This morning’s Gospel reading is John 10:1–10:
Jesus said:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them.
So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
Have any of our readers watched the NBC show The Masked Singer? To be honest, I am not a fan of these types of game shows; the last talent show I ever really enjoyed was The Gong Show, which I admit may count as an admission against interests in a Sunday reflection.
I have seen a couple of segments of The Masked Singer, though, and find the premise intriguing. Various celebrities, not all from the entertainment industry, don fantastical costumes to hide their identities while singing songs of various genres. The point is to stump the celebrity host panel and to give audiences a dramatic reveal. It also sets up an interesting question about whether the assessment of the voice is colored by the identity of the singer.
Today’s readings make this question worth considering, as well as our difficulty in identifying the difference between glamour and value. Once again, we return to the icon of Christ as the Good Shepherd, the one who saves every lost lamb who responds to the call of His voice. Jesus Himself made this argument into an analogy, if not a parable.
Before we get to the Gospel passage from John, we begin with the immediate aftermath of Pentecost from Acts 2. What was the immediate effect of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples? They were given new voices. Before Pentecost, the disciples remained faithful even while stumbling and falling occasionally in faith. They remained disciples – students of the Master, the friends of the Messiah who still struggled with their identities after His death and resurrection.
When Pentecost arrives, however, the Holy Spirit transforms them into apostles and evangelists. They put aside their earlier identities as disciples, and more so their previous identities as tradesmen, and fully embrace the Holy Spirit and reveal their new identities and mission. They choose to die in Christ’s death and rise again in His Resurrection to live His life authentically for the conversion of the world – through their voices, which are also transformed by the Holy Spirit.
The effectiveness of this unveiling of their true identities as apostles through their new, true voices becomes immediately apparent. In our reading, Luke writes that the Eleven converted three thousand people in Jerusalem through baptism in that single day. The people at Pentecost heard the true voice of the Shepherd coming through the apostles and recognized it.
That corroborated Jesus’ analogy in John’s Gospel, obviously. It raises another question, though, which is how we discern that true voice. In his analogy, Jesus explains that the lambs of the Shepherd will not follow the voices of strangers, but that is an important qualifier. At first, it’s reassuring, especially for those of us who profess Jesus as Savior. We may get lost and go astray, but we know the sound of the Shepherd’s voice, which means we can find our way back.
However, we have to first know the Shepherd’s voice, and then refused to be beguiled by the masks worn by the wolves and strangers. This is where The Masked Singer serves as an interesting analogy in its own right. We lose ourselves in the glamour of the material world and allow it to lead us astray. Sometimes we look to celebrities or charismatic leaders who are all too eager to comfort us into accepting sin and degradation. At other times, the pretty façades of the material world fuel our appetites and pull us into abusing the Lord’s creation for our own petty vanities. Those impulses can confuse us to the point where we cannot distinguish the authentic Voice for the babbling sounds of fashion, vanity, and arrogant rebellion.
What truly happens in that situation is that we pull on our own masks of Original Sin. A mere stumble or misstep on the path turns into a willful refusal to listen to the calm, loving voice of the Shepherd. We mask ourselves as the god of our own world, rejecting the Lord and insisting on manipulating His creation to feed our misshapen appetites for power, pleasure, and pride. The longer we wear those masks, the harder it becomes to pull them off, until, at some point, we discover that they’re no longer masks at all, and we are utterly lost.
Even then, we can hope in the Lord. Jesus seeks to recover every lost lamb in his flock, and we are not powerful enough to banish His voice through the Holy Spirit. He calls to us at all times, no matter how lost we are. All we need to do is listen long enough and return to the Shepherd who loves us.
Previous reflections on these readings:
The front page image is “Parable of Christ as the Good Shepherd” by Marten van Valckenborch, c. 1580-90. On display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. Via Wikimedia Commons.
“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections can be found here.
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