This Good Shepherd Sunday. Jesus proclaims: “I am the good shepherd.” He presents himself twice as the door.
Other images are the fence, the thieves and robbers, the guardian and strangers. Who are they?
The sheepfold was a pen surrounded by stonewalls with brambles growing on top to prevent the sheep from getting out and thieves from getting in.
The pen could be in front of a house, at a distance or on the slope of a mountain. When shepherds bring their sheep at night; one stayed awake while others slept. Armed with a stick, he was positioned at the entrance of the fold—it had no door.
He squatted, blocking access, so he himself became the door. Typically, he would doze off, but his presence was enough to deter raiders and wolves from getting into the enclosure.
The sheep could be approached only by whomever he allowed to pass.
In the morning, when the shepherd stood at the door, the sheep would immediately recognise his step and voice. They would follow him because they felt loved and protected; the shepherd had never disappointed or betrayed them.
The meaning of the parable emerges. The good shepherd, Jesus, appears first as the gate of the sheepfold, then as the door.
If you keep in mind the explanation given above, you could say that he is the guardian that is placed at the entry-like gateway.
The door has a dual function: to let the owners pass and to prevent the entry of outsiders. These are two functions that are developed, in many allegories, by Jesus.
He decides who can have access to the sheep and who has to stay away. Only those who have assimilated their own feelings of respect for the sheep and are willing to give their lives as he did, can pass and be recognised as a true shepherd. The thieves and bandits are those who came before him.
He was certainly not referring to the prophets and the righteous of the Old Testament. Thieves were the religious and political leaders of his time who exploited, oppressed and caused all sorts of suffering.
Bandits were revolutionaries who wanted to build a freer and a more just society: they cultivated noble ideals, but their methods were suspect.
They fomented hatred, preached the use of violence and proposed the use of weapons. They do not pass through the door.
In a dramatic crescendo, the work of the thief is described; he steals, kills and destroys, three verbs that summarise the work of death. Anyone who approaches a man to take his life is a thief; he is on the side of evil; he is the son of the devil who was a murderer.
But the shepherd comes to give life and life in abundance. Jesus also presents himself as the gate in a sense that only those who pass through him reach fertile pastures, find the bread that satisfies, water welling up to eternal life and obtain salvation.
Jesus is a narrow gate (Matthew 7:14), because he asks for self-denial, selfless love of others, but his is the only gate that leads to life: all the others are traps, pitfalls which lead to death. “Broad is the gate that leads to destruction and many go that way” (Matthew 7:13).
Father Fernando Armellini SCJ
Claretian Publications
bibleclaret.org
Translated by Father John Ledesma SDB
Abridged by Father Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF
