Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus said, Amen. Amen. I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate, but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.
But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice as a shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice.
But they will not follow a stranger.
They will run away from him because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.
Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them.
So Jesus said again, amen. Amen. I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers.
But the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy.
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
My sheep recognize my voice.
How exactly do we do that?
Because there are times it can be pretty difficult, pretty difficult to be able to discern what is really the voice of Jesus talking to me.
And there are two different tracks we need to take. One is for that internal voice, the voice that comes to us as we pray or as we reflect on the Scriptures that we read.
And the best way to discern that is to understand our feelings. I know we don't often like to talk about our feelings that much, especially people like me who tend to not have any feelings.
But the best way we do that is by understanding our feelings. Because the Scriptures and Christ presence should do one of two things.
It should bring us comfort when we are struggling, when we feel alone, when we feel like no one cares.
That presence of Christ should bring us immense comfort, because we recognize that in spite of anything we may do or anywhere we might be, that love will always be with us.
The second part is the opposite of that.
There are times where that voice of Christ inside of us should also make us feel uncomfortable, because it's always meant to challenge our presuppositions, those times where we can get so self absorbed that we fail to think about other people, where we fail to be merciful and compassionate and loving. It should make us feel uncomfortable because it should challenge us.
Now, the second side of that can be more difficult. And the second side is the external sources that come at us.
How do we discern that it is truly the presence of Christ that we are listening to?
How do we find that out?
Well, the easiest way to do that is think of what is not the voice of Christ.
And what isn't the voice of Christ is any time that there is hatred or violence or greed, selfishness, proclaimed in the name of Christ. Those are inauthentic and those are thieves and robbers, and we should never listen to them.
The other way, if it is the Gospel proclaimed to us or the Scriptures proclaimed to us and preached to us, the way you can tell if it's authentic or not is if when proclaiming Christ, the Gospels are used a lot more than the Old Testament readings.
You're probably on the right track.
Because if we want to know what Christ thinks, what he expects of us, the way we do that is to listen to what he said to us.
And if the people proclaiming Christ are always looking for an obscure verse out of the Old Testament to prove their point, they're probably thieves and robbers.
Because if you listen to the words of Jesus, they're always wrapped in a profound love.
Stop judging and you won't be judged. Stop condemning and you won't be condemned. Give and gifts will be given to you.
That's stuff Jesus said.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Those are things that Jesus said.
And if we look to them, and if we evaluate everything with those as our lens or litmus test, we can pretty much guarantee that it's authentic, that we're listening to the words of the shepherd.
But we always have to have our antenna up, because there are a lot of thieves and robbers out there that try to tell us certain things are based in the life of Christ and they're not.
And we have to discern them, because that's what we're about.
We're about following the authentic word, not thieves or robbers.
