The Lord is My Shepherd
2nd Sunday after Easter
There’s something very endearing about sheep,
isn’t there? They’re placid little animals on the
whole, meekly following their shepherd as he leads them from one
pasture to another so they can feed on the fresh grass of God’s good
earth. They trust their shepherd, and most of
them are quite content to follow him without a single rational
thought in their head. They don’t question how
they should follow, or why they should follow, they just follow.
They don’t worry about what would happen if the shepherd
can’t find a fresh pasture, or what he would do if the wolf attacks
them. They just trust him unquestioningly and
follow him whithersoever he goeth. It’s Good
Shepherd Sunday today. We know who the Good
Shepherd is, and it’s time to realize also that we are the sheep.
“We are his people, and the sheep of his
pasture,” as it says in Psalm 94. It’s an analogy
we should pay more attention to. The nature of
sheep informs us as to the how’s and why’s of the behavior God
requires of us. Like sheep, we should have blind
obedience to our Shepherd, who is our Lord Jesus Christ.
We should follow him wherever he takes us—without question,
without complaint, and without fear. Whatever the
perils the future holds for us, perils from land and sea, enemies
foreign and domestic—we must trust in the Lord.
That Lord is our shepherd, and our trust in our shepherd should be
unassailable. Why? Because he
is such a Good Shepherd who will never fail us, never abandon
us to the wolves, never tire of looking after us, his sheep.
He loves his sheep.
Between his Resurrection and his Ascension into
heaven, our Lord founded his Church. He appointed
Peter, the Rock, to lead his Church, and to be his vicar on earth,
acting as his very own chief shepherd, our pastor.
Three times he admonished St. Peter to feed his sheep.
For two thousand years, the Catholic faithful were able to
trust Peter and each of his successors, the Vicar of Christ, to feed
us, his sheep, to carry out the duties of shepherd entrusted to
them. We became accustomed to blindly following
Christ’s Vicar, the Shepherd he appointed over us.
We followed like sheep, with total trust.
What an inconceivable betrayal then, that they allowed the smoke of
Satan to enter into the sheepfold. It was a
betrayal of us, and more significantly, it was a betrayal of the
trust our Lord had placed in the successors of St. Peter.
They not only allowed the wolves to enter in, they actually
became those very wolves, devouring the faithful instead of feeding
them. On top of it all, while they acted as
wolves they put on sheep’s clothing and still to this day play the
exalted role of shepherd in this pantomime, this parody of the Holy
Catholic Church. The Shepherd has been struck,
and “all we, like sheep, have gone astray,” as Isaiah prophesied,
“every one to his own way.”
Yes, we were given the grace not to follow a
fake shepherd who was now a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
But make no mistake about it, we are still in a very perilous
situation. We have gone astray.
We are sheep without a shepherd, and that’s not a good thing
to be. Because sheep need to follow something,
and there are plenty of evil men in this world who would gladly
become your new leader. Hence the abundance of
cults, not only religious cults (and we probably know a few
traditional Catholic groups who have become cults), but also cults
of personality—we follow celebrities, movie stars, corrupt
politicians, influential doctors, and turn them into our new
shepherds, someone who will feed us with something worth eating.
Don’t be misled. The constant haranguing
from these people who would push their anti-Christian agenda upon us
must be not only ignored but defied. And defiance
does not come easily to us sheep.
There is no substitute for the Good Shepherd.
Don’t place your hope in men—the Lord is my Shepherd.
With the dismal failure of his representatives on earth, we
must not go wandering off after anyone who plays a tune we find
attractive. Remember the children who followed the
Pied Piper to their doom! Our only hope today is
to turn to our blessed Lord himself, and to him alone.
It’s not how he wanted it to be, but if our pastors have
betrayed him, we have no other suitable alternatives.
There are no other options.