Giving Life
Julián Carrón - In many societies of the ancient East, kings and rulers often identified themselves as the shepherds of their people, emphasizing their role in guiding, protecting, and caring for their citizens, much as a shepherd cares for his flock. The same was true in Israel. But often the rulers were not faithful to their task and provoked God to say through the prophets, "Woe to the shepherds of Israel who shepherd themselves! Should not shepherds feed the flock? [Because of the shepherd, they have scattered [the sheep] and are prey to all the wild beasts; they are scattered [...] and no one goes to seek them and care for them" (Ezekiel 34:2-5).
Faced with this situation of the shepherds God has sent to his people, he turns to the prophet Ezekiel and promises that he himself will become their shepherd: "Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I myself will search my sheep and pass over them. [...] I will lead them with excellent shepherds [...] I will gather them from all the places where they were scattered in the cloudy days and in the days of calamity. [I myself will lead my sheep into the pasture and give them rest" (Ezekiel 34:11-15).
How has this promise of God been fulfilled?
God's promise, "I myself will lead my sheep to the pasture and give them rest," became in Jesus, "I am the good shepherd. So these words with which Jesus presents himself are the fulfillment of God's promise to become the shepherd of his flock. The whole life of Jesus documents his concern as a shepherd for people: "When he saw the crowds," we read in the Gospels, "he had compassion on them, because they were weary and harassed, like sheep without a shepherd" (Mt 9:6).
What is the sign that Jesus is truly the Good Shepherd? How do we know that his claim to be the good shepherd is not an empty phrase, but so real that it is truly the fulfillment of God's prophecy? Jesus is indeed the good shepherd, not only because he says so in words - "I am the good shepherd" - but because he shows that he is the good shepherd by his life, by the fact that he "lays down his life for the sheep".
And so the difference with the hireling appears before everyone's eyes: "The hireling - who is not a shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong - sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf takes them and scatters them, because he is a hireling and does not care for the sheep". Few images are as effective as that of the shepherd in showing God's way of relating to His people. It is in this relationship that all of his passion and all of his boldness are revealed. God truly takes risks in choosing this way of caring for his people. He knows that there are good shepherds and there are hirelings who do not care about the sheep. Here, the freedom of man is powerfully challenged, who is called to discern who is a shepherd and who is a hireling. God risks everything, because people may even prefer to be submissive! God's acceptance of this eventuality, the only way to ensure man's freedom, means that both the Father and Jesus know that the sheep - that is, the people, us - have the ability to recognize the shepherd and to distinguish him from the hireling.
How will they know who is a shepherd and who is a hireling? By a seemingly insignificant sign: fear. The realism of Jesus' description of the hireling is striking: "The hireling, when he sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep and flees." This is the most obvious sign, says Jesus, that "he is a hireling and does not care for the sheep.
Does this mean that the characteristic of the shepherd is the strength he has to overcome fear? Not quite. The shepherd is not defined by his strength. What enables the shepherd not to abandon the sheep for fear of the wolf? Jesus surprises us again: "The Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep". Jesus is able not to flee from the wolf - as the hireling does - only because of his relationship with the Father. Only the bond of sonship that Jesus has with the Father enables Him to lay down His life for the sheep. Only a shepherd so free from fear can become authoritative for the sheep. The shepherd's authoritativeness is based on the freedom that allows him to show all the passion for the lives of the sheep because of his relationship with the Father. Only such a shepherd - as we saw in the celebration of Easter, when the Son gave his life for us without fleeing from the wolves - is so credible that the sheep recognize his voice: they "listen to him and become one flock, one shepherd".
"I am the good shepherd, [Jesus continues] I know my sheep and my sheep know me". It is precisely because He knows His sheep - that is, He understands their value, our value - that Jesus is willing to give His life for us! This love unto death that we saw at Easter is what enables the sheep to know the true nature of Jesus, the only true Shepherd. His total surrender enables us to love not only Him, but also the Father. Jesus' words are striking: "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life... No one takes it from me: I give it of myself." The Father's love and our human love for Jesus have the same origin: Jesus' willingness to give his life. This is what distinguishes the shepherd from the hireling.
But does this dynamic witness to Jesus end with him, or does it continue in history after him? The Acts of the Apostles shows how this dynamic continues. "Peter and John were speaking to the people [after the healing of the cripple] when the priests, the captain of the temple guard, and the Sadducees arrived, angry because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They arrested them [...] and the next day their leaders, the elders and scribes, the high priest Annas, Caiaphas [...] gathered together in Jerusalem. They brought them before them and stood up and asked them, "By what authority and in what name are you doing this?"
[Then "Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said, "Leaders of the people and elders, since we are being questioned today about the healing of an infirm man, [...] let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead, this man stands before you restored to health." What must have been the surprise of the members of the Sanhedrin who, "seeing the boldness of Peter and John, and realizing that they were simple and uneducated men, were astonished and recognized them as those who had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13).
What made possible the boldness of Peter and John that amazed the Sanhedrin?
The love of the Father that continues to produce sons in his Son: "You see what the Father's love is, to be called children of God, and we really are!" And from the beginning until today, this is the gift that the Father continues to give us.
New Covenant
"In the days to come," the Lord prophesies, "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Covenant is the image the Bible uses to discuss the relationship between God and the people of Israel and, in its culmination, all of humanity. Why is a new covenant necessary? Because the one God made with their fathers "when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt" is the "covenant that they broke, though I was their Lord. That covenant had failed to pull them to the point of binding them to their Lord. The Law and the Commandments had failed to show themselves capable of making man live for his Lord, because if the Law remains external, it fails to move us to the inner self. What is the innovation of the new covenant that the Lord intends to make in order to succeed where the old covenant failed? This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," says the Lord. "I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they will be my people. They will no longer have to teach one another, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all will know me, from the least to the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more."
The newness of the New Covenant is to "put my law within them," to write it "on their hearts," so that all will know the Lord. The forgiveness of their iniquities will make them know the Lord through their experience, and "then I will be their God and they will be my people. How will God be able to bring within us what we perceive as an external duty, a code to be fulfilled, but which does not lead us to attach ourselves to Him? The Gospel guides us by answering the request of some Greeks, proselytes of Judaism, to Philip: "We want to know Jesus. How can these pagans know Jesus? Here is Jesus' answer: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified", to explain what he means, Jesus uses the image of the grain of wheat: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit". For the Greeks to know Jesus, they do not need a lecture on who Jesus is, nor another list of commandments that would not even succeed in making Jesus known. Jesus can only be known when He reveals all His love to them. Only love can let others know what they mean to us and what we will do for them.
And how does Jesus reveal His love to them? So that the Greeks would know Him? "If a grain of wheat dies, it bears much fruit". So, in order to make himself known, Jesus shows the extent to which he is willing to give himself. That this willingness of His to provide Himself with completely in order to make Himself known is not fictitious, not merely apparent, is shown by the fact that Jesus is well aware that He MUST go through the whole drama of this gift: "Now my soul is troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this very reason I have come to this hour! Father, glorify your name". Jesus also faces the temptation to ask the Father to save him from the hour of death.
But he overcomes the temptation, not by withdrawing from the suffering he must endure, but by looking it in the face, to the point of realizing that he had come for that very hour. The culmination of his self-knowledge is his plea to the Father: "Father, glorify Your name, let Your name shine through my deliverance, that they may truly know who You are. The book of Hebrews helps us understand this: "Christ, during the days of his earthly life, offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to God who was able to save him from death, and because of his complete devotion to him, he was heard. And though he was Son, by what he suffered he learned obedience, and being made perfect he became the cause of eternal salvation for all who obey him".
Only by going through all the turmoil, cries, and tears to the total surrender of His own life could Jesus become the cause of eternal salvation for those who acknowledge Him. How can we see that this total surrender brings salvation to those who know Him? "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself." And lest there be any doubt as to what the Evangelist means, he adds:
"He said this to indicate the death he was to die": the cross. Only a love that does not spare itself is credible. That is why it is able to draw all, Jews and Greeks alike, to Him. This is the novelty of the New Covenant: the attraction that Christ's love can exert on us, to the point of moving us to the depths of ourselves to become his. Not out of duty but out of love. No ethical compulsion can move a man to the depths of binding him.
Only the compelling attraction of love can captivate man. This is the total reversal of the method that Christ brought. It is seen in a sunny way in a Pharisee like Paul, who writes: "I, circumcised on the eighth day, of the seed of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew among Jews, Pharisee as to the law, as to zeal, persecutor of the church, blameless as to the righteousness that comes from keeping the law. He was the man who had taken this law most to heart. "But what I might have counted as gain, I counted as loss for Christ's sake. In fact, I considered everything a loss compared to the greatness of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I let go of all these things and counted them as trash to gain Christ and to be found in him, not with a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but with the righteousness that comes from faith in Christ through faith" (Phil. 3:4-11). Here is the reversal that led St. Paul to live a life marked by this experience and that led him to know Christ in his total surrender, to live by nothing else but Jesus. "And the life that I live I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me" (Gal 2:20).
This text collects some of the homilies delivered by Julián Carrón during the Easter season of 2024, published by paginasdigital.es
The different sections do not correspond to the liturgy's chronology but to thematic groupings. The author has not revised the text and its translation. Download.
