Whoever Enters Through Me Will Be Saved

Whoever Enters Through Me Will Be Saved

Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

“If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?"  When they heard this, they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, "God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too." Acts 11:17-18

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." John 10:7-10

Piety

As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I enter and see the face of God?  (Psalm 42:2-3)

Study

There is only one gate – but all can go through the gate. “Whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.” 

Taken literally, Jesus does not choose only the Jews.  He welcomes anyone with the desire, the thirst, the hunger for a relationship with God. That was not what the Jews (the chosen people) had felt throughout their history.  It also is not what we witness happening in the first reading from Acts.  According to the explanatory notes in the NABRE:

The Jewish Christians of Jerusalem were scandalized to learn of Peter’s sojourn in the house of the Gentile Cornelius. Nonetheless, they had to accept the divine directions given to both Peter and Cornelius. They concluded that the setting aside of the legal barriers between Jew and Gentile was an exceptional ordinance of God to indicate that the apostolic kerygma was also to be directed to the Gentiles. Only in Acts 15 at the “Council” in Jerusalem does the evangelization of the Gentiles become the official position of the church leadership in Jerusalem.

The early Christians were challenged in many ways.  Religious practices set the Jews apart from the Gentiles.  Jesus did not see the same separation.  Slowly, the same realization washed over the disciples as some of the old practices like circumcision were resolved.

Peter saw a vision that required him to preach to the Gentiles.  Once he recognized the voice of God the shepherd, he realized he could not hinder the vision of the kingdom and he followed what the Lord instructed.    

Action

Culturally, we are still wrestling with this conflict between religion and nationalism today.

But these dualisms are not only the stuff of Biblical history. We have our own cult of the “Either.” Red State or Blue State? Progressive or traditional? Conservative or liberal? Pre-Vatican II v Post-Vatican II? Chant or Folk Music?

Peter confronted and conquered the tyranny of the “Or” in our reading today from Acts. Like Peter, we must dare to decide to embrace all our sisters and brothers in Christ. Like Peter, we have to make a choice. Like Peter, we cannot make our choice in a vacuum. What we have believed in the past is challenged and changed. Sometimes we have to begin anew. Peter was not prepared to condemn the Gentiles because they were physically different and ate different food.

Jesus helps reintroduce us to the reality of our original relationship with God. He is the “new Adam,” the shepherd who opens the gate for ALL OF US to walk with him and ultimately, to restore our relationship with the father. Jesus leads us, like a shepherd leading his sheep, back into this right relationship.
What is the path for your journey forward (onward/Ultreya)? Merton (in Zen and the Birds of Appetite) helps us find the way of the sheep by following the shepherd.

On our Cursillo weekend, we reflect on the archetypal story of the Prodigal Sons/Prodigal Father. By the end of the weekend, we explore our tools for moving forward (onward) from the weekend experience of conversion. The son who was lost attempts to journey forward by going back to his original identity by allowing his Father to purify him from his own will.

If we would return to God, and find ourselves in Him, we must reverse Adam’s journey, we must go back the way we came. The path lies through the center of our own soul. Adam withdrew himself from God and then passed through himself and went forth into creation. We must withdraw ourselves from exterior things, and pass through the center of our souls to find God. We must recover possession of our true selves by liberation from anxiety and fear and inordinate desire.

What is your path forward? Sometimes, you have to hit the backspace key before you can keep going in order for the story to unfold.