The Delegation of Rome and Vatican City of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, with the aim of providing continuous formation to its Knights, Dames and Postulants, began publishing podcasts on its YouTube channel on Palm Sunday 2024, with an emphasis on reflections on the festive readings. These have been edited by Prof. Enzo Cantarano, Knight of Merit with silver star, who is in charge of formation. On April 21, 2024, the meditation on the readings of the Fourth Sunday of Easter, the Sunday of the “Good Shepherd”, was published.
Podcast 21 April 2024 – Fourth Sunday of Easter: “I am the good shepherd, says the Lord, I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (John 10,14)
In the Eucharist the unity of the Church continues to be built on the foundation of Christ’s Easter as the First Reading reminds us (Acts 4,8-12): “The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.” We find ourselves before a succession of images which tell us that the Lord and His Spirit are at work so that, through the economy of the already and the not yet, the individual churches progressively advance towards the recomposition of unity in the Community of the Christian faithful, the Communion of Saints.
For this reason, in the Eucharistic Prayer we remember “all men who seek God with a sincere heart” and all those “whose faith only God has known.” Likewise, while we invoke the Spirit to be “gathered into one body” by Him, we also think of “all men of good will in whose hearts grace always and invisibly works” and to whom the same Spirit gives “the possibility of coming into contact, in a way that God knows, with the Paschal mystery” (GS 22). Accepting this mystery means entering into a relationship with the Lord, knowing Him, listening to His voice to reach safely the eternal pastures of heaven, next to the Father, as we ask in the Collect and in the Prayer after Communion.
The Fourth Sunday of Easter is also called the “Sunday of the Good Shepherd,” since Jesus presents Himself to us, personally, as the Good Shepherd for His faithful whom He, continuing the allegory, presents as His flock, His sheep . The passage (John 10,11-18) is very well known, but, before starting to meditate on it together, we must remember that we must read it in the light of Easter, enlightened by the resurrection of Christ and the triumph of life over death. In fact, the Good Shepherd says “I lay down my life [for the sheep] and then take it back.”
For us the figure of the shepherd is rather faded and can be an archaic and almost mythical and evanescent image. Our children, at least those whose relatives do not deny the joy of celebrating Christmas in a Christian way, associate it, at most, with the characters of the Nativity scene. But the image of the shepherd was well known in the biblical world, it was part of the daily experience of the Holy Land, which was largely pastoral, and it was the experience of raising a flock not of an industrial size, but of an artisanal, family one. Generally it is a small flock, of just a few sheep. The shepherd is the one who takes care of them, who establishes a privileged relationship with them, he is the one who looks after his sheep, takes care of the weak one, binds up the wounded one, takes care that the stronger one does not overwhelm the weaker ones. In short, the shepherd’s relationship with his sheep is a relationship that ends up becoming emotional, to the point that he calls them all by name and the sheep recognize his voice which calms them. His mere presence reassures them.
It is not a simple utilitarian relationship, but an almost permanent coexistence, 24 hours a day, which allows for a profound knowledge of even simple differences in behavior and habits of the animals one cares for. The shepherd is not the one who goes his own way, but the one who builds on his own path on what the sheep need.
This experience, in grazing the sheep, is that they are one’s priority, and that therefore the shepherd is at the service of the flock and not vice versa. Thus it is the shepherd who chooses the path, not the one most convenient for him, but the one that is most correct, most suitable for the sheep, even when, as Psalm 23 tells us: “I have to walk through a dark valley.” And sheep, like many other animals, fear the dark and its unknowns. It is even the Creator himself, in Genesis 1.28, who orders a people of shepherds, like ancient Israel, to explore and maintain the best that the Earth can give for the flock, where, with an unfortunate translation of the verbs kabash and radah, the text is rendered as to subjugate and dominate. He who will be invoked as the Shepherd of Israel makes us men and women His stewards of Creation.
Obviously those sheep are us, and the darkness and the unknown scare us too, and when even this darkness has the idea of death within it then it is terror. The presence of the Shepherd, of Jesus the Good Shepherd, becomes a reality that puts darkness to flight, puts death to flight, and therefore puts to flight the fear that man has of both. The Good Shepherd knows His sheep and they know Him, “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” The knowledge that the Good Shepherd promises His sheep, presenting it – for His part – as already a fact, is a wonderful reflection of that which exists in the Trinitarian life between the three Persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Which is disconcerting. Thinking that God interacts with one of His creatures, generating an intimate relationship similar to His own way of being God, is a truth that leaves you breathless, that pulls us joyously outside of ourselves, into the unspeakable vertigo of love.
This is the source that will attract the sheep who do not yet belong there to the true fold of Christ and will make them attentive and capable of recognizing His voice, the voice of the one who gives His life for the salvation of all. Caiaphas will prophesy this, deciding the death of Jesus, when, according to John 11,49-52, “as high priest, he made a prophecy and said that Jesus would die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to unite the scattered children of God.” It is therefore Jesus Himself who makes known the vital relationship between the shepherd and the sheep and who indicates to the Church the path to follow to achieve unity.
The experience of the presence of God allows us to go through death without fear anymore, because the Lord took sin and death upon Himself, and in His death and resurrection He destroyed them, He defeated them forever, making us discover the beauty and dignity of being children of God. ”See what great love the Father has given us to be called children of God, and we really are!”, as today’s second reading tells us (1 John 3.1- 2).
But alongside the luminous figure of the Shepherd, good and beautiful, Kalòs kai Agathòs, the Gospel also presents us, in dialectical contrast, figures that disturb us: that of the wolves and that of the mercenary, the man hired to look after the sheep.
The wolf is the symbolic representation of the Evil One who is always lurking, who is at the door of our heart and wants to enter to destroy our life, to kill us not only physically, but spiritually, taking away love and hope from our existence, making us live from day to day without ideals and without a future: “if you don’t act well, the Evil One is crouching at your door; he tries to dominate you” (Gen 4.7), but it is we who can dominate him, as God says to Cain, living as children of light.
The second negative figure -even more disturbing because it is human- is that of the hired man, who is not the true shepherd, as we have identified him above, but uses the sheep for his own gain, for personal gain: he uses them, he does not love them, and they are not his life. In the face of danger he flees, leaving his flock at the mercy of evil and, certainly, he does not put his life at risk for the sheep that are not even his.
Many times in our lives we are surrounded by many voices, dazed, confused, scared and uncertain about how to act and move forward. It happens that we are unable to listen, or worse, that we do not understand that what Shepherd Jesus tells us, asks us, advises us, to guide us on the path towards bliss and life. Sometimes the voice of the hired man seems more captivating and confident or simple, and we choose to follow the one who does not love us, but deceives us into lies. When we follow these voices, we end up falling into sin, having lost the way to salvation and even, confused and with death in our hearts, we fall into the desperation of believing that there is no longer any hope for us.
Today the Lord, as a Good Shepherd, comes to guide us by manifesting, with all His strength, to our hearts His love for us, the forgiveness of sins and the gift of life for all those who listen to His voice. It is up to us to allow Him to take care of each one of us, to let Him take us on His shoulders when we have wandered away and are lost, even if, to do this, He leaves us in the desert, with all the risks that this entails [the 99 faithful and “rediscovered” sheep and the lost sheep]. He puts it on His shoulder all happy, goes home, calls His friends and neighbors saying: “Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep. So, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who converts than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no conversion” (Luke 15:5-7).
Entering into intimate knowledge of the Son, who shows the benevolence of the Father, means welcoming the prospect of a gift that no one could imagine on their own, let alone build: that of the one great family of sons and daughters of God. “All brothers,” Pope Francis would say, because all sheep – lost, wounded, passionate – are in the one flock of the one Shepherd.
