LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Acts 13:14, 43-52
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 99(100):1-3, 5
Second reading: Apocalypse 7:9, 14-17
Gospel: John 10:27-30
Link to readings
Last Sunday we saw Simon Peter commissioned to take up the pastoral office (‘Feed my lambs; feed my sheep’) previously exercised by the Good Shepherd himself. The Gospel for today, even though it comes from an earlier part of the Fourth Gospel (10:27-30), carries on from that commission in that it pursues the sense of the members of the community as ‘sheep’ belonging to the flock of the risen Lord. Though the context of Jesus’ discourse is new (it is now that of the Jewish feast of the Dedication, celebrated in commemoration of the rededication of the Temple under the Maccabees), the sense of Jesus as Good Shepherd remains implicit as other aspects of the pastoral image are developed.
SHEPHERD’S VOICE
First of all, members of the community listen to the Shepherd’s voice. They are aware that he is constantly addressing them (in the Scriptures and the sacramental life of the Church) and they attune their hearing to the sound of his voice and the message it imparts.
Secondly, there is knowledge. They are confident that the Good Shepherd, like reliable Palestinian shepherds at the time of Jesus, has intimate knowledge of each one of them – knows their strengths and weaknesses, their capacities and liabilities. This leads to trust and readiness to follow whenever and wherever the Shepherd calls.
The image begins to move in a fresh direction when Jesus presents himself as the one who gives the sheep ‘eternal life’. In the Fourth Gospel, ‘eternal life’ refers to human participation in God’s own eternal being and communion of love (1:4, 12-13) – something that begins here and now. Since it is indeed the life of God, it will ensure that the flock will not be lost (from eternal life) or stolen from the Good Shepherd. The grasp that binds the flock to this gift of life is not simply that of Jesus. Behind him is the grasp of the Father, ‘who is greater than anyone’.
CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S LOVE
The strength of these assertions might suggest that once people become believers they gain an automatic assurance of salvation. I do not think the evangelist, if pressed, would be quite so absolute as the formulations make him sound. We are dealing here with a biblical way of speaking where absolute statements are used to inculcate great confidence in God’s love and power. The gospel is exploring and exploiting to the very limit the richness of the image picturing the relationship between the believing community and the Lord as sheep and Shepherd. In the everyday pastoral world from which the image is taken, sheep get lost and sheep get stolen. Those most vulnerable are those whose shepherds are not strong. The Christian community need have no fear in this regard. Their Shepherd is strong with the strength of God – indeed, since ‘the Father and I are one’, their ultimate Shepherd is in fact God.
This final statement stressing the complete unity between Father and Son takes us back to the sublime christology of the Prologue at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel: ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is ever in the heart of the Father, who has made (God) known’ (1:18). The sense of intimacy, of knowledge, of self-sacrificing love that attends the Good Shepherd image in reference to Jesus applies just as much to the disposition of the Father in our regard as well.
FIRST AND SECOND READINGS
In the First Reading, from Acts 13:14, 43-52, the lectionary continues the sequence begun on the Second Sunday of Easter presenting ‘snapshots’, as it were, of the life and mission of the post-Easter church. Here it would be important not to interpret the account of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch in Pisidia in an anti-Jewish way. It is interesting that after preaching to the Jews in the synagogue – the reading omits Paul’s sermon – Paul and Barnabas exhort them to ‘remain faithfully in the grace God had given them’. This is not the language of conversion from one religion to another. It is only a minority of Jews who make trouble and cause Paul and Barnabas to turn to the pagans. But in so doing they are actually fulfilling the destiny of Israel to be ‘a light to the nations’, according to the prophecy of Isaiah (42:6; 49:6; 51:4; 60:3), taken up by Simeon at the Presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:32).
The Second Reading presents one of the great visions of the Apocalypse (7:9, 14-17), depicting the ultimate triumph of the faithful. Not all the faithful are in view but those in particular who have suffered persecution, even death, for their fidelity to the faith. The reading links thematically with the Gospel in its insistence that the Lamb (= the risen Lord) will be their Shepherd and lead them to springs of living water.