Solitary, Radical Love

"Jesus said: ‘The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.’"

A reflection from Father Tudgay for the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

The story of Paul and Barnabas in this weekend’s First Reading is important for us today, as the Church embarks on a new moment, guided by the Holy Spirit, in fidelity to Jesus Christ. Paul and Barnabas, both converts, preached, and the Gentiles responded. Paul and Barnabas lived their faith, and people’s hearts were set on fire with the love of Jesus Christ. Their missionary work shows that every human heart is, in a sense, built for the love of God and that true conversion occurs primarily from falling in love with Jesus Christ. If, in the Christian dispensation, action proceeds from love, then conversion and a change of the way of life proceed from a radical experience of Christ’s love. 

This love – this radical, transformative love – this is the love that is at the center of the Gospel today. Throughout the world, the Church celebrates Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. The Gospel passage that we are given, from Saint John’s Gospel, draws us into the image that Jesus uses to describe himself. Christ, the Incarnate Word of God in whose image and likeness the human person is created, uses the image of a shepherd to illustrate the care and love that reveal The Father’s desire for every human person to know his love. 

The flock, as Christ describes us, needs a shepherd after the heart of the Good Shepherd. Enter Paul and Barnabas again. Their experience of hearing the Gospel and, in Pauls’ case, an encounter with the resurrected Christ was so overwhelming, so powerful, so transformative, that their entire lives became dedicated to the preaching of the Gospel. What their mission shows us is that the Gospel depends on certain individuals to dedicate their entire lives to the service of the Church, witnessing to the solitary love of Jesus Christ in their own lives. Translated into the contemporary language of the Church: there are certain individuals who are called to dedicate their entire lives – including the embrace of celibacy – to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Priesthood, the gift of Jesus Christ, servant of his flock, is the unique and indispensable vocation in the life of the Church that requires service to the entire people of God in and through the proclamation of the Gospel and the celebration of the Church’s sacraments. All of the vocations in the Church all work together as an illustration of the diversity of the ways that we are all called to demonstrate love and fidelity. The ministerial priesthood represents the unique, solitary love of God in total service to the flock of Christ. The demonstration of priestly love is to set human hearts on fire with the love of Jesus Christ through the proclamation of his Gospel.  

This Sunday, our invitation is to both pray – and discern – the call to priesthood in the life of the Church. This radical, solitary love goes well beyond itself to witness to Christ, himself and set the world ablaze with the love of the Gospel.