Today’s gospel reading is extremely short, which means you will read more about my thoughts rather than the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can read it in John 10:27-30. [Jesus said] 27 “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.”
In ancient times, rulers and kings ruled with an iron fist and demanded anything from their subjects, especially the payment of tribute. In return for their fealty, they lived under the protection of the realm for as long as their king is powerful. But as history has taught us, many kings and rulers have fallen, often in the hands of their own people who can no longer stand their cruelty or another king from a distant land invades their territory and the subjects side with the invader. In short, kings and rulers come and go, after all they are just mere mortals.
Since the time of Moses, the Jewish people have always been told of the coming of the Messiah, whose kingdom would never end. Unfortunately for Judaism, their elders mistook the Messiah as a Jewish king who would rule them and lead them out of Roman bondage. Thus a disappointed Jewish crowd chose to free Barabbas instead of our Lord Jesus Christ and asked Pilate to crucify him. In hindsight, we Catholics are taught that the Messiah was destined to suffer and die on the cross for the forgiveness of sins for it is in dying that our Lord was able to conquer death and give us eternal life.
But during the time of our Lord Jesus, life was very simple then. The rich people were either the Lords and Kings or Princes or those who had a lot of animals, like sheep or oxen. But the majority of the people were poor. Hence in addressing the poor who listened to him, our Lord Jesus taught them something that most of his disciples knew … about being a Good Shepherd, after all there were a lot of shepherds in the Holy Land in those days.
If and when you see a sheep or goat, to the ordinary person, he would say, “When you see one sheep, you’ve seen them all!” Indeed this is true, because all sheep looks alike. But a Good Shepherd knows his flock and can even name each one of his sheep and in return, the sheep obeys the commands of the shepherd. It is a symbiotic relationship that works ever so wonderfully, until something goes awry, like when a sheep fails to keep up with the flock and wolves devour it. But a Good Shepherd will keep the wolves away.
Today, thanks to the many periodicals or articles about the Good Shepherd, most people understand this very well, yet only a handful can truly grasp the depth of the love of God, which is quite understandable, after all, even our Lord Jesus Christ said to Simon Peter, “You are thinking the way humans do, not the way God does.” So how can we experience the depth of God’s love? I am reading a book entitled “The Sacrament of the Present Moment” by Jean-Pierre de Caussade and it gives the reader and idea of the depth of God’s love for us and how we can partake in his love.
The first step is the easiest part, yet it is also the most difficult as it is called “surrendering” to God or self-abandonment. When a soul is in a state of self-surrender, then he or she comes the Anawim a poor in spirit, where the soul can no longer decide or plan anything for itself and awaits what God wills for the soul. It is undoubtedly very easy to say that I have surrendered myself to God, but doing it is a totally different story.
But as Kitty Muggeridge, the author of the book on de Caussade, pointed out, “The doctrine of self-abandonment of de Caussade is very relevant today especially for those who find life purposeless in a society abandoned to the fantasies and arrogance of the pursuit of happiness, which so quickly becomes a pursuit of pleasure; in which suffering, mental or physical must be drugged out of existence; in which there is no place for the Cross in Christianity.” How true it is today… that most Catholics go to church believing that they can only find God inside the church. But the reality is, God speaks to us in his time… which to God is the present moment, after all, God is the Alpha and the Omega where time does not exist. He may speak to us at 3:00 o’clock, in our time, but to God, it is the present moment!
In these times, God still speaks to the souls that surrender to Him. Too often, if we tell people that God speaks to us, the normal response would be… you must be a religious fanatic or worse, you’re crazy! But for de Caussade, Jesus Christ comes to us in a new and living way each day—each moment as we worship a living God. As our Lord teaches us, “Be not afraid” to surrender to the Good Shepherd who will take good care of his flock, then we will truly be in one heart and mind doing God’s will and not our will!