and our journey of faith with the Good Shepherd. Christian faith gives us the substance of things that are hoped for (Heb 11,1) as we live our faith even now in Christ. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the Sheep-gate, has opened for us the gates of heaven, and even now we may feast on the riches from his table in the Eucharist.
As sheep, there should be nothing more important to us than to listen to the voice of the Shepherd, to know him in an intimate way, and to place our trust in the way in which he leads us. Prayer, sacrament, scripture, liturgy, and service all lead us closer to Christ so that we might not be strangers but that we might know his voice and allow us to know him intimately and to hear him call us by name, in the tenderness of a friend. As we have been shepherded we also must become shepherds, in the manner of the Good Shepherd, we must be willing to love our sheep, know them personally and lay down ourselves for them in a ministry of service and self-sacrifice. We must also be shepherds and guardians of souls. Our sheep are our friends, our family members, our spouses, our children and our co-workers. Through prayer we can be guardians of many souls that need to find their way to Jesus, the Good Shepherd.
This Sunday is also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Every vocation has as its model the ministry of the Good Shepherd who knows his sheep, who leads them into a more abundant life, who loves them and who protects them from the harm of false shepherds, and who provides a “gate” for them to pass through into life. Listen for the call to abundant life, live your life as a vocation, a call to love, and allow Jesus to be the shepherd and guardian of your soul so that you may guard the souls of the other sheep that Jesus is asking you to watch over. Amen!