Find a short reflection on today’s Gospel passage below.
Today is often called Good Shepherd Sunday as we reflect on the title that Jesus uses of himself. Sheep farming is quite different today from what it was like in Palestine in Jesus’s time. Sheep were mostly bred for wool and therefore around for much longer and so the shepherd got to know his sheep and the sheep the Shepherd.
This image used by Jesus, along with the image of the gate, is to tell us something of the reality of who he is and what he does. He is by his human and divine nature good. He leads us to find his pasture, which is his everlasting life. Jesus warns us against the false prophets and shepherds that offer counterfeit pastures that lead us astray from Jesus’s everlasting life. They do this by distorting and disguising their true voices so as to destroy and steal us from the noble, good and true Shepherd who lays down his life for us.
The devil, can mimic and imitate all things except obedience, “Non serviam” ( I will not serve). Disobedience to Jesus’s voice and his teachings, and to those who proclaim those teachings, is an unholy alliance with the rebellious angels, who will not serve God’s will.
“Obedience unites us so closely to God that in a way transforms us into Him, so that we have no other will but His. If obedience is lacking, even prayer cannot be pleasing to Godand their maker.”
–St Thomas Aquinas
“My daughter, know that you give Me greater glory by a single act of obedience than by long prayers and mortifications.”
–St Faustina
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