Hearing Jesus' Voice - 4th Sunday of Easter

As I read and re-read the gospel in preparation for this Sunday I identified a variety of topics that we could explore: 

• The idea of Jesus as the Good Shepherd and what that actually means. 
• How a Good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. 
• How a hired man doesn’t see the sheep as his own, and runs away and abandons them at the first sign of trouble. 
• How Jesus made it a point to mention that there are sheep outside of his fold, but that he needed to care for them too. 
• And that he needed to lay down his life only to take it up again. 

But there was something else contained in the Gospel that seemed to stand out from the others, at least to me, it was when Jesus said: I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

This sentence intrigued me and I knew there was something special about it. I began to investigate what this might have meant at the time of Jesus and found this out. It was very common in the afternoon and before nightfall for shepherds to bring their sheep down from hills where they had been grazing so they could be protected and away from danger while in a shelter. During the night the sheep from different flocks would intermingle and by the time morning came, it would be difficult to know which sheep belonged to who. Yet, each morning the shepherds would call out to their sheep and recognizing the unique voice of their shepherd they would go to them. The sheep recognized their shepherd and the shepherd knew his sheep. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that He is the Shepherd and that His sheep know His voice. We are to be His sheep. 

Now knowing the deeper meaning of Jesus’ words, I then began to contemplate what it meant to hear God’s voice and to be able to recognize it, and I pondered what might keep me from hearing it. Then I thought of our contemporary world – especially this last year during the pandemic. We constantly hear many voices speaking to us through the television, the internet, Twitter, and text messages. We are bombarded with the voices and ideas of politicians, celebrities, athletes, journalists, lawyers, and newscasters. We are smothered by messages and ways of looking at the world that may or may not be very Christ-like. Yet, Jesus teaches us that to follow Him we must recognize His voice. And since most of us will never hear His voice audibly, we should learn to identify the other ways He speaks to us. 

The ordinary way that most of us will hear and recognize Him will be in our prayers. So, we must ask ourselves: have we developed a prayer life that will allow us to hear Him? So often He speaks in the quiet of our heart and our mind. Have we developed a method of prayer that also allows our mind and our heart to rest in peaceful quiet? If our life is in a state of constant distraction, constant stimulation, and endless external activities, how will we ever hear His voice? I have come to know that to hear His voice and to hear it clearly, it is in the quiet that it can be recognized. And since God often uses situations, events, and encounters to speak to us, we should reflect upon our daily events each night. It is in that prayerful reflection, that meditation, that examination of conscience, that He so often speaks to us, guides us, and inspired us. I was once told that we should imagine Jesus walking slowly through our minds and holding a candle. That He will gently point the candle toward a thought or an idea, illuminating it, and drawing quiet attention toward it. However, if we aren’t paying attention, it will go unnoticed and His voice will never be heard.

I couldn’t help but reflect again on that small portion of today’s Gospel: I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; So how is it that one truly gets to know another? It is through spending time together, openly sharing our thoughts, our dreams, our inspirations, our trials, our troubles, and our fears. It is through having a relationship. The question we must ask of ourselves is “How much am I investing in this relationship with Christ?” Is it enough? Has it been enough that He will know me and recognize me? Do I truly know Him? Can I recognize His voice as my shepherd? Do I truly know who to follow in this world? All very meaningful and important questions that we should be asking of ourselves. And in doing so, I have a challenge for each of us here today: Why don’t we begin today to set aside some time each day or night to sit in quiet? To pray, To talk, To reflect, To listen, And to deepen our relationship, and our friendship with Christ. I want to be able to recognize His voice, don’t you?