Called to be Good Shepherds: Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

The theme for our Sunday Mass today is “Jezu Boro Gonvlli, Aplea Rogtan Ekttaita” (Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Gathers through His Blood) and we are simultaneously celebrating Natural Family Planning Sunday. Most of you will know about family planning; the government has for a long time been promoting family planning in all kinds of ways – the use of condoms, forced, coerced and incentivised sterilisation of both men and women, all kinds of products and procedures for women to ensure that they do not conceive. None of these methods, however, are compatible with theteaching of Our Holy Mother the Church.

The Church teaches that every individual has absolute dignity and that every life is precious, even the unborn, and the newly conceived. To prevent, therefore, the birth of new life is a sin. However, the Church in Her wisdom, and drawing from the teaching of Our Lord himself offers us ways in which we can plan the size of our families, naturally.

Recollect, the words of the Gospel we just heard:

his heart was moved with pity for them,

for they were like sheep without a shepherd;

and he began to teach them many things.

Given the delicate nature of the matter, I will not discuss natural family planning from the pulpit. However, I will say this much, that this method relies on a cardinal Catholic virtue; restraint. Restraint, means a recognition that we need to control our desires, that not every desire can be catered to whenever we feel like, that there is a proper moment to do so, and sometimes that moment is never!

To many people, however such advice, would sound crazy. After all, what our contemporary culture teaches us – through ads, films, and every other media – is that if you have a desire, any desire, and especially a sexual desire, it must be satisfied, the sooner the better!

It is, therefore, to the false prophets of contemporary culture that the words of the first reading from the book of Jeremiah apply:

Woe to the shepherds

who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture,

says the LORD.

Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel,

against the shepherds who shepherd my people:

You have scattered my sheep and driven them away.

You have not cared for them,

but I will take care to punish your evil deeds.

Hidden in these words of scripture is a truth that many of us will recognise; that all of us, regardless of our position in society, all of us are shepherds. This applies particularly to those of us who are baptised. In baptism we become a part of Christ, and his three munera, or responsibilities, that of priest, prophet, and king. Shepherding is way to understand not only the kingly duty of Christ, but also of those baptised into Him. All of us are kings, all of us are shepherds, who have a duty to take care of the flock that has been entrusted to us. And this flock includes, not just our families, but all those around us. We are obliged to care for them and resist the misleading teaching of the evil shepherds who, animated by the Devil who hates life, scatter the sheep, or the flock, of God.

Brothers and sisters, in the first reading, through the prophet Jeremiah God tells us that he will raise up a righteous king who will rule and govern wisely. That righteous King is Christ, who then transferred his teaching authority to the apostles, whose successors are the bishops, and supreme among them in teaching authority is the Pope. It is critical then, that we listen to the words of our bishops, and the pope, who communicate to us the eternal teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are all strengthened to follow these shepherds, and be ourselves good shepherds, by the fact that Our Lord gives us, in every Eucharist we worthily consume, His Precious Body and Blood which gives us the grace to fight the Devil and his shepherds, and follow Our Lord, and His good shepherds.

As he assured Saint Paul (2 Cor 12:9), "My grace is sufficient for you."

(A version of this homily was first preached in Concanim to the faithful at the parish of N.S. do Rosário, Fatorda on 21 July 2024.
Image featured: Roman tombstone depicting the Good Shepherd. Baths of Diocletian. National Roman Museum Rome.)

The Light Burden of the Cross: Homily for Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

 

We are often told, when we are taught about humility and arrogance to not talk of ourselves, but  let others do the talking about you. Your talk, we are told, should not be about I, me, and myself. And yet, in today’s Gospel, All Our Lord is doing, is talking about Himself. Listen again: “Come to me”, “I will give,” “Take my yoke,” “learn from me,” “I am meek and humble,” “my yoke”, “my burden.”

Our Lord, as we well know, is the very model of the virtuous man, so why is He talking so much about Himself?

He is talking about Himself, because He is contrasting Himself with someone else, someone who is not “meek and humble of heart”, but someone who is arrogant, proud and vain. That someone else is Satan, who in Jn 8: 44 we are introduced to as the Father of Lies. Our Lord is contrasting Himself with Satan, because both Satan, the Prince of this world, and Our Lord are offering us a burden and a yoke; and Our Lord is trying to indicate the difference between the two burdens that each of them offers and imposes.

When Our Lord says, "Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest”, we must understand that He is speaking to people who are already burdened and are already labouring. He is speaking to us, who are, labouring and are burdened because we are the “poor banished children of Eve” who are burdened by the effects of original sin, have a predilection to sin, and carry our heavy burden of sin. It is by giving up our burden of sin, the burden of concupiscence, that we will find rest.

But willing to give up of the burden of concupiscence, does not mean that there is no burden. This is the sad fact of the fall, that the world is compromised by the effects of sin, and that there must be recompense for each of them. On the contrary, Our Lord promises us that there is another burden to carry, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” This yoke is the burden of the cross. But, because it is the burden of the Cross, we know that this invitation is unlike the invitation offered to us by Satan. Because what the burden of concupiscence does, is to make us walk alone and constantly curve in on ourselves. The burden of the Cross, however, leads to cooperation with the God’s plan to save all of mankind; remember what Paul said to the Colossians (1:24): “in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”.

But there is another difference between Our Lord and Satan, and that is unlike Satan, who offers us false promises and lets us drop to hell, Our Lord accompanies us along the way, carrying the heavier burden. Listen to this verse again “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” This is to say, that our Cross, is His Cross. When we take His yoke upon us, He shares the burden with us. And how does He share the burden with us? By uniting His flesh with ours through the sacrament of communion, through which His flesh becomes our flesh. Like a yoke that has two oxen hitched to it, Christ walks with us, and it is for this reason that He says that His burden is light. Learn from me, he says, because He will show us how to hang on the cross which is the high road of salvation.

One last observation before I conclude. If it is the Cross which is the yoke our Lord has to offer, how is it that he presents it to us, as easy? How could the Cross, ever be easy? I suspect that it is easy, because for all its pain and torture, it is easier that the trials of Hell which await those who reject the Cross and embrace concupiscence, Satan, and his empty promises. Or as St. John Bosco is reported to have said “Your reward in heaven will make up completely for all your pain and suffering.”

(A version of this homily was first preached in Concanim to the community at the St. Pius X Pastoral Institute, Old Goa on 18 July 2024.
Image: Christ Carrying the Cross, Titian, 1565, Museo del Prado, Madrid. )