FRANCE HAS AWAKENED AND INSTEAD TOWARDS THE IDOL OF SECULARISM HE RUNS TO THE BAPTISM FOUNT

In the letters sent to the bishops by the young French baptized this Easter as adults, They speak first of all of a personal journey, often started in childhood. «Christians are not born, one becomes" wrote Tertullian, which Saint Augustine echoes: «it is not the generation that makes Christians, but regeneration".

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It sparked amazement and joy the news that during the recent Easter Vigils in the churches of France beyond 17000 people have received Baptism.

Regardless of the data or other considerations which however are outside this writing, I am only reporting information that emerges from the young people of that group of baptized people: in the letters they sent to the bishops, They speak first of all of a personal journey, often started in childhood. «Christians are not born, one becomes" wrote Tertullian, which Saint Augustine echoes: «it is not the generation that makes Christians, but regeneration"; in fact, already in ancient times the catechumenate process was long and in some cases could last several years. Like this, always since ancient times, the Easter period, marked by his Sundays, it had become the time of mystagogy, that is, useful for introducing the newly baptized into the deepest mysteries of Christian life. For this to them, like other Christians, more solid food was offered, like the one contained in today's evangelical text, portion of the famous chapter 10 St John, which presents Jesus the Good Shepherd. How it was written: «No image of Christ over the centuries has ever been dearer to the hearts of Christians than that of Jesus the Good Shepherd» (A.J. of Simon). Let's read this Sunday's passage:

"During that time, Jesus said: «My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will not be lost forever and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, he is greater than all and no one can snatch them from the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." (GV 10, 27-30).

To understand a little these just four verses we must frame them in the broader whole of the section that goes from the chapter 7 the chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, where there are. Jesus gravitates around the Temple for the occasion of the Feast of Tabernacles (GV 7,14). We therefore have a unit of space, the Temple of Jerusalem, and of time, the celebration that lasted eight days, in particular the middle of the feast and especially the last day of the same which includes the longest section of the John chapters (GV 7,37-10,21) with inside the promise of the living water of the Spirit, the revelation of Jesus light of the world, the healing of the man born blind and the speech, precisely, on the Good Shepherd. Finally the last part of the chapter 10, which affects our verses, it is always placed in the Temple of the holy city, but for another party, that of Dedication, three months after the events listed above. Jesus is revealing himself to the world, but in constant contrast with it, particularly with the Jews. And since starting from the exile those feasts had taken on a messianic and eschatological connotation, the discourse on the Good Shepherd serves Jesus to understand the meaning of his messianic work.

First Jesus defines himself as "the gate of the sheep", a metonym used to convey that He is indeed the new sheepfold and the new temple. Unlike those who preceded him, particularly those who embody a false messianism, both religious and political, that of Jesus goes in the direction of love towards the sheep. With Jesus they are not subservient to anyone, for this reason the sheep "did not listen" to those who came before (v. 8); they can exit and above all enter through Him, to have life, a life that He as Son shares in perfect and profound communion with the Father. At this point Jesus says about himself, marking the conversation even more: «I am the Good Shepherd» (v. 11).

The theme of the shepherd, reserved for the new Davide, it comes from the Old Testament where it becomes an element of eschatological hope. In fact, Ezekiel makes the Lord say: «I will raise up for them a shepherd who will feed them, my servant David. He will lead them to pasture, he will be their shepherd" (This 34,23). And the adjective «Good, Kalos», it does not have a moral connotation here, almost a subjective quality of Jesus, because everywhere in the fourth Gospel it refers to the works of Jesus (v. 32.33 e GV 2,10: the good wine of the wedding at Cana) and that is, it characterizes it by what it brings to men. Jesus is the Good Shepherd because he "lays down" (v.17-18) his life for the sheep and establishes new relationships of mutual understanding with them: the adjective therefore aims to highlight the salvific work carried out by the messianic Shepherd.

Without exaggeration it can be stated that the entire chapter on the Good Shepherd and therefore also the verses of this Sunday's Gospel constitute a true synthesis of Johannine theology. What is striking is that this theology is not exposed only in an abstract or theoretical discourse, but it starts from a historical and concrete situation in the life of Jesus. The historical situation is that of the revelation of Jesus at the Temple of Jerusalem during the celebration of a solemn feast which ends with the healing of the man born blind which will lead to discrimination of men in front of Jesus. On the one hand, the believers, represented by the blind man, healed by Jesus; on the other, the Jews who rejected the light of the world. The speech on the Good Shepherd is a symbolic speech through which Jesus suggests that he is leading his sheep outside the enclosure of Judaism, some belonging to that fold and others will come later, the so-called Gentiles, in order to establish a new flock, the messianic community.

His, Jesus, it will be the gate of the sheep, the one who gives access to salvation and will be the Good Shepherd who communicates life in abundance. The docility of the sheep towards the Shepherd is expressed by the words "they listen to my voice". This formula receives a deeper meaning here than that of a simple attention as it could have been to v. 3 of the beginning, since it expresses the future docility of the sheep, Get out of the fence now, towards the shepherd Jesus who will lead them. During the Passion, Jesus will say that to listen to the voice one must "be of the truth" (GV 18,37) and the reason for this is obvious: the docility of the sheep towards the Shepherd is in fact a fruit of faith, it is essentially now a reality of the Church of messianic times.

These sheep are "his", they therefore have a special relationship with Him, interwoven with freedom, and He knows them and this mutual knowledge is in the image of that existing between Jesus and the Father (vv.14-15). This is not knowledge in the Greek sense, you're an intellectual type, but biblical, that is, relational and existential. Knowing in the Bible means having a concrete experience of the object and knowing someone means entering into a personal relationship with them. Here we talk about Jesus' relationship and intimate possession of his sheep: "The Lord knows his own" (2Tim 2,19). Only here, twice in the chapter 10 St John, it is said that Jesus knows his own to mean that this particular "intelligence" is a knowledge of love by virtue of which Jesus invites his own to follow him and it is expressed in the gift of eternal life, which will not begin after death, but already now. The disciples know Jesus and their knowledge flows from their faith in Him (cf.. GV 14,7.9). Since it implies communion with Christ and, thanks to Him, with the Father, constitutes the very essence of "eternal life", of participation in the very life of God (GV 17,3). Already at the beginning of the Gospel John the Baptist had said about Jesus: «The Father loves the Son and has given everything into his hand» (GV 3,35); now here is Jesus himself who says about his sheep: «no one can snatch them from the hand of the Father. I and the Father are one.".

Thus the new community it is no longer a fence like the one the sheep abandoned, it is now a communion, consists in mutual knowledge between the sheep and the Shepherd, in their personal relationships with Him, e, through Him, with the Father. And since the work accomplished by the Son is nothing other than the execution of the Father's will, we must affirm that the Father himself is simultaneously the origin and end of the entire work of salvation.

Since I spoke, about this chapter of St. John, of theological synthesis, we can affirm without a doubt that the figure of the Good Shepherd brings together themes of Christology here in the Gospel, ecclesiology and soteriology that recall each other, but nevertheless it is Christology that brings about the unity of the whole. We see once again how the whole of the fourth Gospel has the person of Christ as its fundamental center of interest.

From the Hermitage, 11 May 2025

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