On the feast of the Dedication of the Temple, Jesus reveals himself as the door of the sheepfold and as the good shepherd. He says "I am" the door of the sheep, the good shepherd, echoing the words of God to Moses, where he "I am" is his name. Jesus is the door that allows the sheep to leave the boundaries of the sheepfold and graze in freedom. If the door is closed, the thief enters from elsewhere and steals, kills and destroys. For Jesus, the thief is the one who has come before him and, veiled, also the one who leads his people now. Twice he says: "I am the good shepherd". Moreover, in Greek: "the beautiful shepherd"where beauty is not so much a physical connotation, but the beauty of his whole being and acting, in contrast to the ugly shepherd, who is the mercenary who does not care about the sheep and if he sees the wolf coming, he runs away.
Jesus explains the three actions in which his beauty consists, with which the beautiful shepherd "gives" his life. "Giving", in Greek tithēmiwhich means to put, to put in, to place. We try to give different nuances to the one verb. The first beauty of the shepherd is that "exposes" (at risk) his own life when he sees the wolf coming. He is interested in the sheep and risks his life, his fame, his prestige, his honor. The mercenary does not know the sheep, he deals with them in groups; the beautiful shepherd, on the other hand, says: "I know mine and mine know me."And this reciprocal knowledge, which in the Bible is the knowledge of love, is the same as that between the Father and the Son. When Jesus repeats: I lay down my life for them, it can be understood: "I dispose" of my life, I do not keep for myself, as a jealous treasure, this life of love with the Father, but I share it with my own, who enter into the communion of love that exists between the Father and me.
Jesus has other sheep that are not of this fold, that will listen to his voice and become one flock (it is not one sheepfold!), one shepherd. The original says "one flock, one shepherd".between flock and shepherd there is no conjunction, because flock and shepherd have the same life. "Therefore the Father loves me because 'deposit my life for the sheep and the I pick up again"like a garment. God's own is to give life and to give it abundantly.
This is what the beautiful shepherd does for us, he lays down his life on the altar of the cross and takes it up again in the new tomb. The leaders gave the people many precepts and commandments to keep them in the sheepfold, Jesus receives only one commandment from the Father: to give his life for the sheep, to free them from the sheepfold and lead them to pastures of eternal life. With the example of the beautiful shepherd, we ask ourselves if we are able to live like him and in him, with respect to the little flock that he himself, in the Church, has entrusted to us.
The homily on the readings of Sunday IV of Easter
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
