(Good Shepherd Sunday)
Acts
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Introduction
Introduction
Good Shepherd
Sunday
The second Sunday of Easter is always
Doubting Thomas Sunday for all three liturgical cycles. This fourth Sunday of
Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday.
The
theme comes from the tenth chapter of
We’re all shepherds
Some of us senior citizens
have an old ecclesiology lurking within us which views shepherds as hierarchy on
the one hand and sheep as laity on the other. Life isn’t so clear-cut. Sooner or later we are all shepherds who have
to shepherd someone, and sooner or later we are all sheep who have to be shepherded.
That’s not just a matter of age.
That same ecclesiology
views shepherds mostly as priests, pastors and popes. Ecclesiastics aren’t the
only shepherds there are. Professors, counselors, nurses and doctors are also shepherds
who have sheep to shepherd. We just
buried Dr. Collette Cameron, only 56 years of age. Her mission was to heal
stubborn wounds on people’s limbs instead of cutting them off. The church was
packed for her funeral with people who, the obituary reads, didn’t just like
her but “adored her.” Now there is a shepherd of the first water. She knew all
her sheep by name. She protected them. She laid down her life for them. She
walked up front and everyone came running after her. They came running to her funeral
and filled the church with standing room only.
We are all shepherds. That’s
particularly true of mothers and fathers who shepherd sons and daughters. Good
Shepherd Sunday is about all of us.
And we’re all sheep
On Good Shepherd Sunday we
remind ourselves also that we all sooner or later are sheep who need to be led
and fed by someone. Yes, even shepherds (even parents and pastors and popes) at
times are sheep who need to be led and fed. When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected
supreme shepherd of the church, he chose Benedict as his new papal name. St.
Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order, counseled his abbots (shepherds of
the abbey) to listen to and learn from the least monk in the community. On the
day of his inauguration Supreme Shepherd Benedict promised that his program of
governance would be not to listen to himself only but also to the sheep. Fr. Francis
Gonsalves, a Jesuit in
Good pastors
The qualities of a good shepherd are many.
He leads the sheep. He feeds them. He protects the sheep. A good shepherd also
knows his sheep. “I am the good shepherd… I know my sheep and they know me” (Jn
What the sheep don’t lose sleep over
“Alleluia! Alleluia! I am a good shepherd—a
good pastor.[3] I
know my sheep.” What do I know abut them? I know that most of them do not
agonize over contraception or over divorce and remarriage or over sacramental
confession, as they used to agonize in the old days. I know that most of them do
not lose much sleep over a celibate or married clergy or even over a male-only
clergy. I know that 71% percent of them now favor or at least are not soundly
opposed to married priests or even women priests.
The
story is told that Bishop Sklba was scheduled to have an afternoon Sunday Mass
at Sts. Peter and Paul and completely forgot about it! On the spur of the
moment a wonderful lady of the parish in her early seventies was conscripted to
relieve the emergency of a church full of people waiting for Mass to begin and no
priest around to celebrate it. The lady’s name was Rita--a very dignified and
intelligent lady in her early seventies. She regularly conducted a Sunday Communion Service at what used to be called the Protestant Home.
Rita willingly
consented to relieve the emergency. But she first stepped to the pulpit and said, "I conduct the Communion Service at
the Protestant Home, but the people
there are a kind of captive audience. You, however, are not captive, and if you
wish to leave, feel free to do so."
No one rose to leave. She conducted a Communion Service in the place of a
bishop's
What presages of priestesses did that predict!
Couldn’t care less
In an
Last year
“Alleluia, I am a good pastor. I know my sheep.”
I know that most of them couldn’t care less about who may or may not do the
dishes after Mass or about fixing texts that aren’t broken. I know also that
many of my sheep are irked by such preoccupation, especially when a whole
system of pastoral care built up over a thousand years which provided shepherds
for the sheep is collapsing before their very eyes. Many are irked and
frustrated because nobody is calling for an ecumenical council to fix that and
other overwhelming problems beside which dish-washing and text-fixing dwindle into
nothing.
“Alleluia, I am a good pastor. I know my sheep.” I know also that an ever-increasing number of
them no longer agonize over their homosexuality but accept themselves, even
though the church does not. Though many of them have left the church, I know
that many remain in our midst and have quietly settled down to life in the
church which they love and have no intention of leaving. I know, too, that
there is an increasing number of straight sheep among the flock who have
settled down to peaceful acceptance of their gay brothers and sisters.
“Alleluia, I am a good pastor. I know my sheep” I know that many of my sheep
have either fixed these matters for themselves, or simply don't know what the
problem is, or simply do not care. I, good shepherd and pastor, might not like
these facts, but they’re there, and I don’t pretend they’re not there.
The culture of pretense
There is a culture of pretense out there:
pretense about divorce (we don’t permit it); pretense about birth control (we
don’t practice it); pretense about gays (they’re not there); pretense about sacramental
confession (it’s necessary before Holy Communion). That culture of pretense is not healthy for our
human spirit. It fills us with a vague feeling of dishonesty and makes us
cynical. It’s not healthy for our faith. When we pretend about this, that and
the other thing in our faith, then we start
wondering whether we are also pretending when we raise bread on high at Mass
and claim it is the very body of Christ. It’s all one fabric.
What they do lose sleep over
“Alleluia, I am a good pastor. I know my parish.” I know what my sheep do lose sleep over. I
know they are worried about getting a job and holding it down in this age of
downsizing. I know they are concerned
with the bottom line, like affording health insurance, educating their kids,
replacing an old car or washing machine and paying for gas at the pump. I know
that some of them are battling cancer or are beset with grief over a loved one
who has just died of it. I know that some are burdened with the monkey of addiction on their own backs or the
backs of someone they love. I know that
some of them grieve over lost sons and daughter and spouses in
I know also that a basic discontent plagues
them; they are exhausted making a living and have very little time to live. I
know that fathers and mothers are now beset with a brand new fear—a modern one-- that their sons
and daughters might be massacred in their schools and universities by some benighted kid who’s going to get even
with a world that has made fun of him, and who is determined to have the last
laugh.
A good shepherd (pastor)is also a good sheep
A good
shepherd—a good pastor—is also a good sheep. A good shepherd not only teaches but
also as a good sheep is capable of being taught. A good shepherd teaches his sheep about celibacy, women’s place in the
church, divorce and remarriage, open communion, birth control and homosexuality.
But he is also capable of being taught by his sheep concerning these issues
which greatly impact their lives.
Good parents.
Good Shepherd Sunday is not only about
pastors who shepherd parishioners. It’s also about parents who shepherd sons
and daughters. Here the Alleluia Verse rings out, “Alleluia! Alleluia!, I am a
good parent. I know my kids.” I know when
there’s a spiritual storm raging within them which can turn them into weapons
of mass destruction. If the nation learned anything from the Columbine massacre
in
The sister of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia
Tech shooter, issued a long statement in behalf of the family. Among many
things she says, “We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless
and lost. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I did
not know this person.” His family didn’t know him. The Virginia Tech community didn’t know him.
His roommates didn’t know him. None of them knew there was a spiritual storm
raging in him which turned him into a weapon of mass destruction for 32 dead
and 31 wounded students. A convenient culture of pretense on the part of
parents, brothers and sisters, classmates and administrators lay partly at the
roots of the massacres at Columbine and Virginia Tech.
“Alleluia, I am a good parent. I know my kids.” I know whether they are
taking drugs or are having irresponsible and uncommitted sex. Good shepherd that I am, I know all this not
because I’ve been snooping but because I spend
prime time with them. In
prime time I get to know my kids, and they get to know me. And if I don’t have
prime time for them, I make prime time, because anything less is too dangerous,
too disastrous and too expensive, as the parents of those two kids from
Conclusion
A magnificent shepherd
Some of us senior citizens live
in the glow of the days of that great shepherd of the church, good Pope John
XXIII. He was born poor in 1881 in a
little Italian village called
That great shepherd led the church as it had never been led for a
very long time. He walked up front of
us, and we, the church, ran enthusiastically after him. It was an exhilarating
period in our Catholic lives.
That great shepherd also fed the church as it had never been fed
for a very long time. He fed us with new bread baked at Vatican II (his great gift
to us), and he invited us to become new wineskins to receive the Council’s new
wine (Mk
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word
meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies
of Jews outside
[2] By “the unchurched” is
especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church
has left!
[3] The Latin word for shepherd is pastor, and it comes from the Latin verb pascor which means to feed as one feeds livestock.