This weekend we celebrate the Fourth Sunday of Easter, World Day of Prayer for Vocations, Mothers’ Day, and my day of gratitude for restored health and return to the full exercise of my ministry among you! In today ’s Gospel from John, Jesus declares that “My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me.” Every facet of this weekend’s celebrations can only have their full meaning and power if they are experienced as connected to this declaration.
The richness of our celebration in Word, prayer, song and Sacrament is found as they express and deepen our faith in the Resurrected One. What it means to “have” a vocation, to be a Mother and loved by a Mother, to weather illness as a patient, loved one, or professional health provider is best and most fully known as these realities are tied to the Person and Paschal Mystery of Christ. His perfect and ultimately sacrificial love, his choice to forgive rather than to punish or exile, his desire to draw near to an individual with compassion and healing power rather than to pass by or even run away from their suffering ... these tell us now not only who Jesus the Christ is, but also who we are.
Everything in our lives is for a time. Our strength in living is for a time, our relationships are for a time. Our education and training are for a time, and our professional endeavors are for a time. The one thing we have been told that is not limited to or for this time is our life in Christ. The time in which we experience it now is the time in which we are called, in which we are invited to hear his voice and know the wonder and the power of the Shepherd in but also beyond this time. Here and now it is our hope and his promise that we can know a love that it not a love “for the ages” but beyond the ages, that knows our shadows but seeks and trusts his light leading us to the light that will never fade, life that will not end.