May 8, 2017Monday, 4th Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 11:1–18Gospel: Jn 10:11–18
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Not so the hired hand or any other person who is not the shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong. They abandon the sheep as soon as they see the wolf coming; then the wolf snatches and scatters the sheep. This is because the hired hand works for pay and cares nothing for the sheep.“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father. Because of this I give my life for my sheep.
“I have other sheep that are not of this fold. These I have to lead as well, and they shall listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock since there is one Shepherd. The Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down freely. It is mine to lay down and to take up again: this mission I received from my Father.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Businessmen know quite well that business cannot totally be relegated to caretakers. A friend who put up a small poultry in his farm understood this. Thus, the next time his caretaker told him in one of his rare visits to the farm that five chickens had died of sickness, he demanded exhumation of the carcass. Of course there was nothing to exhume!
The same dishonesty can happen in the care of sheep. In Palestine most owners required from hired shepherds the presentation of part of the body of the sheep as proof that it had not been appropriated. What if the sheep died because of wild animal attack? The hired shepherd was still required to show proof that he had at least tried to save the sheep from the mouth of the animal by showing at least part of its leg. This strategy made hired shepherds honest but did not necessarily make them more loving.
Jesus perfected the image of the good shepherd. “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care” (Isaiah 40:11). He feels compassion for the people because he sees them “as sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36); Peter calls Jesus “the shepherd of our souls” (1 Peter 2:25), and the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of him as “the great shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13:20).
Despite the strategy that my friend employed in monitoring his chickens he had to eventually chicken out from the business. He understood that businesses like his couldn’t just be entrusted to caretakers. What more could be said of the business of souls? God entrusted his sheep to no hired caretakers but to Jesus. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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