In real life, shepherding is always hard work, often boring and sometimes dangerous and risky. And the sheep themselves are often stubborn and difficult to handle. Jesus says that he himself is the Good Shepherd. He knows his sheep and his sheep know him. He not only leads them to nourishing pasture; he will also protect them from mortal danger, even to the extent of laying down his own life. He knows his sheep and his sheep know him.
Fabian Radcliffe, OP
Then how could each shepherd reclaim own sheep? Two ways. First, the shepherd knew them by heart. Sometimes he had a special name for each character in the flock. And second, the sheep themselves recognized their master’s voice immediately.
John Foley, SJ
It’s actually an acquired capacity to read little signals or symptoms, so that the shepherd has a sense for what the sheep are wanting.
Aidan Nichols, OP
Haven’t you ever longed to hear the voice of someone who could make things alright, who could lift the burdens from your shoulders? Someone who knows you by name and loves you? Jesus says he is that someone. You “shall never perish,” he adds, as he holds you in his own hands. It is the Father who has given you to Jesus. Who could revoke that gift?
John Foley, SJ
We want someone else to understand our fears and anxieties, and to witness and share our joys and happiness. We need to be known in this intimate way by someone who will never disparage or humiliate us, never use or manipulate us. Yet precisely this is the quality of relationship offered by Christ since, in his divine-human perfection, he really is the Good Shepherd.
For Jesus to promise he will know us in the way the Father knows him, with a love that has been going on in God before the world was made, is a mind-blowing claim.
Aidan Nichols, OP
The Father and the Son are one because of the Father’s call of the Son and the Son’s response in history, resulting in a complete alignment of the words and acts of the Father and the Son.
Reginald H. Fuller
Drawn from Torch; The Dominican Friars – England & Scotland and The Sunday Website at Saint Louis University
