Daily Retreat 05/03/09

2009 May 3 SUN:FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 4:8-12/ Ps 117(118):1. 8-9. 21-23. 26. 28. 29 (22)/ 1 Jn 3:1-2/ Jn 10:11-18

From today’s readings: “He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.... By the LORD has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes.... Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.... I am the good shepherd, and I know Mine and Mine know me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I will lay down My life for the sheep.”

Good Shepherd Sunday

The fourth Sunday of Easter is known as “Good Shepherd” Sunday, because the Gospel reading always is taken from the section in chapter 10 of St. John’s Gospel, in which verses Jesus develops the metaphor of Himself as the Good Shepherd.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Good Shepherd is the disposition to lay down his life for his sheep. Jesus, in fact, mentions this trait several times. So I bring your attention once again to this peculiarity of the Good Shepherd, his readiness to lay down his life for his sheep, because, like so many things Jesus said, the idea itself is disturbingly mind-boggling, but because we’ve all heard it before a number of times, we’ve become too numb to be shaken by the extraordinary words.

For, in the normal order of things, while it’s unquestionably noble and the supreme sacrifice of love for a man to lay down his life for his friends, it’s tragic for any man to lay down his life for mere sheep, whether it’s ten sheep, a hundred sheep, or even a million sheep - there’s no way any number of sheep can be counted as outweighing the life of a single human being.

Now, even the most confused literalist doesn’t believe that Jesus is here espousing a reckless style of actual shepherding, whereby the sheepman is expected, for instance, to be the wolf’s dinner to insure that sheep may safely graze. So, are we then just to dismiss this self-sacrificing aspect of the Good Shepherd as an inappropriately over-driven hyperbole?

Actually, the Lord’s figure of speech is not an exaggeration at all - if anything, it’s actually a restrained understatement to help us fathom the limitless love behind the divine decision that, in the person of Jesus, God Himself would lay down His life, willingly, for the sake of His “sheep,” His creatures, i.e., for you and for me, and for all of humanity.

In his novel Charlotte's Web, E.B. White writes of a spider who lays down her life, who gives her all, so that a runt pig may live. Now, any farmer would, of course, be happy to trade all his resident spiders for any size of pig, no matter how small, and yet, despite the intrinsic worthlessness of her own arachnid life, Charlotte’s self-sacrifice successfully ennobles even the apparent worthlessness of Wilber’s swinish life. That’s the transforming power of self-sacrifice!

To an infinitely higher degree then, the value of human life, which in itself, is already beyond simple human appraisal, was immeasurably ennobled by the inestimable self-sacrifice of the divine life of Jesus. As St. John writes, “Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are!” No longer mere exalted creatures of God - we are God’s children, because the loving self-sacrifice of Jesus has ennobled our very nature!

Jesus, the Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep. He didn’t throw away His life, His life wasn’t taken from Him! He lays down His life for His sheep, simply so that, in taking it up again, we sheep may have a full share in His divine life!