Homily for Fourth Sunday in Easter - April 18, 2010

Have you ever noticed how many of our desires appear to contradict one another? For example, we want to lose weight. But we want to eat the kinds and amounts of food that cause us to gain weight. We want to be financially solvent. But we can’t distinguish between our wants and our needs. We want our bodies to be strong. But we, like couch potatoes, want to sit around instead of exercise. We want our souls to be strong. But we want our lives to be easy. We want to stretch our minds and increase our knowledge. But we want to stay within the comfort zone of those things we already know.
Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in the area of dependence and independence. Every one of us has a desire to be free, to have the right of self-determination. That is one of the deepest passions of human nature. We want the chance to be ourselves, to express ourselves, and to do as we please. This desire can be seen in everything from a small child resisting restraint, to an entire nation struggling for political freedom. To long for and seek after independence is part of what it means to be human.
That, however, is not the whole story. We also have a desire to be dependent, to be connected to something or someone. Our lives are empty and meaningless unless we belong to some family, to some group of friends, to some cause greater than ourselves. One of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays is entitled “Self Reliance”. He probably had as much of that as anybody. But it is easy to figure out where some of his self-reliance got support. He once said, “my wife, Lidian, is an incarnation of Christianity.” Behind all of our independence, lies the deeper fact that we must belong to someone or we are lost.
Jesus talked about this in today’s gospel reading. He said: “my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” The language is figurative, but the meaning is clear. Nothing is more dependent than domesticated sheep. They literally belong to the shepherd. They depend upon him for their very survival. The shepherd leads them to pasture each morning, watches over them during the day while they feed, and brings them safely back to the fold at evening. The sheep instinctively recognize their dependence and submit themselves to it. Without the shepherd, they would be lost.
This is the essence of our Christian faith. It is about belonging to Christ. He is our shepherd, we are His sheep. He speaks, and we recognize His voice. He leads, and we follow. He is our provider and protector, our guardian and our guide. Our very lives literally belong to Him. It is a psychological impossibility for any human being to belong to nothing. Sooner or later, something gets a grip and holds us in its power. And the importance of that is beyond calculation.
The quality of our character depends upon it. And the quality depends not so much on our efforts, as on our surrenders. By dent of will, we can have some effect on the details of our behavior. But that to which we belong determines what we truly are on the inside. Someone wrote a poem about Christopher Columbus. It pictures him in mid-ocean saying, “Sail on, sail on.” When supplies ran low and his crew threatened mutiny, he kept saying, “Sail on, sail on.” These words expressed the resolve of his will. But in back of them was something more powerful. Columbus had surrendered himself to a great idea about his planet. It had taken possession of his mind. He belonged to it. And in perilous times, it was that idea that determined his course of action.
We read about Paul and Barnabas in Antioch of Pisidia. At first, their ministry was received. But strong opposition developed. Finally, they were driven out of the city. They could have given up and gone home. Instead, we are told that they “shook the dust from their feet and went on to Iconium, 100 miles away.” What kept those two men going at a time like that? It was not that they decided to try one more time. It was a deep conviction that God had appointed them as “a light to the nations, a means of salvation to the ends of the earth.” They had surrendered themselves to that appointment. And in difficult days, it was that conviction that determined their conduct. The someone or something to which we belong finally decides the quality of our character.
It is also the determining factor in our happiness. We all want to be happy, and well we might be happy. A person who has no happiness is missing one of the vital elements of life. We read that the disciples in
Antioch, “were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” Their secret of happiness is not explained, but it is fairly easy to surmise. They found their joy, not in things that belonged to them, but in that to which they belonged. This is not simply a matter of religion. It is one of the fundamental laws of life.
Go to the office of a businessperson and take stock of the things found there. You will see a desk and a chair. On the desk will be a telephone and a computer. And likely, there will be some books that pertain to his line of work. All of these things belong to him/her. But look further and you will see the things to which he/she belongs. On the desk or on the wall, may be pictures of his wife and children, and maybe grandchildren. Which of those two groups is the determining factor in that person’s happiness? The answer is obvious – not the things that belong to him -but the people to whom he belongs. If his family relationships are right, they are his happiness. If not, they are his unhappiness.
Nothing in your life or mine is more important than belonging. And make no mistake about it, we do belong to something. The good news is that we can belong to the highest and the best. That is what Jesus had in mind when he said: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall not perish.”
Former President Jimmy Carter remembers finding himself with too many commitments in too few days: “I was snapping at my wife and daughter, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions throughout the day. Before long, those around our home started being affected by the pattern of my ‘hurry up’ style. It was becoming unbearable.”
“I distinctly remember after dinner one evening the words of our daughter. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, “Daddy, I want to tell you something, and I’ll try to tell you really fast.”
“Suddenly, realizing her frustration, I answered, ‘Honey, you can tell me – and you don’t have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly.’
“And I never forgot her answer: ‘Then daddy, LISTEN slowly.’”
What do we really belong to? The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want!
During a visit to the United Nations several years ago, Mother Teresa was approached by a diplomat. “I am not a Catholic,” he said. “But how should I pray?”
The frail little nun took his burly hands in hers and spread out his five fingers. When you pray, she said, it is Jesus speaking to you in your actions. Think about the many blessings you have received; then, at the end of the day, she said, count out on each finger these words spoken to you by Jesus: You did this to me.
The diplomat was stunned. Yet there was a happiness that brought tears to his eyes as he held up his hand like a trophy of newfound insight. And he kept looking at it: You did this for me.
In this simple prayer, Mother Teresa made real for a diplomat that the resurrection can and does live within every person---kings and cab drivers, presidents and school teachers, simple people who work in difficult situation, and the high and mighty who eat their meals off linen tablecloths. You did this to me.
From: “Mother Teresa viewed the world through the prism of her heart” by Phyllis Zagano, recent Boston Sunday Globe.
The love and peace of the Good Shepherd is present to us in the many moments of compassion that bless our lives: in the kind word, in the listening ear, in the generous act of another “that Jesus does to us.” Christ is present, as well, in every blessing we extend to others. In realizing Christ’s living presence, the hope of the resurrection dawns in all of our lives; the Good Shepherd, God’s Word-of-love-made-flesh, guides us every day in our journey to the eternal life of the Father.