28

4^th Sunday of Easter

甲年，复活期第四主日（善牧主日）

Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF

甘天霖神父

Gospel: Jn 10:1-10 （若10：1-10）

"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers." Although Jesus used this figure of speech, they did not realize what he was trying to tell them. So Jesus said again, "Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came [before me] are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Homily：The Discerning Space

The good shepherd is an image so engraved in the Christian literature that we have forgotten that it is a metaphor. It must have been the same for the Jews as well, since all the celebrated Jewish ancestors were shepherds. Abraham, Moses, Jacob, David and all in that line. Going beyond the metaphor, we need to meditate on its real meaning, the sheep and the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, the relationship of every Christian with one’s Master.

The meek and gullible nature of the sheep make them susceptible to be led astray. Look at that statement from prophet Jeremiah (9:11), “like a trusting lamb, I was lead to the slaughter.” That is where Jesus talks about being the good shepherd who will protect the sheep at the cost of his own life. A shepherd, knowing all too well his sheep sings a song of the sheep in Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” I couldn’t care less, since my shepherd is taking care of me. This sheep knows the master very well and leaves all its cares unto him. Jesus instead, aware of the danger of evil shepherds, warns us to be more discerning like snakes and innocent like doves. Be discerning of the voices, that is what the Lord wants of us.

 About discernment Viktor Frankl wrote in his Man’s Search for Meaning, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I have been captivated by this sentence over decades and particularly in the context of the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep. The sheep, we humans, get used to the master’s call through familiarity to his voice. The animals get conditioned to the tone and frequency of the shepherd. We have a choice beyond the conditioning. There is a space between our response and the master’s call.

“My sheep hear my voice,” thus begins the gospel today. This little sentence hides a lot more than it expresses. First of all, it indicates the existence of other voices (of other shepherds) and other sheep that do not belong to the good shepherd. The Good Shepherd seems to speak from the experience of evil or bad shepherds who sell or kill their sheep, or leave them to the cruelty of preying animals.

I often wonder how we get use to the voice of the shepherd. How do we hear the voice of the Lord regularly? I listen to the Lord through a process of discernment based on the values that I have picked from the scriptures and the Church. There was a period of growth in me in which I tried to cancel the space between the voice and response. That was by choosing a passage from the Bible at random and trying to find a personal message out of it. This practice, like taking a lottery ticket, is practiced around the world. I do not use this method anymore since it cancels out the personal process of discernment. The random usage of the word of God is more likely to satisfy human curiosity. Even the devil tempted the Lord using scripture quotes. Since that realization came, I have started a process of discernment to listen to the voice of the Lord in the scriptures, based on the global values that the scripture gives us.

The Good Shepherd stands out in the way he gives a choice to the sheep to listen to his voice and does not force his voice over the sheep. But he does not allow anyone to get lost either. When the sheep wanders and gets lost, he goes in search of the lost sheep and returns carrying it on his shoulders.

Every call demands a response from us, a discerned response. When we get used to that discernment, we are able to recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd with accuracy.

证道：识别善牧的声音，警惕坏牧的试探！

在基督徒的文化中，善牧是铭刻于心的一个形象，我们却已经忘记了这个隐喻。对犹太人来说肯定也是一样的，因为所有著名的犹太祖先都是牧人。亚巴郎、梅瑟、雅各伯、达味，以及这脉络上的所有人皆是牧人。超越这个隐喻，我们需要默想它的真正意义，羊群和善牧耶稣基督，即每个基督徒与唯一牧人的关系。

羊群本然的温顺和轻信，使他们容易误入歧途。让我们看看耶肋米亚先知的表述：“像一只驯服被牵去宰杀的羔羊（11：19）”。这就是耶稣所说的要做一个好牧人，以自己的生命为代价来保护羊群。在《圣咏》23篇中，我们看到一个牧人对他的羊了如指掌，也会唱出羊的歌曲。“上主是我的牧者，我实在一无所缺，”我不能毫无在乎，因为我的牧人在照管着我。这羊群对牧人也非常了解，所以把所有的忧虑都交托给他。耶稣却不然，他意识到邪恶牧人的危险，警告我们更要机警如同蛇，纯朴如同鸽子。上主需要我们对声音机警地分辨。

有关分辨声音，维克特·弗兰克在他的《人寻求意义》（Man’s Search for Meaning）一书中写道：“在刺激和回应之间有一个空当。在这个空当中是我们选择自己回应的力量。在我们的回应中是自己的成长和自由。”几十年来，我一直被这句话所吸引，尤其是在牧羊人和羊之间关系的背景下。这羊，也就是我们人类，过去常常通过熟悉主人的声音来回应他。动物们习惯了牧羊人的音调和频率，而我们却有一个超越条件的选择。那就是在我们的回应与牧人的召叫之间，有个空当。

今天的福音就是这样开始的：“我的羊群听我的声音”。这短小的一句话，它隐藏的远比所表达的更多。首先，它表明存在其它声音（或者其他牧人）和其他不属于善牧的羊群。善牧看起来是从邪恶或坏牧人的经验中说出来的，坏牧人贩卖或杀害自己的羊群，或者把他们丢弃在扑食动物的残酷虐待中。

我常常在想如何习惯善牧的声音。我们怎样才能经常听到上主的声音呢？我聆听上主，是通过一种基于自己从圣经和圣教会中择取的价值观来进行的分辨过程。在我成长的某个阶段，曾试图消除这声音与回应之间的空当。那就是从圣经中随机选择一段经文，并试图从中找到个人想要的信息。这种做法如同买彩票一样，是在世界各地都会有的做法。我不再使用这种方法了，因为它抵消了个人分辨的过程。天主圣言的随意使用，更可能的是为了满足人的好奇心。甚至于魔鬼也使用经文引用来试探主耶稣。自从意识到这一点，我就开始了分辨的过程，就是基于圣经教导我们的普世价值，在圣经中聆听上主的声音。

善牧坚持到底的方式是给予羊选择听从他声音的自由，并不把自己的声音强加给羊。不过，他也不允许任何一只羊迷路。当羊迷路的时候，他去寻找迷失的羊，并在找回时把它放在自己的肩上。

每个召叫都需要来自我们的回应，而且是分辨后的回应。当我们习惯了分辨之后，我们就能精准地认出善牧的声音。

译者：Fr. James