Fourth Sunday of Easter - May 2, 2004

            On a number of occasions, people, knowing my love of books and reading, have come up to me and recommended a good book, and I have had the pleasure of not only reading it but then discussing it with the one who recommended it to me.  And so a bit of goodness is shared, and hopefully, as a result, a bit of growth in goodness for us both.  But also on occasion people have recommended a book or article or essay to me as something tremendously good and meaningful to them, and after reading it I am rather surprised to recognize writing that is not only not Catholic but not even Christian and actually opposed to the Christian view of God, the world and the human person.  I am surprised because these people are often Catholics and should know better; yet there they are patterning their lives, thoughts and behavior after something foreign to their faith.  Meanwhile, the great classics of Catholic literature collect dust on a shelf somewhere; the Scriptures remain unread, the lives of the Saints buried away somewhere in the attic.

            Why is that?  Why is it that some people seem to parrot TV more than they can remember even basic prayers?   The average philosophy or worldview one meets with today is much more likely to sound like Oprah or Phil Donaghue than like Christ and His Church.  Every time you pick up the newspaper, there’s a breakthrough in the news that refutes all that went before it, including the great big breakthrough from the day before.  Experts are out there to tell us to find fulfillment, to raise children, to live a long time, to be successful; in fact our country has become much less of a democracy than a rule by experts.

            Of course, some of the advice out there is good.  But how do we know what is good and what is bad?  What do we measure these new supposed insights up against?  What standard is there that we use in order to judge the value of new ideas?  For none of us thinks in a vacuum.  To every issue that confronts us we bring a set of assumptions and preconceptions; and where do these come from?  The dime-store philosophers on television?  Hollywood?  The newspapers?  Madison avenue?  For we have to face the fact that we are constantly -- especially in our “information age” -- barraged by other peoples’ ideas that are designed to influence us.  Whose voice do we listen to?

            For we are sheep.  We perhaps don’t like to think of ourselves in that way, but it is true nonetheless.  Our Lord Himself calls us that, particularly in today’s Gospel.  “My sheep hear my voice.  I know them and they follow me,” Jesus said.  We are sheep because the full answer to life in this world is not within us.  We don’t have the whole picture.  We are not able to find our way without help.  We are sheep.   And sheep follow the voice of a shepherd.  Who or what is our shepherd?

            Strange as it may sound, we may not even know.  For we tend to say things or think of  things or “come up with” ideas we think our own when in fact we are expressing influences weighing in upon us from all kinds of sources.  One of the great philosophers rightly said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  And part of the vital examination that we need to make of ourselves is to determine what voice will be our foundational approach in the world.  Is it the voice of Christ and His Church?  Are the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and the 2000 years of accumulated wisdom divinely preserved for us in the Church the voice we listen to or the latest expert (who will probably be refuted and old hat next year)?   The question we have to consider when we hear our Lord’s calling us sheep who are to listen to His voice, the question we have to consider is, On what foundation am I living my life and preparing my destiny?  Do I drift along with the latest fad, with the most contemporary fashion? 

            There is no escaping the question or the dilemma it proposes:  we will be shepherded, but we can, with effort, determine what or who will be our shepherd.   I know this flies in the face of much of modern thought on the human person, which vainly sees us as independent and self-determining individuals.  Much is said today, for example, about the individual conscience and its right to pronounce on the most serious issues of the day.  And, according to this modern view, everyone’s conscience is the last authority.  But each person’s conscience will be to a large extent formed by the influences that surround him or her.  We might like to think that our conscience is completely free and the domain in which we exercise complete sovereign sway.  But it is not so.  The conscience will be formed by some shepherd or shepherds from outside of us.  For we are sheep.  And the Catholic believes -- if he has been taught according to the Faith -- that the conscience is a faculty of the human heart that when rightly formed approves of the good and warns against evil.  Conscience is the echo of the voice of God in our souls.  The more we listen, the more we hear and the better we follow the Shepherd’s voice, who would lead us to eternal life.  But to listen means to turn off distractions, to take with a grain of salt the latest thing, to reflect deeply on our lives and especially our lives in Christ’s Church.  To listen means to pray, to remain still in the moment of worshipping our Maker, to receive with gratitude all that God has preserved for us in the Church, and behold that there, in His Church, is His voice, the voice of the Shepherd, leading us to green pastures. 

            What voice do we listen to?  Whose authority shapes us?  What is the foundation of our lives?  Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me.”  There are many voices in the world.  But there is only one voice that leads to eternal life.