This Gospel passage underscores what a fragile thing, how easily threatened, our sense of identity is as separate individual human beings, our sense of who we are, why we are.

So much of our contact with the institutions of society has been structured in such a way as to be very dehumanising, depersonalising.

So, today’s Gospel reading is quite the contrast because of the image Christ draws of himself, the image of a shepherd that knows his sheep and calls each of them by name.  In all of God’s people there is no such thing as a faceless, nameless number.  We are, after all, what God has made us to be, uniquely valuable individuals, individual enough to be known and recognised by Christ as a person apart from any other person and valuable enough to be loved by him.

Now that is a staggering thought when it really sinks in.  We are, each one of us, completely known to Christ.  Just think for a moment of all the things about yourself that you like.  All the virtues, the strengths, the temptations resisted, the challenges met, the good deeds done that somehow seem to get unnoticed and un-respected by the people around you.

And then think of all the things about ourselves that we try very hard to keep hidden from the people around us, the weaknesses, the fears, the vices that are really more embarrassing than evil.  The sort of qualities that we feel would make us a good deal less loved, less respected, if they were known.

Well, they are known.  All of the virtue in each of us is seen and known, and named, by Christ.  The world may not notice nor be much impressed by our personal struggles to be virtuous.  But that really doesn’t matter.  Christ does.

And the weaknesses too.  The great truth is that Christ loves and calls by name weak and foolish and fearful people.  Christ has no disdain or contempt for our faults.  He knows human beings too well for that.  He calls us away from those faults, certainly.  He encourages, leads, and shepherds us away from them.  But even that is a gentle and loving process. 

There is, finally, only one measure of what we are, any of us, and that is the great truth that Christ calls each one of us by name.

Fr Andrew