26 April 2018
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Every flock has its black sheep, and the flock of Jesus is no exception. “I know those whom I have chosen.” He says, warning them of Judas’s impending betrayal. Our Gospel tells us that He warned His little flock so that when the betrayal took place, and the shepherd is struck down such that the flock is dispersed (Matthew 26:31), they may yet have faith that He is the Son of God.
Imagine what must have gone through their minds, how their hearts must have filled with dread at the thought of what might soon take place. All along Jesus had predicted and foreshadowed His suffering and death and now, at this meal, using bread and wine to underscore the reality of what was to come in a matter of hours.
Yet Jesus encourages them, saying, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”Conversely, Luke tells us, “Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Luke 10:16). In other words, He is telling His shepherds: I will be with you always.
We might call to mind this passage from the Prophet Ezekiel:
“As a shepherd examines his flock while he himself is among his scattered sheep, so will I examine my sheep. I will deliver them from every place where they were scattered on the day of dark clouds. I will lead them out from among the peoples and gather them from the lands; I will bring them back to their own country and pasture them upon the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and every inhabited place on the land. In good pastures I will pasture them…I myself will pasture my sheep; I myself will give them rest” (34:12-15).
He is not telling them, nor us, that He will abandon them! Rather, He tells them, as St. Paul tells the leaders of the church at Ephesus “Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock…” (Acts 20:28-29). Yet He is with them; He is with us. Even when there was a coyote at the table Jesus was assuring them that all will be well, that even when that coyote led the wolves to the Shepherd, the flock would not only go unharmed but, as we read in the beginning of the Book of Acts, it would prosper.
Do we trust in our Good Shepherd, living with confidence in His closeness to us? Even amongst the wolves that seek to separate us from the flock, do we strive to follow Jesus, to remain within the sheepfold until He has led us to His Father’s rich pastures? We need not fear: even if on a “day of dark clouds” we scatter, He will seek us out, one-by-one, setting us on His shoulders with great joy, with all of heaven rejoicing at our safe return home (Luke 13:4-7).