Jesus said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.

But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.”

Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them.

So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

In the time of Jesus, as in our time, there were fakers in every walk of life and in every sphere of human activity. But what irritated Jesus more were the fakers in religious matters, those who were supposed to be true models and reliable leaders of ordinary people—the scribes and the Pharisees.

They posed as guides of those who were ignorant in religious matters (namely the knowledge of God’s will as expressed by the Law of Moses), but actually what really motivated them was pride and ambition. They used their influence over the ignorant masses for their own selfish aggrandizement.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus refers to them three times as “thieves, robbers, strangers.”

Since they used all kinds of trickery to influence the people and exploit them for their own profit, Jesus compares them to those cattle thieves who enter the sheepfold by devious means instead of passing through the door.

In contrast to them, everything he did (his healing, his welcome of sinners, his teaching) was candidly performed in the open—like a shepherd who fetches his sheep by passing by the doorkeeper and the door of the fold.

The lesson we can draw for ourselves in this page of the Gospel is very clear and simple: we must be in reality what we claim to be—not fakes, forgers or counterfeiters. On Easter Vigil, we have renewed our baptismal vows and publicly proclaimed ourselves Christians.

We professed to renounce sin and henceforth to love God and neighbor. That is what we claimed we would do, and that is what we must do if we are to deserve the beautiful name of Christians.

We can choose to be fake members of the Church, entering the fold of Christ by climbing over the wall, like thieves and robbers—or we can choose to enter by the door and to become like Christ, loving shepherds of our brothers and sisters. What will it be?