Complete vs Perfect ones

(Jn 10:22-30)

In the so-called Book of Signs of the Fourth Gospel (Jn.1-12) there is a progressive revelation of the divine Mystery that envelops the Person of Jesus.

As this unveiling becomes more precise, both adhesion and incomprehension grow around His figure, even of His neighbours - to the extent that He departs from the traditional expectations of the Messiah, the glorious leader and executioner.

Even in our vocational experience, we have often realised that full existence and paths of indestructible quality (vv.28-29) are not subject to demands immediately satisfying the common mentality.

The Life of the Eternal (v.28) is revealed as a goad: not to mortify intentions, but to set us on paths of growth.

The Gospel is not confirmation of likes, dislikes and convictions.

And Jn 10:22-24 applies this criterion in a blatant manner - in blow by blow friction with the leaders of conformist religiosity: contradicting the mentality of the experts.

The religious rule developed the idea that the Torah could cleanse the mind of errors, and the inclination of people of impurities - in order to chisel out a people pleasing to God.

Anything that disturbed the prescribed balance had to be immediately condemned and punished, as deleterious to fixed stability, mass cohesion, and its very efficiency.

The complete configuration of the indisputable religious proposal, and the magnificence of the official cult structures, guaranteed the eloquence and imperturbability of conditioning (on the misfits).

Doubts and insecurities were immediately branded as disturbing factors in the landscape of reassurance and the profile of normality - to be repressed from adolescence onwards.

The new Rabbi, on the other hand, did not want to sterilise emotions or situations.

The inner world and anxieties were not to be silenced at all, but to be encountered and known.

On the other hand, [as we do today] looking around he realised that it was precisely in observant people, the standard-bearers of ethics or manners, who repressed spontaneous impulses or, conversely, profound criteria, that narrowness and disorders increased.

Precisely those who faced the spiritual path... by increasing dirigisme, manners and control, became exaggeratedly snobbish, confrontational and secretly untrustworthy.

Burdened with suffocating norms, the naive people were reduced to unhappiness.

Everyone felt restlessness and parchedness - precisely because the obsession with sin poured out on the unwell, preventing them from integrating their desires.

In short, what had to be reduced and annihilated for reasons of social, civil, devout consonance, ended up penetrating souls in a more intimate manner, resurfacing here and there in a paradoxical manner, with duplicity and very serious relational imbalances.

Authentic Jesus the Guide was a 'friend of publicans and sinners' in the sense that He taught to expand the harmony of creaturely being.

He himself wanted to learn the art of looking without prejudice, and to treasure various experiences; of all that could emerge even from within.

The perfection he preached to others was in the imperfection of selflessness, in the irrationality of love, in the absurdity of pure gift-giving and tolerance, which gleaned pearls of experience from everywhere.

Indeed, according to the True Shepherd, it was important precisely to be troubled, rather than impassive.

All in order to know in time and make sense even of the signs that worry [even according to a pious, or à la page, and aligned mentality] - thus completing ourselves.

Learning to welcome, not to establish.

The authentic Master and Friend knows that ... Only what touches, involves, and upsets us personally will succeed in shifting our gaze, to grow. To activate exodus to fertile pastures, the land of freedom.

The Feast of the Dedication [Feast of Lights] was being celebrated, a commemoration of the purification of the Temple, consecration and dedication of a new altar [following the Hellenist desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had forced his hand by imposing the cult to Olympian Zeus in that place].

The debate with the institutional masters takes place as usual in Solomon's Portico - each time trying to educate them to let go of their sense of inquisition and domination, still unbearable today.

The authorities felt no need to seek the Mystery of God.

In this way, the leaders wanted Jesus to define himself, so that they could judge him according to the criteria of their abstract world; which impregnated their teaching and common mentality.

On the contrary, the Master even for us today does not place himself in the armour of established ideas, in a pre-established, contrived, external framework.

He does not stagnate, stuck on a wavelength; as if he were fearful of the unknown - hence for us the bearer of a non-alarming devotion.

Christ is a fraternal presence, certainly - not a 'ratifier'.To enter the life of Faith and become liberators of others, one must be emancipated and tirelessly available, able to shake up convictions - starting with oneself.

In short, for those who consider themselves arrived and masters of the situation, the new must present the imprint of authorisations, credentials, permissions - or one has no right to speak and act.

Instead, the Lord calls for confidence, for conversation, for collaboration: a propitious climate that allows the Father to reveal himself.

He only rejects fanaticism, sophisticated, cerebral, mannered, and one-sided thinking.

In short, Jesus did not want to be mistaken for 'the' [that] expected political Messiah: resembling David. That is why it requires the so-called messianic secret.

And beyond words, which indeed can always be misunderstood, it is the works of life alone that are eloquent language (v.25).

But it is the soul that did not want to believe: the feeling of those who do not belong to him (v.26).

In fact, sincere Faith is activated from a first testimony within, in the being, in one's own character and creaturely imprint (Jn 6:44).

(Vv.25-26) If you do not lead people to think differently, giving evidence is of no use. The problem is the shaky eye, or openness. And it is only the perception of the unhealthy that is free of interested ballast.

The mutual understanding between Jesus and the least of the people is complete transparency, total harmony even on the basis of an elementary sympathy: the natural Way that unites Father and sons.

All this, starting from a sure testimony in oneself, not from a preconceived religious rationalism.

Being One (v.30) motivated Christ, and still leads the voiceless to feel adequate, equal.

It leads them to face-to-face, without the need for models, rigmarole, legalisms, affected manners.

Not disciplinary obedience, but prophetic likeness.

It annoys us to be compared to a flock, but in ancient Israel the archetype of the shepherd who shares everything with his sheep remained even in Jesus' time a prototype of existence and life of communion with God.

The metaphor must be understood in the sense of the family relationship, of total sharing: feeling the burden and the goals together; grasping the spirit of each one and seeing the qualities, or providing for them; trusting even in destitution.

In the life of Faith, the guiding specialists should introduce us into this special relationship with the Father who knows each of his kinsmen, and redeems their loneliness or vice versa.

Immediacy and personal freedom in love are the cornerstone of the new relationship with the Most High.

A frankness that Jesus teaches without looking anyone in the face who is still enraptured by worldly elements - let alone being intimidated by marauders (vv.1.5.8.10.12-13) in angelic garb.

His Word and extreme events are still the Gates that lead [radically] to Heaven and humanity.

All this despite the fact that his Message is considered crazy and demonic by those interested in the status quo (vv.20-21).

Conversely, by crossing all the expected thresholds, in our imbalances we penetrate the furrows of reality and mystery; we introduce ourselves there where royal decisions ripen - finding surpassing fascination.

Perfect correspondence with our vocational trait and yearning for the fullness of life.

Knowledge of the heart

Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd who gives eternal life to his sheep (cf. Jn 10:28). That of the shepherd is an image well rooted in the Old Testament and dear to the Christian tradition. The title "Shepherd of Israel" is attributed by the Prophets to the future descendant of David, and thus possesses undoubted messianic significance (cf. Ez 34:23). Jesus is the true Shepherd of Israel, in that he is the Son of Man who wanted to share the condition of human beings in order to give them new life and lead them to salvation. Significantly to the term "shepherd" the evangelist adds the adjective kalós, beautiful, which he uses solely in reference to Jesus and his mission. Also in the story of the wedding feast of Cana, the adjective kalós is used twice to connote the wine offered by Jesus and it is easy to see in it the symbol of the good wine of the messianic times (cf. Jn 2:10).

"I give them (my sheep) eternal life, and they shall never be lost" (Jn 10:28). So says Jesus, who shortly before had said: "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (cf. Jn 10:11). John uses the verb tithénai - to offer, which he repeats in the following verses (15.17.18); we find the same verb in the account of the Last Supper, when Jesus "laid down" his garments and then "took them up again" (cf. Jn 13:4.12). It is clear that he wants to affirm in this way that the Redeemer disposes of his life with absolute freedom, so that he can offer it and then take it back freely. Christ is the true Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep, for us, by sacrificing himself on the Cross. He knows His sheep and His sheep know Him, just as the Father knows Him and He knows the Father (cf. Jn 10:14-15). It is not a matter of mere intellectual knowledge, but of a deep personal relationship; a knowledge of the heart, proper to the one who loves and the one who is loved; of the one who is faithful and the one who knows that he can be trusted in turn; a knowledge of love by virtue of which the Shepherd invites his own to follow him, and which is fully manifested in the gift he gives them of eternal life (cf. Jn 10:27-28).

[Pope Benedict, homily for priestly ordination 29 April 2007]