Sacrifice is Adoration

A word on Good Shepherd Sunday and Mother’s Day.

“My sheep hear my voice.” (Jn 10:27)

The voice we hear first is that of our mother.  In the womb, we hear her voice every day, echoing throughout our tiny world.  It is said that language acquisition begins before birth.  The child begins to internalize the rhythms and sounds of her mother tongue long before she first gives voice to it.   Our mother’s voice is home, and even from the womb we can begin to sense that we are loved, wanted, or perhaps that we are not loved, not wanted.  From a theological point of view, our mother’s role is to introduce us to God, not just by speaking, but in her very self.  She is the image of the God who gives us life, nourishes us and brings us to maturity.  We know that none of our mothers was perfect, so if the voice of the Shepherd is muffled, our image of God may be unclear, incomplete.  Still, our mothers give us the precious gift of beginning to know God.

“I know them, and they follow me.” (Jn 10:27)

To be known, this is a fundamental need.  Recently we heard from the monk-psychologist Brother John Mark Falkenhain, OSB that loneliness is an experience of lack of intimacy.  Loneliness does not depend on physical solitude but can be felt in a crowd.  Intimacy has to do with being known.  Many people know us a little, a few know us more deeply, only one, only God knows us to the very bottom.  Those people in our lives who know us more deeply stand for God.  “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (Jn 10:14-15).  Our home, our destiny is this intimacy of mutual knowing for which our inner being cries out.

“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” (Jn 10:28)

Eternal life, abundant life, is what our Shepherd gives us.  This is more than just a beating heart, more than just breathing.  This means life that has meaning, value, purpose.  Too often today, life is dismissed as an accident in a random cosmos.  Life is something to be taken for granted, something to be ended as a matter of convenience.  But life is a gift from God, a gift that we receive continually.  Living is learning to live, a process of becoming more and more who we were created to be, the person God dreams of, his own image.

“No one can snatch them out of my hand.
…and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (Jn 10:28-29)

The psalmist calls on God to snatch him (Eripe me, Domine) from the hand of the enemy.  Here Jesus says he will not allow anyone to be snatched from his hand, from his Father’s hand.  He sounds like a mother, one of those crazy, fierce, heroic mothers whose children are in danger.  To be a mother is to be made responsible for life, for guarding it, promoting it, bringing it to fullness.  No one will snatch her children from her hand.  This is a maturing process that happens as we live, whether we are physically mothers or not.  We all need to grow into this sense of responsibility for life, for those around us and for those far away.

The important contrast here is with the thief, or the hireling.  The thief is only out to do harm; the hireling is more ambivalent.  He appears fine as long as everything goes well.  But when there’s a problem, when there’s danger or hardship, something that asks more of him, he is gone.  He runs away to save his skin.  He does not lay down his life for the sheep, because his own life is more important than theirs.  This is very challenging.  Challenging for all of us, who are called to be spiritual mothers, shepherds of one another.  Do I really care for the people in my life?  Do I take responsibility for them?  Or will I run away and hide when the going gets tough?  Will I lay down my life for them?

“The Father and I are one.” (Jn 10:30)

This was the verse I chose for my Abbatial Blessing card.  A kind of motto.  If you asked me why then, or if you ask me now, I would not be able to say exactly.  A word that grips us with its importance does not reveal its secrets at once.  What I can do is repeat what Jesus said to Philip: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (Jn 14:9).  When we see Jesus on the cross, we see the Father, we see God, bleeding.  We see the self-sacrificing love that is the goal of our living and becoming.  To be fully alive is to be fully given.  To lay down one’s life.  I have been reading Caryll Houselander and came across a deep word that belongs here: sacrifice is adoration.  Christ’s sacrifice is the perfect adoration of the Father, the perfect expression of their oneness.  So is our sacrifice adoration of the Father, our life given that others may live.  Sacrifice is adoration.

Image: Found Sheep by Julia Stankova