Good Shepherd Sunday
Today’s liturgy offers one of the best-known passages of the Gospel, the Good Shepherd, to our meditation. The image is a tender one, that of a man who looks after his sheep with great care and does not want any of them to be lost. The Good Shepherd is not like a hired labourer who is there for the money and runs away when there is danger. No, the Good Shepherd is there for the sheep, to nourish and protect them at any cost.
Along with these tender expressions that touch us, there are others that astound us: the Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep. After hearing the expression for the first time, one would want to stop the speaker and say: What did you say? Will the Shepherd die for his sheep? Isn’t that pushing it a bit too far? Isn’t the life of the shepherd of much more worth than the whole flock? Of course, it is, but this is precisely the point. The Good Shepherd is Our Lord Jesus Christ, who, out of pure mercy for our souls, came down from Heaven to save us. To do this, He had to offer His life so that we could live. The shepherd dies for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd; and I know mine, and mine know me. As the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father: and I lay down my life for my sheep. Each of us is known personally to Our Blessed Lord. There is no such thing as an unwanted or extra sheep. Each and every one is willed and wanted, and each has a special name that only the Lord can pronounce and only the sheep can hear.
In the epistle, St Peter shows us the consequences of this for our own life. Instructing his readers on how to live the Christian life in the world, he points out, in the passage immediately preceding the one that is given in the Missal, that if a person endures punishment because they did something wrong, we do not consider that to be praiseworthy. But if someone is punished or humiliated for having done something good, if he endures it patiently, then he is following in the footsteps of Christ Our Lord who, when He was insulted and beaten, did not fight back but endured it all in silence. Such is the example Christ has given us, and St Peter says that we must follow in His footsteps. If we ever suffer persecution for professing our faith and living a truly Christian life, then we can rejoice that we are being treated the way Christ was.
Whether or not we will be given to suffer for our faith remains to be seen. However, one practical consequence of this teaching that we can take to heart is that the person with authority must be prepared to suffer for those under his/her care. St Paul points this out to the Ephesians when he tells husbands: Love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for her (Eph 5:25). If you have authority over your wife, you must be ready to lay down your life for her. The same goes for parents over their children, for priests and bishops over those entrusted to their care. The profound thought here is that if one is not prepared to offer one’s life for those entrusted to one’s care, then there is a certain danger that either the authority could be misused or, in any event, that one could run away in times of trial.
In the strict sense, however, Our Lord’s words here refer to spiritual paternity in the Church. The shepherd, priest or bishop has been given charge over the souls entrusted to his care, and the good of souls is of greater value than the good of his own life on earth. That is why a good priest will expose his own life if it is necessary to save a soul entrusted to him. The Good Shepherd lays down his life because human life in this world has value only inasmuch as it allows us to obtain eternal life in Heaven. But this is only possible through the true faith and the sacraments, the keeping of the commandments and the practice of good works. The priest’s role is to make sure that none of his sheep are lost to sin and Hell, and just as today’s oration tells us that the world was lifted up through the humiliation of the Son of God, so a soul can sometimes be lifted up and saved only by the suffering of a priest. A priest who does not want to be a victim for souls runs the risk of being the hireling who runs away at the moment of crisis.
At this particular time in the history of the Church, when the whole world has its eyes turned towards Rome and the imminent conclave, it is the bounded duty of every Catholic to storm Heaven and ask, first of all, that all the Cardinals in the conclave meditate seriously the parable of the Good Shepherd and take to heart their duty to provide the Church with a worthy head. And for the elected one, we must beg God that he put the care of souls first and never allow himself to be swayed by any interests inspired by a worldly view of the papacy, all too easy in a world that honours its servants and chastises its enemies. The Pope’s role is to maintain the Church in the unity that Our Lord gave her when He died for Her, unity in the fulness of the faith and observance of the moral law, unity in works of charity to all those in need, unity in worthy worship of the Divine Majesty through the Sacred Liturgy and the sacraments. If he does these things and is ready to pour out his blood for us, his sheep, he shall be truly worthy of the honours we will owe him. If he does not, the sheep shall continue to scatter far and wide as the wolf catches and devours them one after the other. Let us pray.
