Jesus came to invite us to be better than we are—much better. In fact, a key teaching of the Church is that “the Son of God became Man so that we might become God.”[1] It sounds almost blasphemous, but I just quoted that from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And this teaching comes straight from Scripture. As we hear in today’s second reading from the First Letter of John: we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). This teaching is so important that theologians have given it a name—actually, three names: we call it divinization, deification, or theosis, if you prefer Greek.
But how can this be? How can mere mortals become gods? Well, when God became human in Jesus Christ, humanity became divine in Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, God returns us to the image and likeness of God that we received at creation but sullied with sin. The goal of the Christian life, then, is to return to that god-like condition and to “live out the implications of our dignity as deified children of the Father.”[2] Now don’t get me wrong, divinization doesn’t mean that we become objects of worship—"only God is Divine by nature; we are divinized by adoption.”[3] It’s only in Jesus that we can attain the true, divinized state that God intends for us. That’s why we turn to Jesus to show us how.
Jesus came to teach us, through his example, how to live as God intended us to live—how to live like gods. We’re called to imitate him, which, in the simplest terms, means that we’re called to be good. Now, being good doesn’t sound so hard, and it shouldn’t, because we were created to be good. It’s our nature to be good. But let’s make sure we understand what we mean by good. The word Jesus uses for “good in today’s Gospel, kalos in the original Greek, is more nuanced than its English translation. Kalos implies a goodness that’s also charming, lovely, and noble. So the Good Shepherd that Jesus is, which we’re called to imitate, isn’t a clean your room, pay your taxes, and eat your broccoli kind of good shepherd. It’s much more than that. It’s a charming, lovely, noble shepherd, like Jesus. We’re called to be god-like shepherds, shepherds who give ourselves unconditionally for the well-being of others, shepherds who are willing to lay down our lives for our flock.
Jesus’ definition of good certainly ups the ante, but it’s not out of our reach. We witness and experience the unconditional love of charming, lovely, noble good shepherds all the time—just think of the countless healthcare workers, first responders, and military personnel who put their lives at risk every day to protect ours. I bet that each one of us can think of people in our lives whose charming, lovely, noble goodness has changed us for the better, and changed us for good. These people leave their hand prints on our hearts. I’d also bet that each of us can think of people in our lives whom we love unconditionally, for whom we’d freely lay down our lives. Sure, there are wicked people in the world—Jesus warns us about them in today’s Gospel—but human nature is fundamentally good and destined for so much more. With Jesus’ help, divinization isn’t as hard as it may seem. We naturally imitate the good characteristics of those we love, and in sharing that love with others unconditionally, we not only honor and imitate the people who’ve loved us unconditionally, we honor and imitate Jesus and become like God in the process.
The challenge for us, then, is to expand our flock. We can all think of a few people whom we love unconditionally, but Jesus, the Good Shepherd, loves every human being unconditionally. Admittedly, that’s not as easy. Some people are hard to love at all, let alone unconditionally, but these are the people who need our love the most. We learn how to be good and how to love, when we experience the goodness and love of God through the goodness and love others. The sad fact is that people who turn to evil ways probably haven’t experienced, or haven’t allowed themselves to experience, the goodness and love of others. Think about it, a common characteristic of the poor souls who commit the most heinous crimes is that they’re loners and outcasts who felt rejected by their communities. So if we want to be good shepherds, if we want to be like God, we need to find the sheep “that do not belong to this fold,” and welcome them into our flock with unconditional love, just like Jesus does.
Elphaba is one of those poor souls. After a series of well-intended mishaps, Elphaba is cast out of Oz and dubbed the Wicked Witch of the West. That beautiful song I mentioned earlier comes at a very sad point in the musical, the moment when Glinda and Elphaba realize that they can no longer be friends (at least publicly) because Glinda chooses to be good, while Elphaba embraces wickedness. I won’t spoil the end of the musical for you but suffice it to say that good always triumphs over evil, and that we should never discount the positive impact a good shepherd can have on another. Like everything in Christianity, following the path of divinization, is our choice. With the help of Jesus, we can all be charming, lovely, noble good shepherds who leave our hand print on the hearts of all we love. And in doing so, they and we, will be changed for the better, and changed for good.
Readings: Acts 4: 8-12; Psalm 1181 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18
[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 460.
[2] Godfrey Diekmann, quoted in Robert Barron, “You’re Holier Than You Know,” Our Faith, US Catholic (July 24, 2008), https://uscatholic.org/articles/200807/youre-holier-than-you-know/.
[3] Joe Heschmeyer, “What Eye Has Not Seen: Divinization and the Saints,” Word on Fire (May 3, 2017, https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/what-eye-has-not-seen-divinization-and-the-saints/18611/.
