(GOOD SHEPHERD SUNDAY)
Acts 2:14,36-41; Psa 22(23); 1 Pet 2:20-25; Jn 10:1-10
Theme: The Voice of the Shepherd and the Ears of the Sheep
The picture Jesus creates in the gospel reading of today shows the culture of the Palestinian world of his time which is still obtainable in some parts of the world. At that time, there used to be a large walled and protected area where all those who have sheep would keep their sheep at night after taking them out to pasture. Whenever any of the shepherds wanted to take his sheep, he would come into the pen, and upon hearing his voice, his own sheep would follow him. In a place where very large cattle, belonging to different shepherds are resting, each of the sheep knows the voice of its master and
joins him upon hearing that. What matters is not the appearance of the shepherd, but his voice. It does not matter how scattered or strayed the sheep have gone, once they hear the voice of their owner, they run towards him. They know who a stranger is, not necessarily by what they see but by what they hear.
There is only one action on the part of a shepherd, and that is to call out to his sheep. But the sheep does three things: to hear, to discern and to follow. A shepherd comes into the large area that houses large number of sheep belonging to him and to others. He calls out to his sheep. Then the sheep would hear it, and then discern whether it is their master’s voice. And when it is clear to them that it is their master’s, they begin to follow him. This picture is very interesting in that unless the sheep are convinced beyond any doubt that the voice calling them is that of their shepherd, they won’t follow the person. Yes, they live in a large place with many other different sheep who have also their own masters. They hear different voices calling out for their own, but if it is not coming from their own shepherd, they won’t be bothered. We are like the sheep, living together and in the midst of many people who have voices to which they listen to. We hear different voices, demanding people’ s response. But are those voices the voice of our Shepherd? If yes, are we following it? If No, why do we follow them?
Have we even trained ourselves that we know how to first listen to the different voices hitting hard in our ears, and have time to discern on where they are coming from? The first thing a child learns, even when he/she is blind or has not started seeing well, is who the mother is, and the most effective way is through the voice of the mother and her smell. Do you know why? Because being always close to his/her mother, he/she knows the texture of her voice. Have we become so used to God and the things of God that we can easily identify when God is speaking to us and when other voices are speaking?
The sheep does not just listen to the voice of the shepherd, but it also follows him. It can happen that we know the voice of God, and we know when what we are hearing is obviously not God’s voice, but we decide to ignore God’s voice and do the contrary. We can be hearing a lot of voices, and even be
able to discern the voice of God from the voice of the world, but at the end, what defines us is the voice we follow. We do hear voices calling us to sin, to the pleasure of the flesh, to an inauthentic life, to maltreatment of others, to the use of our positions in life to dehumanize others, but if we are able to
withstand them, and not go after them, they would remain only strangers and thieves described by Jesus in the gospel. But if we end up following them, we become at that time, their own property.
With their sweet voices, they may lead us out of the pen, but because we do not belong to them, and they only have the objective of stealing us away from our safety and destroying us, they would lead us out to destroy us. That is what sin does. That is what the pleasure of the world does. It attracts us with
pleasurable sensations and leave us damaged. It is not enough to know the voice of God, for what defines us is our ability to follow him. What then shows us as those who follow the voice of God, our Shepherd?
St. Peter responds to this in the second reading. By the way we live our lives, we show to whom we belong and whose voice we listen to. The voice of God calls us to life of foolishness in the eyes of men. In the second reading, Jesus is shown as undergoing all sorts of insults, but instead of fighting back to show his strength according to the world’s calculation, he did exactly opposite. By living in the example of Christ, we show ourselves as those who listen to his voice and follow him. If Christ calls us to life of forgiveness, but we keep malice, does it not mean that we are not following his voice, even though we hear it? If Christ calls us to life of truthfulness, whose voice then do we follow by living in lies? If Christ’s voice calls us to a pure love, free from the pleasure of the flesh, whose voice do we listen to when we live according to bodily pleasures of all kinds? If Christ calls us to live in peace, whose voice do we follow when we create and love anarchy?
What do we do when we see ourselves following and living according to the voice of the world? The people who listened to the preaching of the apostles on the Pentecost day, as read to us today in the first reading, asked the same question. Salvation begins when one is able to ask the question: “What shall I now then?” “How can I make amends?” The answer cannot be as clear as St. Peter provides: μετανοήσατε (Acts 2:38) (Repent!!!). The Greek word for repentance is metanoia, which is taken from the verb μετανοέω which literally means ‘to perceive/understand afterwards.’ Repentance therefore happens when one, at some point in his life, perceives or understands that he has been acting wrongly. And therefore, he changes from what he is doing.
To repent is to “have a serious change of mind and heart about a previous point of view or course of behavior”. The Hebrew word uses שוב (shuv), that is, to return or to turn back, to describes repentance. It can happen that at some point, we see ourselves living our lives, or doing a particular thing, not according to God’s voice, but the voice of the world. We should not say, “Poor Henry…Let me then continue since I have started”. No…immediately we come to our senses; immediately God’s light of mercy shines on that particular aspect of our life, helping us to discover that it is not of God’s voice, we change our direction, we turn immediately away from that and move back to our safety in Christ.
As St. Peter tells us today, “We must save ourselves
from this perverse generation” that does everything possible to replace God and his voice with the voices that lead to our destruction. My fellow youths…we must save ourselves from this ungodly voice calling us to worldly riches, to carnality, to rascality and to dehumanization of our fellow human beings!!! My dear parents, we must save ourselves and our families from this ‘earthquakic’ urge to enjoy comfort, not minding at whose expense!!! They are not God’s voice, and we must turn now and run back to Christ, our safety and our Shepherd.
There is no need looking at others and saying: ‘since everybody is doing that, we are still together’. If you listen very well to the gospel reading, Jesus did not say that the sheep follows someone when it sees other sheep following the person. No. It is not the action of a or some sheep which determines the action of another sheep. No…it is their hearing of their master’s voice, and discerning that it is really theirs (Jn 10:4). The reason is that the sheep do not even know one another. So a sheep does not care what others do…it is only moved to action at the hearing of the shepherd’s voice.
In the same way, our lives should not be dependent on the lives of others. What we must do, how we must live, should not flow from how others live and act. The reason is because we do not know them, and we do not know to whom they belong and whose voice they have decided to be listening to and to be following. We must be guided by the voice of God and we must habituate ourselves to God’s voice by constantly being with him in prayers, meditations, reflections, reading the Bible and meditating on it, keeping ourselves very close to God’s word and holy things so that by staying always with God, we may learn how to discern easily his voice, just like a little baby learns the voice of his mother by his constant wrapping himself in the mother’s arms.
May our living by the examples of Christ, our Shepherd, differentiate us from other people who live by the contrary. May we not change our focus from Christ standing before us and leading us, and shift it to the dancing waters, and swimming fishes, and the water lights underneath us, lest we be taken
away from Christ by the strong rushing wind and the turbulent flood. However, when the waters of the world begin to sink us, fighting to take us away from our Christ, may we raise our face and voice, and while fixing our gaze on him, may we cry out: Domine salvum me fac (Matt. 14:30)
Wishing You a Very wonderful day of the Lord.
Fr. Chukwuezugo Nnamah