The 4th Sunday of Easter

    This weekend is often called “Good Shepherd Sunday” because of today’s Gospel reading. However, I think we could also call this “Scandal Sunday.” The word scandal comes the Greek word that means “to put a stumbling stone in front of someone.” So it is something offensive and inconvenient.
    Jesus referring to himself as the Good Shepherd would not be scandalous for the Jewish people at that time. Oh, the Scribes and Pharisees might have disagreed with him, but they knew that both in the Psalms and in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel the Messiah was described as the one, true shepherd of Israel. By calling himself the Good Shepherd, Jesus was making the claim to be the long awaited promised Messiah. Again, while some would disagree with his claim, they would not have been scandalized by his making the claim.
    What would have scandalized his listeners — both those who believed in him and those who did not — was this line, “A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus was declaring that he was going to die for the salvation of the people. This would have been shocking to the people because they would never have thought of the Messiah dying. The Messiah was going to rule them forever; he could not die. Of course this is because they had a wrong idea of who the Messiah was going to be, but also because they did not have the correct understanding of what salvation is.
    The salvation that Jesus proclaims, and the Church still holds to, is not an eternity in a garden of sensual delights. Rather the salvation that Jesus Christ offers us is to share in the very life of God. Salvation is to become a child of God, enjoying God forever. The early Church Fathers called this divinization or deification. This does not mean that we will become gods — that was the lie the serpent told our First Parents when he told them that if they ate of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they would “be like gods” (Genesis 3:5). Rather, deification is a participation in the divine nature.
    The founders of the other major world religions do not claim to offer a way to this kind of salvation.

    Buddha said that the problem of human existence was the illusion of our selfhood. He offered a way by which we would lose this illusion and cease to exist as personal beings.

    Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, basically adopted the position of the serpent in the Garden of Eden; that if we lived a good life we would be rewarded by becoming a god over our own planet or solar system.
    Mohammed’s view of salvation was that as a reward for obedience to the mono personal god, “Allah”, we would be given an eternal afterlife of sensual pleasure and comfort.
    None of these are what Jesus taught and what we as Christians believe about salvation. Jesus teaches us that God is our loving Father and that by, through and in him we become a child of God, sharing in the divine life.
    In today’s first reading, St. Peter concludes his message with the line, “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” 

    It is this line that is scandalous to our modern, pluralistic society. Our modern world finds it arrogant for St. Peter to claim that Jesus is the sole way to salvation. The world today says we must all be tolerant of other views. If by that we mean be respectful of others who have different beliefs than we have, then absolutely. As Christians we know that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore have a basic dignity that cannot be taken away. However, if by tolerant the world means that every opinion is just as good as any other, then we must say NO! There is a single TRUTH, and Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the only one to say that salvation is a participation in the very life of God as His child.

    If there are three fruit venders, one only sells oranges, another only sells apples, and one only sells bananas, it is not arrogant to say, “If you want bananas, you must come to me.” It is not arrogant for Jesus to say “If you want salvation, to be a child of the one true God you must come to me.”

    I learned a new word this week, “Christophobia.” This is the fear of Christ, the world’s fear and hatred of the truth that the Church continues to preach — a divisive and intolerant truth — that Jesus Christ alone is God, He alone is the Savior from sin, and that we are all sinners in need of the Salvation Christ offers.

    St. John in his letters speak of the world being the AntiChrist; teaching lies in opposition to the Truth revealed by Jesus Christ. In today’s world, the “sacraments” of the Antichrist, the sacraments of the anti-Christian “sexual revolution” are pornography, fornication, divorce, contraception, abortion, same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism. As followers of Christ we cannot embrace any of these sacraments of the Antichrist. We cannot reconcile light and darkness.

    St. Peter did not expect everyone, especially in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, to smile and love him and agree with him. He expected to be murdered and martyred for what he said. And eventually he was, as were all the other Apostles with the exception of St. John. However, it was that courage, that willingness to be hated by the world that changed the world and saved the world. 

    Today our cowardice to speak the hard truth is losing the world. Every Christian is called by God to become a saint and an apostle. We are all called to be a warrior of love and truth, which are our only two weapons in this great spiritual war of Christ versus the Antichrist. At stake is something much more than the American Dream or Western Civilization. The real stake is the souls of every human being, each of whom have an eternal and immortal and absolute value. St. Thomas Aquinas says that the first thing that love and charity to our neighbor demands of us is to lead them to the truth.