by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla
“I am the Good Shepherd, and I know mine and mine know
me.” (John 10:11)
The gospel today is part of the famous Good Shepherd
discourse in the gospel of John. Jesus is the sole shepherd of his people. There is no other shepherd who is the true
shepherd, and this is why they know him and follow him
if he calls them. There are other sheep
in the sheepfold, but they do not know him and do not follow them.
But those who recognize his voice he leads to a rich pasture. Jesus is the legitimate shepherd. He does not climb over the fence to get into the sheepfold. He uses no tricks, no illusions. His purpose in getting into the sheepfold is not to steal or slaughter like the thief or the robber. Rather he enters by the proper gate, the gate of his own body, the gate which he tells us is himself.
But those who recognize his voice he leads to a rich pasture. Jesus is the legitimate shepherd. He does not climb over the fence to get into the sheepfold. He uses no tricks, no illusions. His purpose in getting into the sheepfold is not to steal or slaughter like the thief or the robber. Rather he enters by the proper gate, the gate of his own body, the gate which he tells us is himself.
How can he recognize his sheep? They all have an instinctive sense for the
true Shepherd. Jesus says: “They will not follow a stranger, because they
do not recognize his voice. Those who
are his sheep have a sensitivity, a sensitivity that is acquired from the unique
tone of God’s Word. They recognize its
pitch, its song, its melody, its cadences.
And they recognize the Word of God when they hear it, because they know
the sound of Jesus’ own voice, who IS the Word of God. This Word sounds different, completely
different from the clanging of purely human world views, religions, ideologies.
When the Word speaks and makes the claim: “I am the way”,
“No one comes to Father except through me”, there is a tone that is unique, for
it is a unique claim. All other ways,
all other doors are false, they lead to a dead end, literally a dead end. To the world, to those who refuse to hear the
call of the Word, who refuse to recognize the voice of the Savior, this claim
sounds like intolerance. And it is, for
it is the divine intolerance for all paths invented by men, which, no matter
how well meaning, do not lead to the eternally satisfying pasture, to the
Father’s house. In an age in which
tolerance is proclaimed as the supreme virtue, but which often masks a denial
of truth, we must in fact be tolerant, for we cannot see into others’
hearts. We must be tolerant , for we are
not the Shepherd, we are not the Door.
But one must stop at mere tolerance. This is where the world stops. This is where
our kids are taught to stop, at mindless tolerance. We are urged to look at the many paths
available with an open mind and choose one of them, knowing that in the end
they are all the same, they all end up in the same good place. Instead what we should do is to seek the
spiritual instinct for the genuine sound of the divine call. We should beg for this, and teach others to
beg for this, to beg God for the musical ability to hear the song of God who
sings to us the song of love and to be able to sing it ourselves.
But instead some of us become irritated at the absoluteness
of Jesus’ “I am” claims: I am the Way,
the Truth and the Life; I am the Resurrection and the Life; I am the Good
Shepherd, I am the Gate. This has
irritated the world ever since Christ uttered these words, for the world
contrasts the supposed arrogance of these words with its own doctrine of many
paths and thereby of many truths.
But truth is not divisible.
This is shown in the Christian understanding of truth when the truth is
seen to be absolute love. The Good
Shepherd will give his life for his sheep:
there is no higher, not even comparable, truth. How gloriously the Epistle of St. Peter put
this: “By his wounds we are
healed”. The word of the Cross is linked
to the Word of the Shepherd. He meekly
endured all manner of humiliation; he bore our own sins in his own body on the
Cross. He did not rise up in anger
against the suffering and sin of the world that was imposed upon him, laid on
him. He submitted in obedience. He left
everything for his Father to judge. He has healed us. He has given us that
instinct to hear his example as the genuine call of God. He speaks to us from the Cross: “Look, this is how much I have loved you,
this is what the truth is, this is God, this is the meaning for which you
seek.” “For the word of the Cross is
folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power
of God.” There in the words of the Cross
do we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd.
And in that Word are we who are lost, found. “At one time you were straying like lost
sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”
This call that is certain, this call that is unmistakable is
heard so clearly in Peter’s post-Pentecost sermon as recorded in the Acts of
the Apostles: “Let the whole house of Israel know beyond any doubt that God has
made both Lord and Messiah this Jesus whom you crucified”. There are the words of the Gospel, the words
of the Shepherd, the word of the Cross.
They are certain; they are unmistakable.
The words that judge a people, a generation, a world—ah, no, not merely
the Jews to whom Peter is speaking here.
These words unmistakably and certainly judge this our own world and this
society which flees any sense of responsibility for the horrible mess in which
we find ourselves. These words are
directed forever at those who pretend that the violence of terrorism that
surrounds us, abortion and euthanasia on demand, an epidemic of drugs and
pornography—that all of this has nothing to do with the cry of God from the
Cross, the cry that is the cry of sin and death, and which cry is at the same
time the song of the love of God.
Peter, who in a sense is the first Pope, challenges the Jews
of his time to recognize and risen Jesus as the Messiah. And it is the Church today, carried by the
Holy Spirit, that must, in the words of the Acts of the Apostles, must cut to
the heart, through the psychobabble and rationalizations that make the song of
the Shepherd so difficult to hear. It is the job of the Church not to comfort
the world that wallows in the false comfort of its own sentimental
arrogance. It is the job of the Church,
and that includes the hierarchy, to bring the world to the point where they
will ask: “What are we to do?” This is the place the world must be brought
to: it must see in the Church the form of Christ; it must hear in the preaching
of the Church, in the worship of the Church, the answer to the question that is
the truth. While affirming the Church’s
mission to the poor and dispossessed, the job of the Church is not to ask the
world: “What should we do for you?” The
job of the Church is to bring the world to that point, that crucial point to
ask of the Church: “What MUST we
do?” What must we do to turn this
around, to stop the moral pollution, the violence, to make sense of our lives,
to not die like a dog, the death of eternal meaningless?
There is only one way to do this: to do what Peter did, to
do what our clergy must do, from parish priests to bishops to the Pope himself,
the successor of Peter: to preach Christ
crucified as the Way, the Truth and the Life, as the only way to what every
human being, no matter how dark his soul has become, longs for: redemption and eternal life.
Mercy—Yes! But there
is no true mercy without the sharp sting of the Truth.
Father Richard G. Cipolla
