My Sheep Know Me

[A reflection on the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 11, 2025. All the readings for Sunday's Mass may be found by clicking this link here.]

"You do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep."

Is it truly that predetermined? Does belief come only because the believer was fated to do so and no one else has a chance? Is there truly no freedom with God? Philosophers and theologians have struggled with this for centuries with opinions running up and down the spectrum, most of them firmly held and the source of bitter disagreement.

I believe that to derive a sweeping theological statement from this passage is a mistake. Our Lord is being very specific with a group of people He is finding wilfully obtuse. Also, it is not over the question of whether He and the Father are one, that is peripheral to the discussion and flows out of the fundamental issue. It is over the teaching and actions of Jesus that the debate rages. To His point, the actions and the teachings should stand for themselves, taken against the witness of both the Law and the Prophets. Jesus called those who heard Him to believe or trust in the strength of what He taught and of what He did. He taught a radical holiness, a radical love for the other, What He taught and did testified to the authority by which He taught and did, and pointed to His singularity of purpose with the Father.

Still, that message for some fell on deaf ears. Perhaps they thought their way was holy enough. Perhaps they reasoned that the radical love for others was only for certain others. Jesus called on them to trust the whole message, and yet parts of the message they rejected, essentially telling Him that if such was the Kingdom of Heaven they were having none of it, for it did not match their vision, their beliefs, their concept of God.

What about us? What about our belief? Are we ready to accept and trust in a vision of radical love and radical holiness that denies our selfish desires and preconceptions and truly be His flock and the sheep of His pasture? Or is it just lip service? As the psalmist wrote in Psalm 95, "Oh, that today you would listen to His voice, harden not your hearts!"

His Kingdom is not of this world, let us stop trying to make it conform to it as that will not happen.