On the surface, it may look like Our Blessed Lord is pushed and shoved around by his enemies.  In reality, the opposite is true.  He is laying down His Life, and He is taking it up again.  His Resurrection continues to unfold in his friends who have planted His Sacrificial Presence in their hearts.  Why? Because He is the unbreakable communion who holds God and His disciples in safety.  He does not withdraw when troubles arrive. The Shepherd dies, the Sheep are safe.  Here He is at His most attractive.  Here He is magnetic.

Two lovers gaze at one another and say without reservation that they will love and cherish each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, all the days of their life. (Catholic Rite of Marriage)
A father and mother hold their newborn baby in their arms, and from some new vastness within themselves say, and mean, 'I would lay down my life for you'.  
Someone sits and gently takes hold of the hand of their friend who is terminally ill or terminally lonely and says, "You know I'm not going away."

Three examples of how unconditional love appears in our lives.  Not as something we do but, much more importantly, as something we are.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is most Himself, completely at home in his identity as "I Am", when he is laying down His life for His sheep.  His, "I Am" could be easily translated as, "May you Be!"

So too with us. Getting to know who we really are is something we glimpse from time to time when life bless us with Greater Moments.  And when we are radiant with giving power to be, are we not attractive?  Is it not the magnet Jesus said it would be?   Is it not wonderful that the original Greek for good, as in 'Good Shepherd' can also be translated as Beautiful.


Something beautiful for God.

And now,A stone, the size of twelve men
Moved like a mountain on its way to the sea.
And on the fresh wind of morning
Came the Son of Man.
His shroud, a wedding garment,
His feet between Earth and air in dance.

Death, Sin and Fate poured rhetoric 
Into the stirring air about them.
But the silent Son of God only danced
To music beyond their words.

He whirled around death and with each turn, death himself grew old
Till with a last, unbelievable look he saw no more.
Then wordless, Christ spun around the words of Sin
And there was only a mouth without a voice.
Next, Fate heard the risen footsteps, and frost formed on his tongue.
As Christ leapt before him, he froze in mid sentence,
Iced by the warmth of God.

Next, there was only morning and the dancing man of the broken tomb.
The story says, He dances still.
That is why,
Down to this day
We lean over the beds of our babies in the moments before they sleep 
And tell them the story of the risen dancing man
So that the dream of Jesus will carry themThrough the night
To the Dawn.