Fourth Sunday of EASTER 14th May 2000

First: Ac 4:8-12; Second: 1Jn 3:1-2; Gospel: Jn 10:11-18

THEME of the READINGS

Today the Church celebrates the World Day for Priestly Vocations. The texts of the liturgy outline Jesus as the model for priests. First of all, like Jesus, the priest must be a good shepherd, ready to lay down his life for his sheep (Gospel). Like Jesus, the priest must be like a cornerstone for men, who supports the entire building of their beliefs and spiritual, moral and human values (first reading). Finally, like Jesus, the priest has been chosen to be a son of God and to live the experience of a tender and filial love for God, his Father (second reading).

DOCTrinal MESSAGE

Jesus, the model of the shepherd. The shepherd is someone who has been entrusted with the care of a flock of sheep. What duties does such an image involve? The first duty of the shepherd is to preserve all of the sheep that have been entrusted to his care. None must get lost, none must die due to starvation or disease. To preserve them, he must be willing to defend them from the wolves, to find them a place of shelter on cold nights, to guide them towards fields with abundant pastures. He must also know each sheep to be able to subsequently establish if any are missing, to be concerned with each one as if it were his only sheep. Jesus, the good shepherd, preserves, defends, protects, guides, feeds Christians with his very life, by means of the sacraments and through the hierarchy of the Church.

Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, is the prototype of priests who, as good shepherds, must devote their entire life to preserving the faith of the faithful entrusted to their care. Like the good shepherd, the priest must also defend the faith of his faithful from the many temptations and traps that we find in our society. He will defend them from an individualistic and subjective faith, from a morality dominated by the opinion of the majority, from an eclectic and over-sentimental spirituality based on appearances, from a cold, legalistic liturgy, almost devoid of any internal resonance. He will also feel the need to nourish his faithful with the truth of the Word of God, with the teaching of Catholic doctrine, summarized in the Catechism, with the witness of a holy and generous life, given unreservedly for the good of his brothers in faith.

Jesus Christ, the cornerstone. Christ is the stone which you, the builders, rejected but which has become the cornerstone, says Peter before the members of the Sanhedrin. Often men want to build a society without Christ, for they consider that he is one more stone in the building of the world. But they are wrong; he is the fundamental stone without which the whole building collapses, without which the other stones have no cohesion or point of reference. Either we build a society with Christ at its center, or sooner or later such a society will be doomed to ruin.

The priest, the representative of Christ, is the cornerstone of the Church. Through the priest, Christ himself continues to exercise in the Church his power of salvation, his love as an older brother and redeemer, his impulse to human fraternity and solidarity. If priests were to disappear, the building of the Church would collapse and would become mere ruins.

Jesus Christ, the model of the son. "The Father loves me," says Jesus in the Gospel. And he loves the Father, as an only son, as the favorite son. And because he loves him, he knows him intimately and does only what will please him. In the second reading we hear, "...by letting us be called God’s children, which is what we are!" We are God’s children, and our model is the Son, Jesus. As priests we should ardently wish that all men enjoy God’s fatherhood and feel happy to be his sons. As priests, we should work together with the Father so that Christians are ever more conscious of their divine sonship and find in it the basis for their attitudes and behaviors. As priests, we should give a witness to our brothers of what it means to be children of God and live as such in our everyday life.

PASTORal SUGGESTIONS

The Father loves me... The need to love and to be loved is essential to the human heart. The love of parents and children, the love of spouses and friends, the love of brothers in faith, or of brothers in religion... without such love life becomes dull and our joy disappears. In our Christian communities there may be people who feel lonely and abandoned, who think that nobody loves them, who feel that they are a bit useless in the Church. To all, but especially to them, we must preach this great truth of Christianity, "The Father loves me." You are not alone if the Father loves you, if he is by your side. And you, do you love God the Father? You are not useless if the Father loves you, and with his love gives meaning to your life, allowing it to enter the history of salvation. And you, do you really believe in the love that the Father has for you? Do you think that the love of the Father gives a wonderful meaning to your life? As priests, following the example of the Good Shepherd, here we have a concrete way of helping our faithful: let us remind them and help them to be aware of the fact that the Father loves them and will never abandon them.

There is no other. In the first reading, St Peter is extremely clear: "Only in him is there salvation." Was there any man in history as great and ingenious as he was? None! No medicine, no invention, no discovery? None! No ideology, no religious system? None! No extraterrestrial, if they actually do exist? None! No angel having come down from heaven? None! Only Jesus Christ is our Savior, the Savior of each and every human being. To preach this in our society, in our world, may scandalize some, but it is something that Christians cannot do without. Ceasing to preach it would be like hiding the light so that it gives no light to the world, or like making salt become tasteless and worthless. The Christian claim that there is only one Christ is not something that we have invented, nor is it something that we can manipulate at will or according to circumstances. Recognizing Christ as the only Savior is essential to Christianity. The way, the tact, the time and place for this profession of faith is up to the Christians, guided by the light of the Holy Spirit.

Source: http://www.clerus.org/clerus/dati/2004-05/21-13/CICLOB.html by P. ANTONIO IZQUIERDO L.C. (1948-2013)

[참고: 이 파일은 저서명 "가톨릭 교회의 말씀 전례에 따른 성경공부 해설서"(엮은이: 소순태, 출판사: 가톨릭출판사)의 각주의 연장으로 마련되었습니다].