The Good Shepherd
One of the abiding memories I have of my first visit to the Holy Land was travelling on a bus from Jerusalem to Jericho and seeing in the distance, across the valley, a local shepherd walking along a path with his flock of sheep following behind him. He was leading them to a place where they would be safe and have plenty to eat.
A father of a friend of mine worked as shepherd in nearby Faversham. His shepherding was very different. I spent a day with him and his wife. I went with him and his sheep dog to where his flock were being pastured, and his dog would round them up into a circle in the middle of the field. The shepherd would then scan the flock — and, by merely looking at them, could tell if any of them were in difficulty or needed attending to. On the day I was there, a lamb had been rejected by the ewe and so he was being hand reared in the kitchen of the farmhouse by the shepherd’s wife.
These two experiences of mine help me understand more deeply the imagery Jesus gives us when he talks about himself as the Good Shepherd. He is the one who leads us. He knows us and he cares for us. We do not always want to be shepherded. We want our independence and to go it alone. We can very easily get lost or into difficulty. But even at these times the Good Shepherd does not abandon us. Remember the parable of Jesus and the lost sheep. Each one of us is important and significant. Jesus always searches for us, and he will never abandon us. It is important that we come to know the Shepherd in our personal and communal prayer. He wants us to share in his work of shepherding. Parents do this with their children, teachers do this with their pupils and catechists do this in their work of sharing faith with those they guide.
One of my treasured possessions is an icon that was made for me on an anniversary of ordination. It is at present in the window of our shop in Canterbury Lane. It depicts Christ with a lamb over his shoulder. This reminds me of Pope Francis’ words to a group of priests involved in the education of seminarians. I wish you to be shepherds with ‘the smell of the sheep’, the Pope said. He said priests should be people capable of living, of laughing and crying with your people, in a word, of communicating with them. He said priesthood isolated from the people of God is neither a Catholic priesthood nor a Christian one. Strip yourselves of your pre-constituted ideas, your dreams of greatness, your self-assertion, in order to put God and people at the centre of your daily concerns. On this Vocations Sunday let us pray that young men will hear, and then answer, the call to be good shepherds.
