T hat is what Jesus says of himself : “I am the good shepherd”. He is not “one among many”, or “one together with the others”. Neither is he “one more than the others”. He is “the only, one shepherd”, “the one, and only good shepherd”. The oneness is his truth. Other truths which would be ascribed to him, but which lessen, or annul this oneness of his, are simply false, deceiving, untruthful.

Christ Jesus’ oneness is also what He adds immediately after: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”. By saying this, He sets the eternal truth that must embrace who in Him, through Him, with Him, is called to be a “good shepherd” of the only flock of God till the end of times.

There is the life of the sheep and that of the shepherd. The good shepherd must offer his life for the sheep. Life is no longer his, but the sheep’s. It is not the sheep that live for him, it is he who lives for the sheep; and not only that, he also dies for the sheep. His life is wholly consumed for his flock.

Those who do not consume their lives for the sheep, are called hired hands by Jesus: “The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep”.

The hired hand is simply a mercenary. He leads the flock for a vile interest. He looks to his life and earning. The sheep are for him, not he for the sheep. He does not interpose his life between the wolf and the sheep to defend them. He simply slips out, runs away. He is only interested in one thing: his life. The hired hand is the exact contrary of the good shepherd, who is only interested in the life of his sheep. To the hired hand the sheep are not his. They do not belong to him, because he never made them his own. Instead they belong to the good shepherd, because he made them his own.

Love is the good shepherd’s only secret. Jesus loves his sheep. How does he love them? The same way the Father loves Him: “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep”. It is right then to ask ourselves: how does the Father know Jesus and how does Jesus know the Father?

The Father knows Jesus through divine progeny. Jesus is the Only Son of the Father, the One and Only Son who is from his being through eternal generation. God knows the Son through the gift of life which is from his very nature. The Son knows the Father, because He gave all his life to the Father. The Father lives all in the Son and through the Son; the Son lives all in the Father and through the Father. Father and Son live an eternal communion of love in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus lives this same relationship with his sheep. His sheep are from Hi

m. He generated them to divine, or eternal life, by giving them his blood. His blood, which is the blood of God’s Son, in the Holy Spirit, makes of every one of his sheep a son of God. The relationship between Christ Jesus and his sheep is real, if it is bilateral. If it remains unilateral, the relationship is false.

The relationship is bilateral when the sheep that are from Christ, live also in Christ and through Christ. From Christ Jesus they received life, to Christ Jesus they offer life. They are from Christ, if they live for Christ. If they do not live for Christ, neither are they from Christ. If they are not for Christ, quite soon they return to be by themselves, but if they are by themselves, they are no longer Christ Jesus’ sheep. The “reciprocity” of the love which is lived between Christ and the Father and the Father and Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit fails.

Another truth characterizing the essence of the good shepherd is universality. He is not the shepherd of one, or more sheep. He is the shepherd of the Father’s every sheep. If one of the Father’s sheep is not one of Christ Jesus’ sheep, neither is it a sheep of the Father. Only one Father, only one shepherd, only one flock, only one fold: “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd”.

This truth is valid for every other shepherd who in Christ is placed by God to lead his flock. Whoever does not have universality and oneness to heart, who does not look for and live universality and oneness, he surely is not a shepherd in Christ. Jesus calls him hired hand, because he is not interested in the life of the sheep. And he is not surely interested, because he sets the sheep out of the one and only rule of life that God established for them: “Only one flock, only one fold, only one shepherd”.

In love the self life is given. The freedom of the gift that gets even to sacrifice is the peculiarity of true love. A compelled love is not a true love. Jesus freely offers himself to death for the sheep: “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father” (Comp. Jn 10, 11-18).

Virgin Mary, Redemption Mother, You want every man to become a sheep of Your Son Jesus of his only flock, in the only fold. That is why you called us to remind and announce the world the divine Word of salvation. For this will of Yours to be fulfilled today and always, support us with Your moternal intercession so that we, first, become sheep who love Christ Jesus as Christ Jesus loves the Father. Only in this perfect love true life is and only from this love we can attract to Christ and his only flock.

Sac. Costantino di Bruno

'Caritas – The exercise of love from the Church as a community of love”. With these words the Holy Pontiff titles the second part of his first encyclical, and you can already catch in them a key to the reading of the entire work.

“Deus Caritas est”. The surprising declaration of the Apostle John surely contains one of God’s highest and extraordinary revelations. Every believer, in front of the depth of this assertion, should assume an attitude of worshiping contemplation: in it is enclosed the unfathomable and fascinating mystery of God’s being and acting and, consequently, of the very being of man, moulded in the image of his Creator.

The Christian faith, however, helps us to deeply penetrate this mystery, thanks to the singular revelation of the Tripersonal God. God is love, and He is tripersonal love: in the Most Holy Trinity every divine Person loves, and does it according to his own specificity and truth: the eternal Father in that origin; the Son in that generated love and always turned towards the Father; and the Holy Spirit in that personal subject of communion.

In the economy of salvation this divine love pours out on all creation and on man always according to the peculiarity of the single Persons and in the perfect communion of their reciprocity. Thus we can individuate as an essential characteristic of the divine love the double dimension of the specificity and of the communionality.

The Church is born from the Trinitarian love: she is continuously regenerated in it; through it she expresses herself in the attempt of rendering it present to the world; to it she continuously aspires in her eschatological tension. So the charity is a vital expression of her very essence and nature (cfr. DC 25a), so that “she cannot neglect the service of charity just as she cannot leave out the Sacraments and the Word” (cfr. DC 22).

The community of believers lives this dynamism of love according to the same divine modality, in a communion specificity. In the human society, for example, its service of charity is expressed in communion with the other humanitarian organisms (cfr. DC 30b) and in a reciprocal relationship with the state institutions (cfr. DC 28), but always keeping the self specificity, avoiding to dissolve into a simple variant of a common charitable organization (cfr. DC 31). All its action, in fact, must be characterized as an “expression of a love which searches for the integral good of man: it searches for its evangelisation through the Word and the Sacraments…; and for its promotion in the various spheres of life and human activity” (DC 19). The practical action, as far as its efficiency is concerned, remains insufficient and inefficacious if love for man is not made perceptible in it (cfr,. DC 34), if it is not an instrument in itself of God’s love for every man.

Inside the Church, also, charity breaths with this double lung of individual specificity and choral communion, so that every believer is called to love, but according to the truth of the own ecclesial ministry, personal charisma, individual gift. Out of these co-ordinates of charity love

is not real any more, but it is a simple philanthropic effort which remains sterile.
“Love of the neighbour rooted in the love of God is first of all task for every individual believer, but it is also a task for the entire ecclesial community, and this at every level: from the local community to the particular Church and to the Church universal in its totality. The Church as well, in that community must practise love. A consequence of this is that love needs also an organization as a presupposition for an ordered communitarian service” (DC 20).

Then, inside the ecclesial body there are particular charitable institutions which apply themselves with a special devotion to the mission of charity. The Pontiff indicated them the constitutive elements which must mark their service (cfr. DC 31): an answer to an immediate necessity; professional competence; heart care (it is not enough for the care to be technically correct: those who work in charitable institutions must distinguish themselves for the fact that they don’t limit themselves to follow in a proficient way what is convenient at the spare of the moment, but devote themselves to the other person with the care suggested by the heart); independence from parties and ideologies; charity must not be instrumental to the acquisition of new proselytes; let love talk.

Also in the individuation of the receivers, Christian love lives of this double communion and individual dimension. In fact, if it is directed to everyone, without exception, in a universal way (cfr. DC 25b; 30), it will always concretely realize itself starting from specific situations of necessity, which interest specific persons in need (cfr. DC 31).

At any rate, the Christian must always feel as a mere instrument of the divine charity; “ordinary servant” (Lk 17, 10) of that Love which must be the only source, the only strength and form of every one of his actions. That love which is not simply a feeling – “feelings come and go” – but which involves all the person in the specificity of his components: intellect, feelings, will, action; putting them in communion with the Truth, the Will, the work of God itself.

Therefore, loving is above all letting the three divine Persons be loved in and through us: that is why the real charity is drawn only in the grace of the Sacraments and is revived with a constant prayer (cfr. DC 37); loving is, moreover, loving following the Trinitarian model, every one according to the own truth and personal reality, and always in synergic communion with the others.

Sublime model of charity is the Virgin Mary, Redemption Mother, mirror of every holiness. “Magnificat anima mea Dominum”, She says on the occasion of her visit to S. Elizabeth (Lk 1, 46), expressing with this all her life program: not putting herself at the centre, but giving space to God daily met in the prayer and service to the neighbour (cfr. DC 41).

The Most Holy Mary is great. She is great because she loves, and she does it according to the specificity of her most singular and noble person, but always in communion with Heaven and the other creatures.

Sac. Michele Fontana

I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD
IV Easter Sunday Year B

SALVATION IS FOUND IN NO ONE ELSE (At 4,8-12)

The Church lives of one only truth: “Salvation is to be found through him alone; in all the world there is no one else whom God has given who can save us”. This truth makes itself mission, martyrdom, sacrifice, offering to God of the self life so that every man may come to the knowledge of Christ in order to be saved. Truth and mission are a single thing; they are like the tree and the fruit. The fruit of a man is always the “product” of the truth that runs in the veins of his soul and his spirit. If the truth changes, so does the fruit; if the fruit has changed, it is a sign that also the truth has changed. If we put in the veins of our soul the “truth” that every “religious way” is good in order to be saved, the consequences cannot be none others that the abandoning of the mission, the renunciation to martyrdom, the declassification of the same Christian life with its consignment to vice and sin. Every decaying and change of mission, is a sign that the truth has changed. The infinite work of the Church is only and always one: putting all the care in order to always stay in the truth of Christ Jesus.

A Christian is not God’s son through generation from the Father. Only Christ Jesus is generated from the Father. Neither is he through creation. Every man is God’s son through creation, because by God he is made in his image and likeness through the Word. The Christian is God’s son with a very special motivation: “because he was made to take part in the divine nature”. The divine nature that he did not receive through generation, he receives it instead through the participation in Christ Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, in the Baptismal waters. If the truth of the Christian is that of having received as a gift the divine nature, which must be his fruit? It is only one: faultlessness. To the Christian is required the same faultlessness which is God’s, which has been of Christ Jesus, of the Virgin Mary, Redemption Mother and of those who in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, reached the perfection in holiness. The Christian holiness is none other than faultlessness already reached in this life, on our earth. Whoever has known God does not sin. Whoever sins does not know God, because it is proper of the divine nature not to know sin.

AND I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR THE SHEEP (Jn 10,11-18)

REMAIN IN ME, AND I WILL REMAIN IN YOU
V Easter Sunday Year B

THEY WERE ALL AFRAID OF HIM (At 9,26-31)

When God and man live in a perfect communion synergy, deed and word, will and intervention, salvation is carried out on earth in a prodigious way. With Paul the Lord operated the greatest wonder in the Church of the origins. Of the fierce persecutor he made a chosen apostle in order to bring his name to the pagans. First the Lord needed Anania, so that he baptised and consented him to recuperate his sight. Then he served himself of Barnabas, who carried out a decisive role in the early community in Jerusalem: he made him credible in speech by witnessing for him. Lastly he served himself of other brothers in order to save him, leading him to Caesarea and making him leave Tarsus. Without any diligent commitment, full of zeal, lived with much discernment on the part of men, God’s work is hardly fulfilled. This truth must lead us to a single conviction: there is a moment in the history of salvation in which the life of God’s Kingdom is entirely placed in our hands: through us the Kingdom grows and produces fruits, but also through us it stops its journey and dies.

AS HE COMMANDED US (1Jn 3,18-24)

Love towards man and towards God was not left to everyone’s free decision; on the contrary, everything was established by God, even in the smallest details. Man’s heart is an abyss and could easily be deceived. It could suggest him a form of love, which in truth might never be love, because it is a larval form of high and devastating egoism. Since man has existed on earth, since his beginning in the Garden of Eden the Lord always indicated him what is good and what is bad and which is the best way of all in order to love in fullness of truth, justice and holiness. The first law of love according to perfect truth and justice are the Commandments. The new law of full love are the Beatitudes. With the Commandments we give God and man what is theirs; on the contrary, with the Beatitudes we give what is ours, what we could save for us, but that from the love of God we are called to give to the brothers, on the example and model of Jesus the Lord. This is the vocation of the Church: teaching every man how to love as Christ loved us.

I AM THE TRUE VINE (Jn 15,1-8)