Good Shepherd calls by name

In our wildest dreams none of us can imagine having to offer up our lives for someone else, whether it be for a spouse or for a child. While television dramas provide a plethora of scenarios when this might happen, the news also regularly reports of parents saving their children from flaming homes or raging currents. They are not always successful.

War brings an incomprehensible and tragic loss of life, military and civilian. Few Australian or NZ families of the early and middle years of the last century failed to be impacted by war fatalities. No one, rich or poor, educated or unschooled, farmer or businessman escaped. When such tragedies envelope whole townships, cities, states, countries and peoples the immensity is plainly overwhelming.

Less than 2 years ago I stood at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium as the last post played. There were people present from across our planet, each sharing this poignant moment, remembering those who died on the battlefields of Europe. People nearby were shedding tears. It was extraordinarily moving.

Further east at Gallipoli 5,833 Australian soldiers died. A further 1,985 died of wounds, bringing Australia’s total losses on those shores to 7,818. 19,441 Australian soldiers were wounded. New Zealand lost 2,721 men and 4,752 were wounded.

Their motives for fighting a war far from home were complex and there was certainly a strong desire for adventure and to serve God, King and Country, and if called upon, they would lay down their lives.

One of scripture’s strongest images is of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. It is he who calls his sheep by name, who seeks them out when they are lost, who when they hurt carries them back to the fold, and who – when all else fails – lays down his life for his flock.

This Sunday’s Gospel of the Good Shepherd coincides with ANZAC Day. The image of our men and women leaving these verdant, beloved shores to enter into the hell-holes of war, and that of Jesus as the kind, loving shepherd is incongruous, but is critical is coming to understand the desire of these young soldiers of freedom to protect their homes and loved ones. Though so many died on foreign soil, the ultimate sacrifice is anof love of a monumental scale. And though we have acknowledged that love with physical memorials, the Menin Gate being a most famous example, the most resonant and lasting is the freedom we now possess.

Few of us will be called to lay down our lives for those we love, but we are most definitely called to love deeply, to give of ourselves, so that the lives we live will matter, will have meaning and purpose, to mirror and model the Good Shepherd.

This Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter is also called Vocations Sunday.
, Menin

Face to face with Jesus

Over Easter I attended a national conference for Catholic principals in Hobart. The program was dense but inspiring and there is much I have yet to unpack, absorb and enact. While standing in line I heard the voice behind me utter: ‘Don’t you say hello to your old friends.’ As I turned and faced the owner of the voice I had zero recognition, so I looked at his name tag, looked at his face again. It had been 28 years since we had last met. A rush of memories overwhelmed me.

Our capacity to recognise faces is usually much better than this experience, though admittedly we had both aged considerably, had less hair, more bulk and had long, but wonderful stories to tell. When newborns bond with their mothers they read the face, absorb the smells and react to the stress and anxiety. These faces are fixed into our memories, and we have this ability to refer this knowledge to new faces, to see racial or regional characteristics or where we see familial similarities. There is a name we give to the disorder when people cannot recognise faces they know – prosopagnosia.

In our Gospel reading this week (John 21:1 – 19) the disciples encounter Jesus while fishing. Jesus calls out to them. Only one disciple, ‘the disciple Jesus loved’, recognises that it is the Lord, and it is then that Peter also acknowledges, ‘It is the Lord.’ Yet, despite the ‘recognition’ when all the disciples join Peter and Jesus for a breakfast of bread and fish, ‘none of the disciples was bold enough to ask, ‘Who are you?’ for they knew quite well it was the Lord.’ It is possible that the disciples were still expecting a resurrected Jesus to be a revivified corpse? Or was the resurrected Jesus not quite recognisable because he was substantially different, or was the transformation so significant that not only was their facial recognition ability impaired, but so was their very perception of the person of Jesus. This, according to John, was the third time that Jesus had ‘shown’ himself to his disciples, and obviously they still didn’t get it.

This is the problem also faced by the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Although the stranger explained all the scriptures and the prophets, it was not until the breaking of bread that they recognised who he was, and then he disappeared from their sight.

The key for us is recognising the person of Jesus alive amongst us. His resurrection means that he continues in some way within our community, he exists as a person, as the Body of Christ. Our faith calls us and invites us to explore that presence through service of the community, through the Body of Christ. The faces we see every day, those we know well and those we have never met and those which have gone before, and those yet to be born will all bear the image of Jesus himself. Will you recognise him?