The Good Shepherd
Every fourth Sunday of Easter we have the Gospel of the good shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who leads his flock to good pastures, who knows his sheep one by one and calls us by our name. It gives us a lot of confidence to know that we have a great shepherd to lead us to heaven. All we need to do is to follow him. The early Christians loved this depiction of Jesus. In fact the oldest image we have of Jesus is a young man carrying a sheep on his shoulders, in the catacomb of Saint Calixtus, in Rome. Have you ever tried to carry a sheep on yours shoulders? It is not easy.
We also call Jesus the Lamb of God. In every Mass the priest shows us the host saying: Behold the Lamb of God. He is the lamb of sacrifice. In the Old Testament the Jews used to offer animals as sacrifices to God. Now they are not needed anymore, because Jesus gave his life for us once and for all. We Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we try to be like him, sheep and shepherd.
To be a shepherd means to give your life for the sheep. It is nice to be the boss, but it demands sacrifice, responsibility to forget about yourself, to do the best for others; in one word, to lay down your life for them. It means not to have your own life. We cannot be the hired shepherd, who doesn’t know his flock, who doesn’t care about his sheep; shepherds who only think about themselves, who are there just for profit, who don’t know how to serve. Service is a beautiful word that has almost disappeared from the dictionary. We talk about rights, but we forget about responsibilities. We don’t like to talk about duties.
We are also sheep, a good one, who follows the whistles of the shepherd. Not the lost sheep of the parable. It is easy to get lost. We like wandering around, playing with fire, doing our own thing, following the inspirations of our pride and selfishness. And when we are lost, then we complain. We want the freedom of doing whatever we want, and when we are in trouble we ask for help. Jesus tells us to be a sheep, not a wolf. Sometimes we prefer to be a wolf, fighting with everyone, biting whoever comes our way, barking all the time. A wolf is more exciting, but a sheep is a gentle, peaceful, smiling animal. It doesn’t complain and lets you do whatever you want. It is a big difference between to kill a sheep and a pig. A sheep dies without complaining; a pig doesn’t go down without waking the whole neighbourhood. There are two kinds of people: people who create problems and people who solve them. A mother is always helping. Spoiled kids are always creating trouble.
We call this Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday. Today we pray for vocations, asking Our Lord to send us good shepherds. We are fulfilling Jesus advice: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We pray that the Lord will send us shepherds, specially from our own parish. Jesus knows that we need vocations. All we need to do is pray for them.
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