The house beside still waters

The texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary create the opportunity to consider the great gift which the psalmist describes in the six verses of Psalm 23. The Divine Shepherd leads us to repose beside still waters where we are fed in communion with God and in the face of those who would seek to harm us. Our wonder and praise is that we might live in the House of the Lord all our days. The Holy Spirit inspires Peter to preach the core of the Gospel to the House of Israel and we are stuck. like Tom Shanahan, S.J., by his fearless words to identify that the Jewish  authorities have crucified the One whom God has made both Lord and Messiah. The Letter of Peter describes how disciples of Jesus are those who share in the suffering of the Son as witness to the depth of the Love in which we are invited live through forgiveness and the same power of the Holy Spirit which Peter displayed in his evangelism. The tenth chapter of the Gospel of John comes to a high point for many in the declaration of Jesus that He has come “that they may have life, and have it abundantly“(John 10:10). This declaration resonates with the image of Psalm 23. The text in John 10: 1-10 may not be clear to modern thinking. Our understanding of sheep, shepherds, sheepfolds and gates is not in our daily experience. Father Ryan Erlenbush helps us consider that “All who came before me are thieves and bandits”(John 10:8) is not a diminishing of the Law, Prophets or John the Baptist, as early heretics proposed, but it is the identification of the unique Presence of the Son as Shepherd, the One. Rev Dr Janet Hunt shares her comments on Jesus as the gate (John 10:7), which we may misunderstand in a sense of separation from, like her pet cat from her work area. She shares the image of the Middle East shepherd who lay down as the gate to the sheepfold. All the sheep who come and go are known individually by the shepherd who is awakened continuously by their movements. Jesus as the gate means there is no separation between He and us! The Good News of Divine Intimacy is message which we proclaim in the tradition of Peter and in the assurance of the psalmist.