We must always marvel at the benevolent love of the Holy One for the men and women that He calls His own. And we know that He calls the Church His own, because He actually calls it the sheepfold of which He is the Good Shepherd. And this is the theme of the readings today, which we have dubbed Good Shepherd Sunday: the love of God. What is the easiest way of describing the love of God? Paternity. We do, after all, call Him Father in our most well-known prayer. What is the love of a father? If we are not human fathers, we may have the experience of a human father. My own experience is of the man who picked me up when I fell over (and still does, even if he now has to drive halfway across the country for it), who corrected me (and still does), who is constantly concerned for my physical and spiritual welfare and for my ability to reach a happy end. Now, multiply this love infinitely, and you will find the Sacred Heart, a fire that burns for the sons and the daughters of men. And the Sacred Heart says to us in our reading today, ‘I AM the Good Shepherd.’
“I AM the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, whereas the hireling, who is no shepherd, and does not claim the sheep as his own, abandons the sheep and takes to flight as soon as he sees the wolf coming, and so the wolf harries the sheep and scatters them. The hireling, then, takes to flight because he is only a hireling, because he has no concern over the sheep. I AM the Good Shepherd; My sheep are known to Me and know Me; just as I am known to My Father, and know Him. And for these sheep I am laying down My life.”
Gospel of S. John, 10: 11-15 [link]
Some 600 years before OLJC walked this earth in human form, the prophet Ezechiel memorably spoke of God as the Good Shepherd. It’s not in our readings this weekend (sadly), but it is the Good Shepherd chapter of the Old Testament of our bibles:
“A word, shepherds, for your hearing, a message from the Lord God: ‘Out upon yonder shepherds! I will hold them answerable for the flock entrusted to them, and they shall have charge of it no more, feed themselves out of its revenues no more. From their greedy power I will rescue it; no longer shall it be their prey.’ This is what the Lord God says: ‘I mean to go looking for this flock of Mine, search it out for Myself. As a shepherd, when he finds his flock scattered all about him, goes looking for his sheep, so will I go looking for these sheep of Mine, rescue them from all the nooks into which they have strayed when the dark mist fell upon them. Rescued from every kingdom, recovered from every land, I will bring them back to their own country; they shall have pasture on the hill-sides of Israel, by its watercourses, in the resting-places of their home.'”
Prophecy of Ezechiel, 34: 9-13 [link]
The summary of this chapter of Ezechiel is this: God had appointed men to work as the shepherds of his people, priests (especially the High Priest of the Temple) and the Jewish king and his council, but these men had instead led the people into serious error – God declared through Ezekiel that He had had enough of this destruction of souls and that He would arrive Himself as their Shepherd, working together with a descendant of King David, a true king – so, the divine Shepherd colluding with a human shepherd-king. Does that sounds marvellously familiar? In the fullness of time, a strange being appeared in Bethlehem of Judaea, a Child Who (an angel had told His mother) would rule for His ancestor David and at the same time would be called God. The Holy One Who loved His people had arrived to shepherd them as their Father, but in the human form of the Davidic king that would make Him also their Brother. And He would rule their hearts, their wills voluntarily united to His. Listen to Him speak in our gospel reading above: hirelings flee their responsibility, human shepherds are not always reliable, but the Good Shepherd never leaves the sheep, and gives His life for them. And they love Him with a love that will draw them to the cross and to death for Him.
This is the true love of a father, inspiring a similar love in his children; even if some of us have had no experience of human fatherhood, or perhaps abusive or otherwise deficient fathers, we can yet understand an ideal if not from humanity then in the animal world, of parents that do everything to protect their young from danger and death. And you and I, all of us, are forever young before the Ancient of Days, and we shall always require His fatherly love, His assurance in the midst of our suffering and at the moment of our death that we are accompanied and loved, by a fire of fatherly devotion that burns forever. ‘Think of the love lavished upon us,’ S. John tells us in our second reading, that we can call the Creator of all things by the most familiar names given to earthly fathers; which other community but the Christian ones can do this?
“See how the Father has shewn His love towards us; that we should be counted as God’s sons, should be His sons. If the world does not recognize us, that is because it never recognized Him. Beloved, we are sons of God even now, and what we shall be hereafter, has not been made known as yet. But we know that when He comes we shall be like Him; we shall see Him, then, as He is. Now, a man who rests these hopes in Him lives a life of holiness; he, too, is holy. The man who commits sin, violates order; sin of its nature is disorder. You know well enough that when He was revealed to us, it was to take away our sins; there is no sinfulness in Him, and no one can dwell in Him and be a sinner. The sinner must be one who has failed to see Him, failed to recognise Him.”
First letter of the Apostle S. John, 3: 1-6 [link]
S. John like the other Apostles is insistent that our lives reflect our election as the Children of God; the Children of Light cannot associate with the darkness of sin. But why is it even possible that the children of men can be adopted by God. Because of the Sacred Heart, which is both human and divine, and through which we are therefore adopted by the Holy One. This is the substance of the first reading, where S. Peter declares that the most important stone in the edifice of the People of God (of both old and new testaments) – the God-man, both human and divine, Who brings communion between God and mankind, Who makes them His children – this most important stone was cast aside by the men who should have received Him with joy. These priests and their associates of the first century were not unlike those unworthy shepherds of the prophet Ezechiel, who were to be replaced by the Good Shepherd – he would replace them, too. For their attempt at opposing the Will of God was foiled by the Resurrection of Christ, by which the most important cornerstone of Israel was replaced, upon which the Church was built and will ever stand.
“Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit, and said to them, ‘Rulers of the people, elders of Israel, listen to me. If it is over kindness done to a cripple, and the means by which he has been restored, that we are called in question, here is news for you and for the whole people of Israel. You crucified Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, and God raised Him from the dead; it is through His Name that this man stands before you restored. He is that stone, rejected by you, the builders, that has become the chief stone at the corner. Salvation is not to be found elsewhere; this alone of all the names under heaven has been appointed to men as the one by which we must needs be saved.”
The Acts of the Apostles, 4: 8-12 [link]
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 