April 21, 2013 Cycle C
Talking with a friend after all of the mess and chaos had subsided the young man summed up what he learned from the devastating losses that had dramatically changed in his one shiny life. He said, “I have learned so much in the past year. I used to think I wanted a bigger house, expensive holidays, a fast car, and I told myself I wanted these as much for the family as for myself. Now I have some time to understand that there are only two questions that really matter.” Namely, “How will I spend my time and with whom?”
Today in the midst of the “noise” in our own lives, the clamor, the expectations made of us and in our mad dash to secure the lifestyles we want, or think we want --- for ourselves and for our families; it is the voice of Christ the Good Shepherd who speaks to us in the depths of our hearts. It is Christ the Good Shepherd who speaks in the emptiness of our spirits; it is the voice we hear asking the questions, inviting us to places we would rather not go; warning us of the dangers that lie ahead.
To fully appreciate the image Jesus used in our Gospel today, you have to know a little about the tending of sheep at the time of Christ. In the Israel of Christ’s time, shepherds would often shelter their flocks for the night in a stone enclosure. Often times several flocks might be intermingled. But in the morning the shepherd would call to his sheep and lead them out. A shepherd might give unique names to individual sheep; the sheep would know and then respond to it.
You see the same thing happens in our own lives. Christ calls us to come out of the security of our own enclosures and live in the freedom of eternal life as His disciple. Christ calls us by our true name, a name not known to the world, and a name that we ourselves do not often easily recognize. We may not recognize the name Christ uses because we are conditioned to think that our name is somehow a reflection of our personality, or our own status in life.
Today, no matter what title we have gained in our journey of life, we need to dig deeper and recognize that Christ calls us not by what we’ve done or accomplished, but by our call to be His disciple.
If you only read today’s accounts from the Acts of the Apostles, you might think that Christ calls once and then gives up. Remember the statement that is at the end of the story of the Mission Work of Paul and Barnabas. “They shook the dust from their feet in protest against them.” Those are strong words from a couple of upset Church men. They speak of those who rejected them as “unworthy of eternal life.” But we know our tradition teaches us that that is not the case. Christ is no quitter. Christ calls again and again. And it seems as in the case of the great saints, Christ continues to call until eventually the person is worn down and simply accepts.
Let me use one example from the saint’s stories. The name is Augustine. His name is now preceded by Bishop, Saint, Doctor of the Church. But when Christ first called Augustine out of a life of heresy and desolate living, the future saint did not recognize his true name. Christ is no quitter. He continued to call and eventually Augustine responded. And he was to write in his old age “O thou beauty is so ancient and so new too late have I loved thee, too late have I loved thee.” Christ’s repeated use of our true name as He calls us over the course of a lifetime, which gradually transforms us. We might begin tentatively at first to recognize who we really are. But life itself is a transforming agent that enables us to hear our true name. We slowly learn that the names we give ourselves are not complete.
On this weekend when we are asked to pray for vocations, we might take a moment to think about whose we are. Are you open to God’s call as a priest, or as a member of a Religious Community? Do you stay close to our community of faith? Do you show up and follow in the steps of the One you love the best? Open your hearts for Christ may be calling again to a new understanding of the depth of discipleship. Through the Incarnation, Christ is in our world and can never be silent. Those of every nation, race, people and tongue, who have heard Christ the Shepherd, call them by their true name and they have responded.
To embrace the true joy of this Easter season then, is to open our hearts and minds, our spirits and consciousness to hear the voice of God in our midst and then echo that voice in our living out the Gospel of the Easter Christ.
Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom Adrians, Pastor at Christ the King