4th Sunday Easter: A Smell like the Sheep, a Smile like the Shepherd

An elderly woman went to a very kind and smiling doctor's office for a check-up. The kind and smiling doctor asked if she had any problems. The woman said that she had a terrible farting problem, but they were silent & didn't smell. In fact she had farted at least 10 times since she had been in the office, but as they were silent and did not smell the kind doctor wouldn't have known. The doctor listened to her story and smiled at her kindly. Then he gave her a prescription for some pills. He told her to take these for a week and then come back to see him.

One week later the elderly woman returned to the smiling doctor's office and complained "I don't know what you did but those pills you gave me have got my wind smelling awful, mind you they are still silent but boy do they stink!" The kind doctor again smiled and replied, "Good, now that your sinuses are cleared up we will work on improving your hearing!"

So the story smells, but it puts a smile in your face. Remember those two words – Smell. Smile. As Pope Francis would put it: Smell like the Sheep, Smile like the Shepherd.

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. When we talk of the Good Shepherd we normally refer to Pastors and priests. But this is also refers to leaders, to parents, to teachers. In Chris Lowney’s Heroic Leadership, he says that most people do not see themselves as leaders, but in fact, anyone with influence over another person is a leader. And who isn’t influencing at least one other person? We are all leaders. We are all shepherds with sheep to look after. And what would distinguish us as shepherds would be our smell and our smile.

Pope Francis reminded us in that Holy Chrism homily “A shepherd should smell like sheep.”  This is because good shepherds are close to their sheep.  Jesus in today’s gospel says: “I am the good Shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” The intimacy of Jesus with the Father, he shares with us. And he knows us well because he is always close to us.

In the same way, the closer, more intimate you are with your sheep, the more comfortable they are with you and the more likely they will be to follow you when you call.  The closer, more intimate you are with your sheep the better you know their needs and can give them exactly what they require to flourish.  The closer, more intimate you are with your sheep the better you are able to protect them.  The closer, more intimate you are with your sheep, the more you get to smell like them.  

We the followers of Jesus should understand that shepherds should smell like sheep. Our shoes and sandals should be caked with their mud and their mess. Our skin ought to bear the scratches and the dryness of exposure to wind, sun, and rain.  We should be so frequently among them that we smell like them, that we smell like their real lives, sometimes fragrant but more often sweaty, musty, offensive, dirtied from battle with a world so unforgiving.

And if we do that job well of being with them, we cannot but feel tired at the end of the day. But then if we love the sheep, then we end the day with a smile on our face as we see our sheep safely resting.

Pope Francis comments: “There is a good and healthy tiredness. It is the exhaustion of the shepherd who wears the smell of the sheep… but also smiles the smile of a father rejoicing in his children or grandchildren.  We are the friends of the Good Shepherd: this is our joy. If Jesus is shepherding the flock in our midst, we cannot be shepherds who are glum, plaintive or, even worse, bored. The smell of the sheep and the smile of a father…. Weary, yes, but with the joy of those who hear the Lord saying to us: “Come, O blessed of the Father” (Mt 25:34).

And our response to this could only be: as in Psalm 80 – Lord let your face smile upon us and we shall be saved. Psalm 119 - Smile on me, your servant; teach me the right way to live. And our only wish for our sheep: Num 6 - May the Lord smile upon you and be gracious to you.

Do you know how we can make God smile? “God smiles when we trust Him completely.” God enjoys watching every detail of your life and when He sees us really devoted to our job of shepherding, God smiles – the smile of the Father, the smile of the Shepherd.

There was this social experiment in a Pandora jewelry commercial (click to see video). They lined up six women whose children are blindfolded and asked to “find their own Mom” using their “intuition.”  One child goes and starts smelling the women, stops at one and then starts to feel her face. And as the child touches the curves of her lips, and even without removing the blindfold, the child embraces the woman. And all the other children did similarly and all found their mom. The smell of the mom reflects the smell of her child that is why the child immediately found her and as soon as the child feels the smile of Mom he or she is then reassured - the child could not go wrong. Like the mother a type of the Good Shepherd, we too should have the smell of our sheep, and the smile of the Divine Shepherd.

So will we smell like sheep? I hope so, for I think, in the end, it will be by that smell – a good and fragrant smell like that of  Jesus adored by shepherds in an animal shed, Jesus the Good Shepherd who awaits us as the Lamb of God – and that Jesus our Good Shepherd will know us as his own and gather us to his side as we cherish that smile which he looks down upon us with love.

References:

Pope Francis. 28 March 2013.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130328_messa-crismale.html

Pope Francis. 2 April 2015.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150402_omelia-crisma.html

Lowny, C. (2005). Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-year-old Company that Changed the World. Loyola Press, Chicago.  http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/book_20080721_1.htm

Pandora. (2015). The unique connection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRoqk_z2Lgg

Blindfolded Children Pick Out Their Moms in Pandora’s Mother’s Day Ad

http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/04/23/pandora-mothers-day-adwatch/

This Elderly Woman. http://www.angelfire.com/ny4/Heartprints/H12.html   

2nd Sunday Easter - Divine Mercy

On the morning of January 14, 2009, Fred Berretta decided to clean out his briefcase, something he hadn't done in a long time. As he emptied it out, he came across the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy, a booklet he had stuffed there years ago. He recalls having prayed it a few times only. But by this time, he had completely forgotten it there among spreadsheets and reports and matters that seemed far more urgent than praying.

Only two weeks before, Fred had made a New Year's resolution to try to get better spiritually. Here in this hotel room was an opportunity to fulfill it. So he started to pray the chaplet, a prayer our Lord gave to St. Faustina Kowalska in the 1930s during a series of revelations that sparked the Divine Mercy movement. The time happened to be 3 o'clock, known as the Hour of Great Mercy, when Jesus died on the cross.

Little did he know that this would be his preparation for his impending meeting with death. The following day Fred together with 155 people boarded a jet airliner at LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte, N.C., his home town. Ninety seconds after takeoff, the jet apparently hit a flock of geese, the engines exploded, and the plane started to lose power at 3,200 feet. The aircraft was now out of reach from any airfield. It lost thrust and altitude. Everything became eerily quiet. Fred fastened his seatbelt. His left hand clutched the armrest, his heartbeat raced, his face was flushed. "Prepare for impact," the pilot said over the PA system.

He thought about his family — his wife and four young children. He thought about God, about death, about trust, about an extraordinary promise made by Jesus that he read the previous day in that booklet.

What was the promise? Suddenly, it would come to him, the last passage he read before heading off to his meeting. Jesus said to St. Faustina, "This is the hour of great mercy. In this hour, I will refuse nothing to the soul that makes a request of Me in virtue of My Passion (Diary, 1320).

As the ground surged into view, Fred looked at his watch. It was 3:30, the Hour of Great Mercy! Fred prayed with every fiber of emotion and sincerity he could muster, 'God, please be merciful to us.'"

And the rest of is now history. This was the crash landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, 2009. No one was seriously injured. The news quickly dubbed it the "Miracle on the Hudson." There in the news that day were images of a US Airways Airbus floating gently down the frigid Hudson. The passengers stood on its wings, calmly awaiting rescue. In the history of aviation no jet liner had ever made an emergency landing on water without casualties.

In February 1931 Sister Faustina saw Jesus dressed in a white garment. He held one hand raised in blessing and the other hand touching his garment at the breast as in this picture. From that point in his garment two rays of light emanated, one red and the other pale. Jesus requested that we venerate this image - the Divine Mercy underneath are the words: “Jesus, I trust in You.”

Take a look at the Gospel reading today. When Jesus appears to his apostles, he says to them, “Peace be with you.” They were not at peace. They knew Jesus Christ, they believed in Him , but they were not at peace. They were afraid.

So why are we also afraid? The only reason we would be afraid, that we would not be at peace is because we don't trust Him. We don't fully believe. In our heads, we know; but in our hearts, we don't accept. We keep Jesus at an arm's distance so that our lives don't have to change. We don't want to let him in deep because we know that it will do something to us; something incredible, but we don't know what. So we don't let him get any closer. We are afraid to be vulnerable before God.

And yet the second reading today puts it: “Place your trust in me. I have conquered the world. It is I who come in water and blood. Be at peace. It is the Spirit who will testify” In the gospel, we are shown how the Holy Spirit is breathed upon the disciples and how they are given the authority to forgiver sins, our sins. When we really know that our sins are forgiven, we can be at peace. Many do not believe they cannot be forgiven. They don't believe that God really loves them because they do not believe that they can be loved.

So what does our Risen Lord of Divine Mercy do? He comes to us and He points to his heart. The rays of love flow from his heart depicting, in two different colors, the waters of baptism and the blood of Christ. These symbols represent The Eucharist and Baptism; the covenant and the celebration of the covenant that we entered into. It is the reality of the real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and the reality of having your soul and mine cleansed of sin through Confession.

When we kneel before the priest in confession and hear those beautiful words of absolution, we walk out with the knowledge, the unshakable knowledge, that our sins have been washed away. They are no longer there. Jesus wants, more than anything, to forgive our sins.

The message Sr. Faustina Kowalska brought is the answer that God offers to the questions and expectations of human beings in our time, marked by terrible tragedies. Jesus said to Sr. Faustina: "Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy" (Diary, 300). 

Divine Mercy! This is the Easter gift that the Church receives from the risen Christ and offers to humanity today.

References:

Carroll, F. (2009). A book helped a passenger to pray: “God be merciful to us.” http://thedivinemercy.org/news/story.php?NID=3493

John Paul II. (2001). Pope´s Homily on Divine Mercy Sunday

"This Miracle Has Changed Humanity´s Destiny"

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-homily-on-divine-mercy-sunday

Kearns, P. (2010). “Divine Mercy.” Deacon Pat’s Homilies.

http://deaconpathomily.blogspot.ca/2010/04/divine-mercy.html

Lane, T. (2013). Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter - Divine Mercy Sunday.

http://www.frtommylane.com/homilies/years_abc/divine_mercy_sunday.htm

Good Friday- Have Courage and Be Kind

The final words in a dying person’s life always command our respect. In the movie Cinderella, just before her mother died, she whispered to her daughter her dying wish, words of wisdom for Ella to live by: ““I want to tell you a secret that will see you through all the trials that life can offer: Have courage and be kind.”  These are the same words which Jesus while dying on the cross left each one of us:

Have Courage. On that cross, Jesus cries out: My God, my God why have you forsaken me? I thirst, It is finished, Father into your hands I commend my spirit.

These were not words of despair, these words were a prayer of trust in God amidst such insufferable pain and anguish – a prayer of a brave man.

Be Kind. To his most loved persons Mary and John: Woman, behold thy son. Son, behold thy mother.

To the repentant thief: You will be with me.

To all those who wronged him: Father, forgive them.

A dying person’s words are so sacred that there is a sense of urgency to fulfill that wish and tell others about it.

There is a short story by Franz Kafka - "An Imperial Message". It speaks of a king who, on his deathbed, calls to his side a subject and whispers a message- his dying wish for you- into his ear. So important is the message that king makes the subject repeat it, in turn, into his ear. Then, with a nod, he sends off this messenger, who sets out on his way to deliver the message to you.

“The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forward. But the crowd is so huge gathered all around the palace halls the distance seemingly infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvelous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the innermost palace. He will never win his way through. And if he did manage that he would have to fight his way down the steps. Then he would have to stride through the courtyards, and after that through the second palace encircling the first. And if he finally did burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—for in front of him lies the royal capital city, the centre of the world. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not with a message from a dead man. But you, you sit at your window when evening falls and dream it to yourself.”

Remember this: From his deathbed, Christ confided to his Church his message: "I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!" (Jn. 16:33). Be brave, have courage.

There are still many men and women who stand by the window and dream, without knowing this message. And the only way it will reach them is if we the messengers bring it to them and let them experience it. And how do we do that? “Be kind to each other. Love one another just as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my messenger, if you have love for one another.” (Jn.13:34) Be kind.

Today as the soldier pierces Jesus’ side and as he breathes forth his last, hear him whisper to you: “Have courage, be kind.”

Reference:

Cantalamessa, R. (2013). “Justified as a gift through faith in the blood of Christ.”

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/father-cantalamessa-s-good-friday-homily--6

Kafka, F. (2009). “An Imperial Message.” https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/imperialmessage.htm