The Fourth Sunday
of Easter
(A)
The 57th
World Day of Prayer for Vocations
Dear brothers and sisters,
The Lord Jesus calls himself “the gate for
the sheep” through which the sheep “will be saved, and will come in and go out
and find pasture” (John 10:7, 9). It is easy enough to understand what he means
by the sheep: he means those who hear his voice, who know his voice, and who
follow his voice; he means those who are his disciples, those who strive to
learn from him and to imitate him (cf. John 10:14, 3). To recognize Christ
Jesus to be the gate for us requires us first to take to his words to heart, to
allow them to pierce our hearts, so as to be led to “repent and be baptized,
every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins”
(Acts 2:38).
It is likewise simple enough to understand
what he means by calling himself the gate: he is the door, the entrance, the
way (cf. John 14:6). He makes no mention of any other gate, of any other door,
of any other way. He alone is the way to his pasture, but what is this pasture
which he opens up to his sheep?
To understand something of his pasture, we
can turn to the twenty-third Psalm, one of the most beloved passages of the
Sacred Scriptures. In this ancient hymn, King David - himself a shepherd -
sang, “The Lord is my shepherd; I
shall not want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose; he refreshes my soul”
(Psalm 23:3). Reflecting on his own time spent with his father’s flocks, during
which David sought to lead the sheep to peaceful pastures, he realized that the
Lord did the same for him. The young king of Israel understood that “he who has
God as his shepherd is always granted this abundance, the image of all good
gifts.”[1]
The Fathers of the Church saw in this
image of the pasture the image of the Church herself. This is why Saint
Ignatius of Antioch could say that Christ “is the door of the Father through
which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets, the apostles and the
church all enter. All these enter into the unity of God.”[2]
The Fathers therefore saw a connection with Christ the gate for the sheep with
the waters of Baptism, which is why Saint Augustine said, “he nurtured me
beside the water of baptism, where those who have lost their soundness and
strength are made new.”[3]
When Jesus says that the sheep enter
through him, he says the sheep enter into the Church, the Body of Christ,
through him. We do this through our participation in his Sacraments,
principally through Baptism. But what does he mean when he speaks of those going
out through him who find pasture? He surely does not mean that we can abandon
the Church – which he established – through him.
When he considered these words of the
Savior, Saint Augustine said:
I might say, indeed, that we enter
when we engage in some inward exercise of thought; and go out, when we take to
some active work without: and since, as the apostle says, Christ dwells in our
hearts by faith, to enter by Christ is to give ourselves to thought in
accordance with that faith; but to go out by Christ is, in accordance also
with that same faith, to take to outside works, that is to say, in the
presence of others (cf. Ephesians 3:17).[4]
These outside works, of course, are the
works of the disciples of Jesus; they are the works of evangelization by which
we help others to hear and recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd, to repent,
and to enter into the Church through him.
We can only go out in this way if we
conform our lives to Christ, if we ourselves become doors. We cannot forget
that
In the tabernacle,
the altar is, so to speak, always alive, always remains Eucharist, always the
entrance and ascent of Jesus Christ. Through him the church is always Church
and never a lifeless house in which nothing is happening at the moment. He is
there always. Over the centuries, it was always the great and beautiful thing
about our churches that they stood open, that the door was really a door. It
can stand open only if we ourselves stand open and our life constantly leads to
him, when we, too, in our everyday routine have time for the mystery of living
closeness.[5]
Once we have entered through Christ into
his quiet pastures of overflowing serenity, how can we not desire to help
others also find his pasture? How can we leave them outside the gate, stumbling
about in the wild, outside of his abundant and merciful love?
For this reason, on this fifty-seventh World
Day of Prayer for Vocations, the Holy Father Pope Francis urges all of the
faithful “to overcome all weariness
through faith in Christ, and to make of their lives a song of praise for God,
for their brothers and sisters, and for the whole world.”[6] As
anxiety sets hold of some of us and as others of us are growing restless, these
are words we should all take to heart.
We cannot allow
ourselves to be overcome by weariness, but must instead remember the counsel of
Saint Peter: “If you are patient when you suffer for doing what is good, this
is a grace before God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also
suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his
footsteps” (I Peter 2:20). Rather than allowing ourselves to become despondent
and agitated, we should always strive to see the “goodness and kindness” of the
Lord and so to enter into his pasture (Psalm 23:6). With Saint Augustine, let
us say to Jesus, “I
shall not be afraid of evil happenings, because you live in my heart through
faith; you are with me now, to ensure that when this shadow of death has passed
away, I may be with you.”[7]
Amen.
[1] Romano Guardini, The Wisdom of the
Psalms, Stella Lange, trans. (Chicago: Henry Regner Company, 1968), 94
[2] Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle
to the Philadelphians, 9. In Thomas C. Oden, et al, eds., Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament Vol. IVa: John 1-10 (Downers
Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2006), 343.
[3] Saint Augustine of Hippo,
Exposition of Psalm 22 (23), 2. In Saint Augustine: Expositions of the
Psalms, Vol I, John E. Rotelle, ed., Maria Boulding, trans. (Hyde Park, New
York: New City Press, 2000), 244.
[4] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Tractates
on the Gospel of John, 45.15.
[5] Joseph Ratzinger, Signs of New
Life: Homilies on the Church’s Sacraments, Michael J. Miller, trans. (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2020), 24.
[6] Pope Francis, Message for the
57th World Day of Prayer for Vocations.
[7] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Exposition
of Psalm 22 (23), 4. In Saint Augustine: Expositions of the Psalms, 244.
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