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I love this line from today’s gospel, “The sheep follow him because they know his voice.”  The assumption is that if the sheep recognize the shepherd’s voice, they will follow him.  And if they follow him, he will lead them to green pastures where they will find life in abundance.  “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.”  The whole thing starts with recognition—sheep recognizing the shepherd’s voice.  The post-resurrection stories we’ve heard so far during the Easter Season, are all stories where the disciples initially did not recognize the Risen Lord in their presence.  Something had to happen to trigger the recognition.  Jesus has to do something like breaking bread for the disciples on the road to Emmaus or telling the disciples to cast their nets on the other side of the boat before they recognize him.

There are two basic forms of memory: recall memory and recognition memory. Recognition memory is the stronger and the more accurate of the two.  For example, you witness a crime being committed.  A woman has her purse stolen in broad daylight.  You saw the whole thing, but you couldn’t prevent it.  Nevertheless, you go down to the police station to give your account of what you saw.  A police officer asks you to recall, from your memory, the face of the guy who committed the crime.  In other words, starting from scratch, how would you describe this guy?  You say stuff like, “He kind of had long hair, but I’m not sure what colour.  And I think he had a pointy nose, bushy eyebrows, and sort of a receding hairline.  I can’t describe him exactly, but it something like that.”  That’s recall memory. 

Recognition memory is different.  In this case, you are presented with the mug shots of a number of known criminals and are asked if you recognize any of them as being the guy you saw stealing the purse.  As soon as you see the right one, your mind makes an association.  You recognize the outer picture, the mug shot, as being the same as the inner picture you have in your mind.  You immediately identify the thief.  We all do much better in the world of recognition memory than we do in the world of recall memory.  The disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.  They remembered that three nights before, somebody did exactly the same thing using exactly the same words, “This is my body, take and eat.” 

Mothers and little children have an uncanny ability to pick out each other’s unique voices in a crowded room and find each other.  They recognize the other’s voice.  It’s already imprinted within each of them.  A child just has to hear its mother’s voice and associates it with the voice of loving, caring, and feeding already imprinted within them. 

Isn’t this how a good therapist, a good counsellor, or a good friend functions in your life? When you get stuck and keep asking the same question over and over again—a question that doesn’t seem to have any satisfactory answer—you feel like a caged animal.  You can’t seem to go forward in life.  But, when a therapist or counsellor or your best friend, suggests you ask the question from a different perspective, voila, the answer become obvious.  A good counsellor never presumes to have the answers for someone else. Instead, they help you uncover the answer that already lies within you.  What they say to you, you recognize to be the truth that was always inside of you.

It sounds a little insulting to our Christian ears, but do you know what the Sufis say about Jesus?  “He stands by the river selling river water.”  In other words, there’s little spiritual growth in any of us if we simply say, “I believe such and such, because Jesus said it.” There’s no spiritual growth in that.  That’s a very initial stage.  That’s the stage of believing on authority.  We’re going to rule that out.  The only reason we would buy into anything Jesus says, is because Jesus tells us what we already know but weren’t aware of.  Jesus’ words bring into clarity stuff that we already know is true deep within us.  He doesn’t have much to say but just telling you what’s already there but which you are not in touch with. He stands by the river selling river water.  He tells us the truth about ourselves that we dimly know.  But Jesus tells us this truth with such deep, powerful clarity that it is truly the light in the darkness. 

When the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice it is not a voice they don’t recognize. They already have the Shepherd’s voice imprinted within them.  Whenever you respond to God in your life, it is actually God within you responding to God outside of you.  God recognizing God.  Love recognizing love.  Heart speaking to heart. 

Here’s a story of a young man knowing something true within himself, but he only recognizes it when it’s spoken to him by an older man.  You might say the young man is the sheep, and the old man is the shepherd. 

An old man meets a young man who asks: “Do you remember me?” And the old man says “No.” Then the young man tells him he was his student. And the teacher asks: “What do you do, what do you do in life?”  The young man answers: “Well, I became a teacher.”  “Ah, how good, like me?” asks the old man.  “Well, yes. In fact, I became a teacher because you inspired me to be like you.”  The old man, curious, asks the young man at what time he decided to become a teacher. 

And the young man tells him the following story: “One day, a friend of mine, also a student, came in with a nice new watch, and I decided I wanted it, and I stole it.  I took it out of his pocket.  Shortly after, my friend noticed his watch was missing and immediately complained to our teacher, who was you.  Then you went to the class: ‘This student’s watch was stolen during classes today.  Whoever stole it, please return it.’  I didn’t give it back because I didn’t want to. 

Then you closed the door and told us all to get up and you were going to search our pockets one by one until the watch was found.  But you told us to close our eyes, because you would only look for this watch if we all had our eyes closed.  So, we did, and you went from pocket to pocket, and when you went through my pocket, you found the watch and took it.  You kept searching everyone’s pockets, and when you were done you said, ‘open your eyes. We have the watch.’  You didn’t tell on me, and you never mentioned the episode.  You never said who stole the watch either.  That day you saved my dignity forever.  It was the most shameful day of my life.  But this is also the day my dignity was saved, and I decided not to become a thief, a bad person, etc.  You never said anything, nor even scold me or took me aside to give me a moral lesson, I received your message clearly.  And thanks to you, I understood what a real educator needs to do.  Do you remember this episode, professor?” 

And the professor answered: “I remember the situation, the stolen watch, which I was looking for in everyone’s pocket, but I didn’t remember you, because I also closed my eyes while looking.”

The teacher wasn’t telling the student anything he didn’t already know; he was just helping him get in touch with a goodness that was already there.  When the inner and the outer come together, you recognize the Risen Lord in your midst.  You recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd leading you to life…life in abundance.

Fr. Phil Mulligan