“We shall see God as God really is”

Easter, Sunday 4 21^st April 2024

(John 10: 11-18, 1 John 3:2)

Many young Catholics, even before they leave school, lose interest in attending Sunday Mass. Parents and grandparents have long been expressing their concern about this trend. Older folk also struggle to find reasons why they should continue to attend, and many decide not to.

Could this dissatisfaction in young and old be happening at least partly because our churches do not bring people into real contact with the infinite mystery of God? Let’s look at the metaphor for God that we use in the gospel on “Good Shepherd Sunday”. When Jesus called himself the “good shepherd”, he was speaking to people who every day would see shepherds leading their small flocks along the road to and from pasture. Those shepherds knew each animal by name, and their sheep knew and trusted them.

So in the earliest days church leaders reasonably used the title “pastor”, but unfortunately, over the centuries, because many clerics had superior knowledge the title came to be associated with superior power and control rather than with love and concern for persons. Clerical privilege led to the scandal of tens of thousands of children being abused, and the crimes concealed.

Some people might find questionable Pope Francis’ metaphor that clergy should immerse themselves in the “smell of the sheep”. Who wants – even metaphorically – to be seen as a dumb sheep, anonymous among a huge flock, waiting to be shorn or sent to the abattoir?

Some clerics speak and write as if God has revealed God’s self once and for all, and that clerics hold the key to this cache of esoteric information. It would seem more helpful, especially to young people, if we were to teach in our churches that God reveals God’s self in every flower, sunrise, thunderstorm and human face. If clerics mistakenly call such teaching pantheism, they might learn – for example from Thomas Aquinas – that God is within every particle of creation.

We need to move beyond this contemplative vision – true as it is – to learn from Jesus that God loves each of us with all our faults, far more tenderly than any two lovers ever held each other, or parents looked at a newborn child.

Perhaps more people would come to church if they heard us clerics remind them, as saint John did in this letter, that each of us is already like God (Genesis 1:26-27), and that after our death we will see God “as God really is”?

Almost half of the people who have been clinically dead for a short while see a real mystical vision. They find themselves out of their body but still conscious and deeply at peace. They meet and communicate with a “Being of Light”, who is seen by people of every faith or of none, and whom Christians recognise as Christ.

But I have known clerics to scoff at this Near Death Experience. Perhaps if we “leaders” listened more carefully to people’s experiences, rather than imagine we hold a monopoly on truth, then more people would feel welcome in our churches?

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