Today’s readings: Acts 2, 14.36-41; 1 Peter 2, 20-25; John 10, 1-10.

In a social and cultural context that is becoming more pluralistic and secular and less religious, it is commonplace to marginalise religion as superfluous and peripheral to life, if not outmoded and anachronistic. In ancient times, religion provided the right reasons for living. With time, it has been relegated to only an aspect of daily living, and for many, with no or very little impact on their worldview.

The words of Jesus in John’s gospel resound forcefully in this context: “I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full”. To drive home the real meaning of Jesus in our lives, John uses the powerful imagery of the gate. It is either you enter through this gate “to be sure of finding pasture”, or you enter through some other way which leads you nowhere.

This is very characteristic of John, who even elsewhere insists that Jesus is the way and there is no other way, or that without him we can do nothing. There is a tone of exclusiveness in John where adherence to Christ is concerned. This, of course, clashes with a culture which exalts autonomy and is allergic to homogeneity.

Yet, for an age that has become metaphysically tone deaf, it is extremely important for us to come to terms with the first proclamation of Peter in the aftermath of that first Easter: “This Jesus whom you crucified, God has made him Lord”. This proclamation, insistently pointing to the true identity of Jesus and eventually enshrined in the creeds of the Church, was as difficult in the first centuries as it is for many in the 21st.

Author Aaron Riches, in his recent book Ecce Homo. On the divine unity of Christ, claims that “if truly to behold him is to behold the divinity, for the same reason it is to behold true humanity”. What is it that really transpires from the mystery of the crucified Jesus who eventually is proclaimed as the risen Lord and Lord of life until the end of times?

In the second reading from the first letter of Peter, the latter speaks of a society in those times which was violent and aggressive, and of a victim, Jesus, through whose wounds we have been healed. This is crucial to our understanding of the significance of Christ’s suffering for our lives.

When Pontius Pilate brought Jesus out to the crowds, he did not say “Behold Jesus of Nazareth” but “Ecce Homo: Behold the man”. Christ stands fully and squarely for what humanity goes through. And the proclamation that God has made him Lord, that he is risen not to remain victim of death, is a proclamation of our faith that at the end of the day, God makes life to triumph, in spite of all the negativity that seems very often to take over.

We also today live in a culture that is violent and aggressive, as the one Peter describes. We also fall victim to aggressivity, unbecoming to our civilised times and that distorts the human face. The risen Christ, who becomes the shepherd and whose voice we recognise, is for us the definitive exit from all the tombs we encounter in life and which keep buried the will to live and believe.

We see suffering everywhere, if we just look around. Healing is to be achieved and sought after in the depths of our experience when seen through the lens of the risen one.

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