4th Sunday of Easter A - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2014

Today’s Gospel passage seems to present a glorious riot of mixed metaphors. Jesus seems to be shaping up one moment as the shepherd, the next moment the gatekeeper, and then the gate – of all things! The passage has also been used to refer to the role of leaders in the Church. I suppose that the constant is that you are the sheep! Metaphors can be a mixed blessing – useful to draw a few comparisons, as long as we do not push the similarities too far.

In what sense are we all sheep? In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus spoke about mutual recognition and trust, about being nourished and enriched, about being safe. The point that strikes me is the observation at the end of today’s reading: I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. Jesus wants us to live life to the full. Life to the full! What might that entail? Maturing as self-aware, responsible, adult human persons?

Today is Mothers’ Day. What has made you good mothers?  With your husbands, as far as possible, you have treated your children appropriately. Loving them was non-negotiable. When they were infants, that love involved your accepting total responsibility for your children and doing virtually everything for them. As the children grew older, you facilitated the process of their gradual learning to accept responsibility for themselves – by giving them little freedoms and allowing them to make mistakes. Importantly, you helped them to understand and appreciate true values such as integrity, honesty, love, compassion and forgiveness. You encouraged and supported them to choose wisely and to develop the courage to act in line with their values – which they slowly came to make more and more their own. 

There came a time when you graciously allowed your children to be totally responsible for themselves – though you have stood by in the wings to provide help on request. The shepherd/sheep metaphor applied to you – with different nuances – until the children negotiated their teen-age years. After that, it would have been more hindrance than help.

What about in the Church? I am not sure that the Church has been all that good in helping people to mature, to become self-aware, to accept responsibility, to form personal conscience and to act from it. Sometimes an unhelpful situation of co-dependence has developed, where people want Church leaders to tell them – “Is it a sin…?”, “Is it OK if …?” – and where Church leaders enjoy the sense of power it gives them.

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. The Gospels generally show us a Jesus who is remarkably short on formal commandments, who tells parables precisely to stimulate people to think for themselves and to reflect on their personal experience. When he said, Come, follow me! he did not mean that we become anachronistic clones of himself, but that we learn like him to grow in wisdom and age and grace – exploring, as best we can, what makes him tick  and why.

Maturing means getting to know him intimately, learning to trust him and his way, finding the freedom to entrust ourselves to him in love, as adult men and women, not as children. That requires time spent together, allowing the mutual love to become increasingly transforming. And the Church has not been good at that either. We have not helped people to do much more than to say prayers and to receive the sacraments. We have done little to encourage and to help each other to pray contemplatively. People who want to learn to meditate are more likely to turn to Buddhism than to the Church, despite a wonderfully sound tradition in that area.

Fr. Peter meditates. When he comes back, ask him to help you to learn to do it, too.  You will be surprised at how fruitful the regular practice can be. Jesus dearly wants it: I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.