Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/043012.cfm

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."

Periodically, I suppose, every one of us encounters a shocking, hard reality that threatens everything we thought was certain. One person has lived modestly, never indulged in alcohol or tobacco, but one day a doctor tells her, "Your cancer is terminal." Another works hard, lives honestly, pays his share of taxes and bills; and retiring, discovers he will live out his days in poverty.A third lives in a homogenized political society and discovers the world beyond her boundaries has invaded with tanks and artillery and destroyed everything she ever knew.

The fourth is an innocent man who has done nothing but good for others. But when he presents his case the judge replies, “What is truth?” Such was Jesus before Pontius Pilate.

Periodically I notice again that word we hear in our Eucharistic Prayers, betrayed. On the night before he was betrayed…. What a shattering word! It’s hard to probe its depths.

Jesus knew betrayal, and so he can speak to us of both Truth and Trust. He has met face to face the thieves and robbers who come only to steal and slaughter and destroy.

Throughout the Easter season the Church shocks us with the beauty and fearfulness of Saint John’s Gospel. His world is not cushioned by Social Security, Medicare, insurance policies or helpful police. It is a political world that veils its brutality in a sheer fabric of politesse, a veil that Jesus and his opponents rip to shreds in their struggle for souls.

When Jesus invites his disciples to come in and go out of his pasture, he is not offering them one package of security among many. He is desperately urging them to come with me now before it’s too late.

As I meet with Veterans in the Substance Abuse program I tell them very bluntly, 

“If you are not willing to do the spiritual work of healing, you will not survive. You must learn to speak the truth, listen to others, give more than you receive, and forget yourself. 

"Medicines might help and the VA can give you some. Ideas are useful and we’ll teach you a few. But you must turn your life and will over to the care of God today. Tomorrow never comes."