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Fourth Sunday of Easter Jn 10/11-18 |
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| Background: The good shepherd metaphor, so beloved by the early Christians, was in fact a strange one. Shepherds were at the lowest rung of the social ladder, they were thought to be dirty, illiterate, not very devout. You wouldn’t want to invite one home for dinner. But, as Jesus said, they took very good care of their sheep. So Jesus, who was always crossing people up, compared himself to a shepherd, much to the dismay of those who heard him. The metaphor takes slightly different forms in the different gospels. Today the emphasis is on the loving care the shepherd, unlike the hired man, has for each of his sheep. He takes care of them and protects them, even at the risk of his life. We are challenged to really believe that. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time there was a thirteen year old named Ginger. Her life had been very difficult. Her parents divorced early in her life. Her mother married again. The step father beat them both when he was drunk, which was most of the time. The courts took her away from her mother and step father and put her in a foster home where she was treated like a dumb servant and beaten some more. Finally, they found another foster home for her. A family that already had three teen age children took her in and told her that she was now one of the family and would be treated like the other kids. Her foster brothers and sister liked her and were very good to her. The family bought her new clothes and sent her to the local Catholic high school. They overwhelmed her with love. Ginger was grateful and, in her own way, loved her new family, even though she found it hard to tell them that. However, she didn’t really believe that they loved her. She was often sullen and distant and sometimes contentious. Finally one night she drank half a bottle of her foster father’s Irish whisky, took her foster sister’s car, drove it all over town, crashed it into a stop light and totaled it. The police arrested her and then took her to a hospital. The family were very gentle when they came to visit her in the hospital, even the girl whose car had been totaled. (She goes, like it is insured anyway). Have we done anything wrong, her foster mother asked. No, Ginger said. You have done everything you can for me. You’re wonderful people and I’d like to be able to love you. But I can’t. No matter what you do for me, I will never be able to trust you. |
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