Jesus is our security.

I want to begin today by asking: “What does the word assurance mean to you?” Are you sure about yourself, your life partner, your life?…. We can safely say that this question is a crucial one for many. Few things on this earth are as important to us, consciously or subconsciously, as feeling secure. It is very uncomfortable for humans if we are not confident in anyone or anything. Today’s Gospel provokes us with the words of the Jews in the Temple Column, “If you are the Messiah….” (Jn 10:24).

Is Jesus the Messiah for us? Are his works a sufficient witness for us? Do we believe? Our days are filled with images of this type – a group of journalists hastily following a certain personage and asking him probing, provocative, and all sorts of other questions. Also, Jesus in the Gospel comes to the Temple entrance about mid-December – it is the Feast of the Cleansing of the Temple, and he is surrounded by a group of Jews who ask him a fundamental question.
A question that is all too personal and provocative: “If you are the Messiah, tell us.” Too bad there was too much provocation and so little truth-seeking in this question, in this seeming search for certainty.

He whom a nation of centuries has been waiting for, who has manifested Himself by much deeds-in speech and power-is thus provoked in the temple of His Father. Jesus, however, calmly replies, “I have told you, and you do not believe… For you are not of my sheep” (Jn 10:25). So the gentlemen of the Gospel were not looking for certainty about Jesus; they were looking for themselves. They did not hear the voice of the shepherd…

But indeed, this question from the temple has already crossed our minds in our personal lives. Doubt is perhaps as close to the man as the desire for certainty. “Does God love me at all? Can he save me? Does He even know that I exist?”

It would be no good if we did not have these questions, if we did not ponder them more deeply. They are part of the equipment of our hearts, and we must not ignore them. For it is only when our hearts – when we understand and personally experience the reality of Jesus’ Messiah ship, that we begin to find the proper assurance of life – Jesus Himself.

It would be worse if the words were applied to us: “But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep” (Jn 10:25). If by our freedom and will, we would like to place ourselves outside of God’s game. Anyone in love knows what it is to be in the arms of a loved one for even a moment. To leave that embrace is difficult, even painful. A mother cannot let go of a child from her heart just like that. A father knows how to hold his son with all his strength. And Jesus says with all firmness and certainty: “They shall never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Yes, the Father has given us into the hands of His Son. He has placed us in the hands of the most excellent expert on man and the human heart. None of us would entrust our most precious human being into hands he did not trust. Jesus and the Father are one. We have the assurance that God does not toss us around in His hand like an uncomfortable hot potato, but holds us with love. This is the point at which we can hang our lives in peace and have the assurance that it will never end.

Only to do that, we have to tame our false self-assurance – we have to find the humility in our lives to say: “My Lord and my God.”

I wish for you and myself in this life the certainty of faith in Jesus that will carry us into the eternal security of communion with him.