FOURTH SUNDAY IN EASTER: A. April 13, 2008

Acts 2: 14,36-41 Psalm: 23 1 Pet 2: 20-25 John 10: 1-10

1. The Fourth Sunday of Easter was considered vocation Sunday - and for a long time, it was about the vocation to the priesthood. However we now realize that Vocation is a calling. It involves everyone. The vocation of most people is vocation to marriage. The other vocations are the calling to a Single life and/or religious life.

2 Two things are involved in a Vocation from our readings today:

Coming from our first reading: our vocation is to proclaim the message

coming from the image of the Shepherd -our vocation is one involving caring.

The message basically is what we proclaim in our acclamation of faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. This is the content of the Christian proclamation about Jesus. This is what Peter does in that first reading. He proclaims that Christ was put to death, but was raised to life by God. The main content of the reading is the results of Peter’s preaching.

In response to that preaching the listeners ask, “What shall we do?” The answer is, “Repent and be baptized.” Repentance over here is not our present understanding of sorrow for our individuals sins, our past sins, our communal sins. Repentance is in the original Greek: meta-noia. It means a total new way of looking at the Person who is at the heart of the proclamation. It is a total new way of looking at Jesus.

3. Our second reading shows us why. The writer says we were saved by Christ dying on the tree. “Tree” was an early Christian description for the cross. The common belief of the Jewish Tradition was “a person who was crucified, was a person who was cursed by God.”

This very God seems to be pushing the envelope.

• The one who is cursed, is the one through whom salvation is going to be achieved.
   
• The one who is cursed, is the one through whom God will be reconciled with the human race.
   
• The one who is cursed, is the one through whom imbalance created by sin, will be restored.

All who are going to accept this Proclamation of Jesus will have to re -evaluate their idea of Jesus. They will also have to reassess the significance of Jesus in one’s personal life. They will have to take another look of what role Jesus plays in their relationship to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

4. Vocation is also a caring as seen in the parable of the Shepherd in our Gospel. However there are two parables here rather than one: we have terms like shepherd, sheep, sheepfold, gate, prowler or thief and stranger. Both parables have three things in common: the shepherd, the sheep and the stranger.

• In the first we have the good Shepherd taking care of his sheep by gathering them into the sheepfold. No one can come into the sheepfold, except through the gate. The shepherd normally slept across the gate. If you wanted to steal the sheep, you had to overcome the shepherd or kill him.
   
• In the second parable, we have the shepherd caring for his sheep in a very personal manner. He knows his sheep by name, he calls them by name. They know his voice and they listen to him. The stranger will instill no confidence in the sheep, he is a stranger who may or may not be a source of danger. But since the sheep do not know that, they will not follow his voice.

As shepherds whether

• we care for the parish, or as
• married people care for our families,
• teachers care for their class,
• religious care for those entrusted to them in their ministry,
• singles involved either in their parish, or in their work –
• the idea of being concerned and considerate is the keynote of every ministry.

I walked into one of the classes on Thursday, and the teacher was busy with an activity, so I did not interrupt. I just stood and watched. Without prompting, one of the seven year olds brought me a chair for me to sit. She was kind and thoughtful. It was obvious either her teacher of her parents or both had been good shepherds. They had instilled sensitivity and Christian values in that child.

Often being a good shepherd means living up to values and beliefs which we have been taught or which we have formed by ourselves through careful prayer and meditation.

Newspaper columnist Arthur Jones was drafted into the Royal Air Force and found himself in military barracks with 30 other men. He tells us:

On the first night he had to make a decision. He had always knelt to say his prayers. Should he continue to kneel now that he was in military service? He squirmed a little and then said to himself: “Why should I change just because people are watching? Am I going to begin my life away from home by letting other people dictate what I should do or not do?” He decided to kneel. By the time he had finished, he became aware that everyone else was aware of him. And when he made the Sign of the Cross, he was aware that everyone else knew he was a Catholic. As it turned out, he was the only Catholic in the barracks. Yet, night after night he knelt. He said that those ten minutes on his knees often led to discussions that lasted for hours. On the last day in boot camp, someone said to him, “You are the finest Christian I’ve ever met.”

He replied, “Well, I might be the most public Christian you’ve ever met, but I don’t think I’m the finest. Still, I thank you for what you said.”

Kergyma is a Greek word. It means that the events of salvation are, first of all, proclaimed, and then their application to daily life is made. This is what Columnist Arthur Jones did, and this is what we are called to do as Christians. This is our vocation, this is our calling. And according to St. Francis of Assisi, we are always called to proclaim Jesus, and only seldom are we called to use words in that proclamation.

Through the kergymatic method, the events of salvation are, first of all, proclaimed, and then their application to daily life is made. ...

Kergyma is the Greek term for “proclamation.” In Biblical scholarship it is a technical term for the content of the Christian proclamation about Jesus.