Today we are asked to think about the call of the Good Shepherd in our lives. Each baptized person has a general vocation or call to know, love and serve God in this life, so as to be happy for ever with God in the next life. As Jesus says: “My sheep her my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life.” This is the life of the Risen Christ, the life of Grace, being living stones in the new temple of the mystical risen Body of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit and being able to call God Abba, Father. Temples of the Holy Trinity, with a wonderful intimate relationship with God, with each of the Divine Persons in the One True and Living God.
The Resurrection was not just proof of the truth of Jesus and his words, but a fulfillment of the entire Old Testament and its foreshadowings of the Messiah, the Christ, whose resurrection is the beginning of the new creation, the new people of God, the eternal priesthood and the acceptance of the perfect one eternal sacrifice or perfect worship of God and communion with Him. It is the victory over humanity’s greatest enemies of sin and eternal death, and assures the access to God the Father in a union and communion that is divinising and transforming for eternity.
We all are called to be this light of the resurrection, life, beauty, goodness and truth to the nations of the entire world. The tiny nation of the house of Jacob was chosen to prepare for this eternal life of Christ, life in the Spirit, to spread universally to all peoples and cultures through the Church founded by Christ with Peter and his successors as visible head, and Christ always the Invisible Head.
Within the vocation of all, and to serve the greater good of all, God called the Apostles and their successors the Bishops, Priests and Deacons to serve in the need to serve, govern, teach, and sanctify the Church. This is to ensure that the primary means of sanctifying saving Grace, that is, the Word and seven sacraments, the gospel and Eucharist are rightly preserved, interpreted, understood, and celebrated. The Good Shepherd calls those he needs to nourish and feed his sheep. He calls them to preserve unity in faith and morals, and to apply the gospel to justice and care for creation.
Supporting this whole work of evangelisation, God also calls women and men to the consecrated life through vows of poverty – not destitution but simplicity of lifestyle and detachment from materialism, chastity and obedience. They live the evangelical counsels. All are called in a very intense way as prophetic witnesses to the life and reality of heaven itself.
In heaven, Jesus said, there is no marriage, and we will be like the angels, who do not have exclusive loves. No angel says to another: you are my one and only! Religious are also meant to energise the ordained ministers through their prayer, witness, cooperation and sacrifice. As one monk said: if one of you have inner peace and joy you can help save a thousand souls!
The book of Revelation we are reading now was written to encourage the persecuted Christians at the time who were being martyred constantly. It is meant to encourage us as well in the present moment. The clear victory of all in the Risen Lord and Christ, despite tribulation and even physical torture and death, wearing white robes with palm branches, and having every tear wiped away is a great proclamation of faith in the reality behind the veil of history.
Let us enjoy the wonderful care of the Good Shepherd who surrounds us in all circumstances with his living grace and protective love and beauty. Not a hair on our heads can be lost as an image of our weak corruptible selves being transformed to share in the incorruptible glory of the Risen Christ. Our last breath taken in Christ will reveal all: a personal apocalypse.