Shepherding Our Hearts to the Father's
The Holy Spirit is burning within Peter, the first of the Apostles, as he proclaims the truth about Jesus to the leaders of the Jews in today’s First Reading: Jesus Christ is the stone they rejected and executed, the cornerstone of the Church, in Whom all salvation and healing is found.
In Christ, the Son of God, we also become children of God. In Christ, who calls himself the Good Shepherd, we are known and healed and saved. This Good Shepherd has sacrificed everything for our sake, laying down His life willingly, and taking it back up again.
Jesus is always the one in control. No one forces him to do anything. The Father sent him into the world on a mission of salvation, and his whole life is dedicated to saving all of us. It is a struggle, but he is not struggling to protect or save himself; he is struggling to save all of us as he gives all of Himself. The enemy does not make him recoil or run away from his mission; the “wolf” will not make him anxious, because he cannot lose. Jesus is not worried. He does not need to recalculate his battle plan. The Plan is set from the beginning: He must take on all our fallenness and woundedness and sin and death itself, and carry it all the way to Golgotha in his own Perfect Heart – completely human and completely divine; he must sacrifice himself wholly by laying down his life, and then transform every darkness into light when he takes up his life again.
And His glorious promise to us is that ultimately, all will be drawn together so that there will be one flock without division, under the one Shepherd of love. The love of the Father has willed that we be called His children, as St. John tells us. God has created a world and a Heaven that would not be complete without us, because we are all members of one family in Christ, each of us beloved sons and daughters. Through Christ’s rejection and death, we are redeemed, received, and given eternal life. In this freedom, we are called to accept this great gift and follow the commands of our Good Shepherd.
By Kathryn Mulderink