Who knows me?

Homily

4th Sunday of Easter B2

Good Shepherd Sunday

World Day of Prayer for Vocations

21 April 2024

AMDG

Who knows me?  Does anyone really know me?

What a pivotal question this truly is!  My need to belong, to be seen and known and and heard and chosen, is immense!  I don't make sense on my own, nor can I figure everything out on my own.  I am a mystery to myself, unless I come to know myself by first being known.

So, can there be a more critical question that this - does anyone really know me?

There's a guy in the Gospel who says He knows you.  He knows you just as He is known by His Father, so He knows you, and you know Him.  What incredible words by the most unique voice in human history, the voice of the Good Shepherd.

You know by now that nobody speaks like Jesus. No one in human history has even come close. Unbelievable and radical words that always cut to the heart, words that challenge us to metanoia, thinking not as human beings do but as God does.  Words that reveal the true and deep and hidden meaning of my life, a life I seek in greater abundance during this Easter season.

Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, is about finding the faith to let this voice find us, know us, desire us, choose us, and call us to new and more abundant life.  It's a critical moment in the Easter journey, for John 10 always invites us deeper into life that is not measured by safety or length of time, but by the vertical dimension of love, by the power to lay down one's life trusting that it can be raised again.

The Good Shepherd says He knows you.  What does He know about you?  He knows that the true and full meaning of your life will be found within His paschal mystery, the only story that ends in rising from the dead.  His voice will always invite you to lose your life before it is taken from you, in conversation with His suffering and death, while trusting the promise that it is precisely there that you will find a life that conquers all things and endures.

Yet the voice of the Good Shepherd will never dare you into this mystery.  No, He will simply invite you to follow where He goes before, where He is first shorn naked, killed and eaten, as the lamb of sacrifice Himself.

Do you recognize this voice?  I'm sure that you do, but do you trust it to really know you?  Is the voice of the Good Shepherd the voice you ultimately trust to lead you into the fullness of life?

+mj