How often have we thought, “I can’t let people know ______ about me! No one would love me if they knew that!” … In today’s gospel, Jesus asserts that precisely the opposite is true. Ignorance of another cannot pave the way for love. We can only love someone to the extent that we know them.

April 21, 2024: Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 4:8-12

Psalm 118:1, 8-9, 21-23, 26, 28-29

1 John 3:1-2

John 10:11-18

The Dignity of Being Known

A reflection by Jeff Vomund

I am the good shepherd,

I know mine and mine know me,

just as [our God] knows me and I know [our God];

and I will lay down my life for my sheep.

-              Jesus, as quoted in John 10:14

To me, it is among the most beautiful sentiments in all the Scriptures. Jesus says to the disciples and to each of us, “I know you … and I will lay down my life for you.” It is such a human fear that, if people really knew us, they would not love us. But Jesus makes a special point of reminding us that that we are both known and loved. In fact, in the structure of the text, the knowing precedes the loving, as if to suggest that without knowing one cannot truly love another: without being known one cannot be loved; without knowing, love is an illusion. Perhaps this is an especially powerful passage to members of the LGBTQIA+ community, we who have tried so hard for at least some years to keep from being known so that we could be loved. Ironically, it is precisely the hiding that deprives us of the love which we seek – and for which we are made.

It is especially sad to me, then, that those who would claim the mantle of shepherd in the Roman Catholic tradition have gone to such little trouble to know their sheep. Specifically, I am referring to some passages in the recently released Declaration by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, “Dignitas Infinita,” in which gender reassignment surgery and surrogacy for parents are decried as “grave violations of human dignity” – a list that includes such notable evils as war, human trafficking, and sexual abuse, among many others. This forum is not meant for argument, so I will lay aside the temptation to debate these assertions. Rather, I wish only to point out that the authors of this document clearly do not know the human beings, other than perhaps a very select few, who have experienced these heart-wrenching, intimate decisions. This document pronounces about groups of people without in any way incorporating their voices into the conversation. Anyone who has met surrogate parents would never claim that in surrogacy the “child becomes a mere object.” In my experience, these parents often have an even greater awareness of the divine gift of a new life. Nor would anyone who has accompanied a fellow human through a gender reassignment health care process, suggest that it threatens their human dignity when so many of those who have undergone such procedures experience it as revealing their dignity – unleashing their humanity.

If knowledge of another is the sine qua non of love, then whatever this document is with regard to those groups of people, it is not loving.

But what are we to do with that? How can we respond to these Scriptures so that we do not, in our own way, commit the sin of not being willing to know another?

I think today’s Scripture offers us at least three clear avenues for action. If loving requires knowing and we are called to love, then we are called to at least three great tasks: to be known, to know the Other, and to risk knowing ourselves.

If love of another demands knowledge of them, then hiding ourselves deprives others of the opportunity to love. How often in my younger days did I prevent others from loving me by hiding who I was for fear of rejection? I am not suggesting that we must be fully transparent to everyone in our lives, but rather that we can risk sharing who we are with those who have shown us care and respect. This sharing can be about sexuality, but it can also just be about ambiguity, doubts, fears, hopes, ambitions, joys, and so much else! When we let others know who we are, we risk rejection, but if we don’t risk that, we will never love what it is to be loved. In this sense, “coming out,” as who we are in a great universal call to all human beings.

Similarly, if we do not risk knowing another, allowing them to speak and to be who they are, then we deprive ourselves of the capacity to love them. Allowing others to share themselves requires intention: do I make time and create the space for honest conversation? Do I ask meaningful questions, then listen to the answer with an open heart? If sharing myself takes courage, then so too does accepting what others share. Again, this sharing may be about another’s beliefs, politics, values, experiences – and they may be very different from my own. But even if I do not agree with another’s ideas or perspectives, I can offer them acceptance and the dignity of their own conscience. We do not need to agree with, or capitulate to, the beliefs of another to honor their experience and reverence their humanity.

Finally, if loving demands knowing, then if we are to grow in love, we must also continue to grow in knowledge about ourselves. We are called to make room in our hearts for the continual discovery of our own motives, biases, fears, passions, and joys. We are invited to recognize our pettiness and our heroism, our dignity and our cowardice. In this knowledge of ourselves – in all our beauty and bitterness – we are given another opportunity for acceptance. In knowing ourselves, we can gain the humility that comes from accepting our full humanness, which offers of freedom from the captivity of pretending.

Perhaps that’s the message of these Scriptures for me. If Jesus shows that loving requires knowing, then my knowing myself and others can, in fact, create the possibility for love. For acceptance. For compassion. Maybe that’s what makes me so very sad about the unknowing and unloving remarks in this latest missive from Rome. Not that they don’t love, but that they refuse even to know… and so love is not just absent but impossible.