The grandiose fresco of the Apocalypse dominates the scene of this Sunday which is at the heart of Easter and offers itself as a portentous ring on which the pearl of today’s gospel is set: simple, immediate, incisive like the diamond. The immense multitude, which no one could count, of which the Seer of Patmos speaks, is actually known one by one by the Lamb who stands in the middle of the throne as their shepherd. No tribulation is unknown to the Shepherd who relieves the pain of each of his sheep with his compassion. It is the Lord Jesus who places each of us in the great hand of God after having lovingly carried us on his shoulders as a good shepherd and thus making us rediscover the lost path of trust, joy, hope … in a word of sonship right in the whirlwind of the great tribulation. The experience we are called to have while resting in the great and sweet hand of the Father is this: God will wipe every tear from their eyes. The Lord says about the sheep of him I know them and they follow me. The intimacy to which we are called and in which we are nourished and formed has a deep root and an eternal origin: I and the Father are one. Around the shepherd we can taste the joy of our communion and we can get drunk on the same communion that is God in his mystery of eternal relationship. We were pagans, but we remain pagans if we do not consent to the voice that invites us and guides us to a transforming communion Once again the Liturgy creates a magnificent correspondence: if the Father is evoked three times in the Gospel, three times in the first reading we speak of the Lamb who is exactly that Son who opens us to a communion and relationship with God definitively redeemed from every shadow of fear and servitude to open ourselves to the spirit of the sonship in which we feel and are truly free.

Commentary by b. Michael David, osb Community of the Koinonia de la Visitation

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey