“TRIBE AND SHEPHERD”
Good Shepherd Sunday
Homilist:  Fr. Donie O’Connor
Sunday, April 25, 2010

         
Last December, in a very serious interview called ‘The Meaning of Life’, he spoke about the two huge tragedies in his life.  One, the unexpected and untimely death of the young, beautiful, and talented actress, his wife, Natasha Richardson; and, the other, of the death of his father.

‘I never really got to know my father, he said, and it sure hurts to admit it now.  I knew little of the man I loved most in the world.  The man whose slightest glance could stir up great wonder in me.  We had an awkward relationship and I wonder do other sons have similar experiences.

Do they know their father, other than the authority figure who leaves home early in the morning and returns late at night weary and tired?

Do they, like me, never get to know his heart, his inner hurts and hopes, his joys and his fears?  Above all, did they tell him that they loved him?  I didn’t, and that’s the regret that bubbles within me now.’

These are the poignant words of the Irish actor, Liam Neeson.  Words, I think, are universal like the theme in today’s gospel.  It is a common cry.  Children sometimes do not know their parents and, likewise, parents do not know their children.  Knowing has a high price tag.  If you really want to know somebody it demands time and energy, a listening heart, effort, understanding, showing up and patient waiting.

Jesus tells us today in a very brief gospel that he knows his sheep.  He knows them because he has an intimate bond and a close relationship with them.  This closeness involves self-showing and self-revelation; and both are needed in the definition of knowing.

Jesus not alone knows us by name and face; he knows our human story and how we were kni t together in our mother’s womb.  Our individual stories only unfold and emerge where there is openness, grace, safety and love.  The Good Shepherd provides all these qualities and even more.  And we don’t have to travel far to meet Our Good Shepherd.  All we have to do is be where we are and notice things.  Our Good Shepherd wears two shoes:  the shoe of creation and the shoe of the incarnation.  And all that’s needed is our attention and our ideas.

Jesus tells us today it is only when love and knowledge entwine that our lives are transformed and that we are free to dance.  In fact, loving comes before knowing, not after it.  You cannot really know something if you do not love it first.  So says that great theologian Karl Rahner and he goes on to say:  “Only the heart knows in the full sense of the word”.

Love is more than routine, duty and a mere list of facts; it’s about intimate and interior knowledge of the human centre, where spirit and body, light and love, dwell undivided.  Knowledge is but the radiance and awareness of the power of love.
Sadly in our busy world we can sweat the small stuff.  We can sacrifice the big picture for the detail.  We can get caught up in the craziness of the day, the multi-tasking and sadly maybe lose out to the joy of family life, maybe missing baby’s first step into the world, or that first word spoken to the world, or that first nervous school play, or that first soccer game.

Also in our church as institution a personal relationship with Jesus can be lost too in the pursuit of perfection, structure, duty, safe words and rigidity.  In essence, all that matters when you come to service, when you come to Mass, when you come to liturgy is a sacred imaginative creativity that moves people to passionately and personally fall in love with Jesus which coaxes an intimate gazing at His face, Our Good Shepherd.  That’s what is needed.  If it doesn’t happen, then the liturgy can fail you. 
The plot is lost and our liturgy remains stale and void of mystical experience if we just use empty words and empty gestures.  The gospel speaks to the human heart, not the mind.  The human heart needs to be engaged, touched, cracked open, and it needs to feel at home. 

So really, my friends, we need to return from the head down to the heart.  And maybe we need to start speaking from the heart again, maybe praying from the heart again, and maybe loving from the heart again.  And express our deepest needs, our joys and indeed our disappointments.  By doing so we stretch and make ourselves bigger and better, more generous and more honest.  And where do we get our need and our cue for right relationship and for good relationship?  It comes from our brief gospel, the relationship between Jesus and his Father.  This tender intimate heart-to-heart relationship and how it played itself out in trust and waiting, sacrifice and love, is our mirror.  That’s where we look.

With a heart-to-heart relationship with Jesus we find ourselves most deeply.  That’s the paradox.  By finding Jesus or Jesus finding us we find ourselves and we can become surprised again by the joy and the wonder of ordinary life.

The church, like a mother, should patiently gather her children, should invite a loving relationship, beckoning a gentle voice that speaks the language of protection, inclusiveness and love, leading us out of confusion and darkness, rules and regulations, and into the bosom of our Good Shepherd, where the dreams of the young and the wisdom of the old are saluted and honored because the Christ event is big enough for all of humanity.

Liam Neeson sadly recognized there is a difference between knowing about a person and knowing that person.  No doubt about it, he knew lots about his father, he could write lists about him; but his regret and his loss was he never knew his heart.  Liam’s lament is a human lament. 

My friends, this morning let it not be our lament too.  It would be a tragedy to live and die without anybody knowing our true selves, our wounds, our needs, our disenchantments and our passions.  So let us take that terrible risk because that’s what it takes, my friends, to be vulnerable and to be really ourselves.  To grasp the wonderful opportunity and the possibility to know and be known, to love and be loved.  And let our life be one of wonder rather than tragedy.  As Carlo Carretto, one of our good spiritual writers, wrote once:  ‘There is nothing terrible about suffering a little bit, if it taught us how to love.’
Amen.