When I imagine Jesus as the gate, I immediately think of my time praying with the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. This is a retreat written by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, that invites folks to see themselves as loved sinners through reflections on Scripture and meditations. Part of the retreat includes several opportunities for a colloquy, or a conversation, with Jesus. One in particular is a triple colloquy in which you pray to Mary, then Jesus, imagining that each of these people are a gateway to God.

I imagine being pulled into the warmth of Mary’s mantle, sharing my heart with her, and trusting her to be the gateway to her Son. I kneel before Jesus, the Son of the living God, and I tell him everything, knowing that his arms are stretched out wide to receive me, unworthy as I am. And I feel the warmth and light of God enveloping me, inviting me into a calm that I can never describe.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the Pharisees that unless they are like the sheep who go through the gate to follow the shepherd, they will not be saved. The sheep who blindly follow the thief by avoiding the gate altogether are misled and are destroyed.

I would imagine there are times in all our lives when we’ve been a blindly obedient sheep. Oftentimes, we can get stuck going through the motions of being Catholic. We go to Mass on Sundays with our family, attend CCD classes at our parish or pray every night before we go to bed, and these are all good things! But sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to think outside the box that we put God in. We don’t allow ourselves to stretch our imagination to experience the fullness of the faith.

I work in campus ministry at a university and am a trained spiritual director. I always say that one’s faith life changes dramatically in college and I love being a witness to that transformation every day. Students come to spiritual direction with questions about God and about their Catholic faith. They are learning to not just blindly follow something because it’s what they’re used to. Their minds are expanded to see Jesus as the gate through which they can walk through in the world. They let the words of the Gospel cut to their hearts to transform their understanding of who Jesus is and what God is calling them to do through the words of Jesus.

Sheep follow the familiar voice of the shepherd through the gate to safety. In Spiritual Direction, we can discern how to best listen for the voice of God. We sift through all the voices speaking to us in today’s world: our family and friends, the media, and our inner critic. It can be really hard to follow the voice of the Shepherd when there are other voices yelling at us to follow a different path. We may not know what the shepherd’s voice sounds like, or we may have forgotten it due to our circumstances in life. But the voice of God is always there, we just need the courage to listen to it and to follow it.

Today, in our university community, we will welcome 7 students into full communion in the Catholic Church at one of our student liturgies. As I’ve walked with these students over the past several months, I’ve seen how they’ve chosen to follow the shepherd’s voice in their faith journey, which ultimately led them to the Catholic faith. They did not blindly follow something, but they discerned and prayed and listened for the voice of God. They chose to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church on their own. They are a beautiful example of what it means to listen to the voice of God.

And of course, we must be wary of those who will claim to perpetuate violent and hateful beliefs and actions because they have heard the voice of God. We see leaders who claim to be Christian speaking words of hate and division. We see people in authority use their power to lift up the rich and the powerful while leaving nothing for the poor and marginalized. We see people who blindly follow these modern-day thieves and robbers thinking they will be rewarded with green pastures. But we know the true message of Jesus: love, not hate; peace, not war; unity, not division.

We enter the gate to find peace. Jesus offers open, green pastures for us to find safety and comfort, the antidote to a broken and violent world. Jesus came so that all could “have life and have it more abundantly.” He is the gate that leads us to a life with God. The Easter season is a time to acknowledge that abundance and to celebrate the love God has for us. We follow the Risen Christ who invites us to bring others into the sheepfold. May we follow the example of the Good Shepherd, so that we shall not want; may we find our souls refreshed besides restful waters amidst a world of thieves and robbers.