Our readings from the Holy Scriptures continue to speak to
us this week about God’s bountiful love and desire to save sinners.
We can find similar passages throughout the entire bible,
the Old Testament and New Testament.
It’s not as if the Old Testament only talks about God’s wrath and
justice and the New Testament only talks about God’s love and mercy. All through the bible meet a God who is
extravagant in his love and mercy.
Yet, we can also find throughout the entire bible passages that
speak of God’s justice and what seems like his impossible demands for his
people. Throughout the Bible, God is
chastising his people for their sins and their lukewarm hearts and for their
idolatry. He sends prophets to call people back to the covenant and back to
moral and spiritual perfection. Jesus seems to some this up on the Sermon on
the Mount, when he says, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s the moral demand of God for us; it’s
that high, it’s that impressive: “be perfect.”
It seems kind of difficult to hold these two claims
together: God’s bountiful, overflowing mercy, on one hand, and his demand for
moral perfection on the other. We have a
hard time reconciling these seemingly contradictory claims: we think either God
loves me and forgives my sins, or he is a harsh judge ready to condemn my soul.
Recent decades in the history of the Church have shown this
tension. Before the Second Vatican
Council there seemed to be an overstressing of God’s judgment, and in the years
immediately following the Second Vatican Council an overstressing of his mercy,
as if God really didn’t care if we went to Church on Sundays, God didn’t care
if we observed Holy Days of Obligation, God doesn’t care if engaged couples
live together before their marriage, as if He were now ultra-permissive of sin.
If all you talk about is God’s mercy, you get a skewed
understanding of God, you get a sort of God who spoils his children, letting us
get away with everything, never really demanding anything of us, and never
really holding us accountable for our actions. On the other hand, if all you
talk about is God’s excessive moral demands, you end up with a sort of a
tyrant: a God who broods over us in an overwhelming way. Neither skewed view corresponds to the
biblical image of God or the teaching of the Church. Rather, we preach the entire Christ, who both
calls us to be perfect and forgives the repentant sinner when we are not.
The good shepherd was one of the favorite figures in early
Christian art, Jesus uses the image of a shepherd in the Gospel this Sunday. In fact this is an image that God uses to
describe himself in the Old Testament as
well as the New. The prophet Isaiah
tells us that God is a shepherd who feeds his flock and gathers them in his
arms and leads them very carefully.
In the Gospel, Jesus presents us with this shepherd, who
after counting his sheep after a long day of grazing, as the sun goes down, he
realizes one is missing. You can
imagine, a shepherd, on a mountain pasture, the air is starting to get cold as
daylight fades, and he knows he has to find this lost sheep, and soon. So he huddles the ninety-nine into a natural hollow
underneath an overhanging cliff and he sets out to find the lost sheep. He stumbles over sharp rocks as the sun sets
and the shadows lengthen. He pushes
through brambles and thorns, and pulls his cloak tighter to keep out the
chill. He hears the howling of the
wolves, but knows that morning will be too late, so he trudges on. The mud is slippery, the wind picks up. And there, in the brambles, bleeding and alone
and frightened is the lost sheep who has wandered from the flock.
This is the image Jesus wants us to have in mind when we
find ourselves lost, stuck in the brambles of sin, separated from him. So abundant is his love, that our Good
Shepherd suffers to free us from the deadly thorns of sin; he dies for his
sheep, to gather them into one flock—to gather them into the community of the
Church where Christian perfection, and holiness, and eternal life, and
authentic joy are possible.
The problem with us sheep is that sometimes we forget that,
we fall into old habits of wandering, sometimes pretty far from the flock. This is why we need daily prayer and frequent
recourse to the Sacrament of the Eucharist and Reconciliation. Because the reality is we do have that tendency
to wander back into the thorn bushes.
And this is the reason Jesus gave to his Church the
Sacrament of Confession. Though it may seem unpleasant to humbly acknowledge
one’s sins before God’s minister, have you ever gone to confession and felt worse
afterwards? Of course not. Jesus tells us that even the angels rejoice when
a sinner receives reconciliation.
When we go to confession.
It’s a new beginning. We receive
God’s forgiveness and we are strengthened with sacramental grace that when we
are inevitably tempted again in the future, this time we will remain faithful, we
will remain true to the high and lofty calling of our Father.
Christ is our good shepherd.
He has searched us out and brought us back home many times. But he has included us in that shepherding
work, he wants us to be good shepherds too.
Jesus sends us out to gather his flock, to reach into the thorn-bushes
of our morally depraved culture, to help the fallen be reconciled to God.
Parents, of course, are so important in shepherding their
children, keeping them safe from the evils of the world. At the 11:30 Mass, the Catechists, were
blessed, because teachers of the faith, help to instruct and shepherd us.
I’m very excited to visit our YOSA group tonight, to meet
our young people who are the next generation of shepherds, who are called now
to encourage each other to grow in faith, and to challenge one another in being
generous to God with their time talent and treasure.
Our upcoming parish retreat offers all of us a shepherding
opportunity. We may think of neighbors
who we might like to invite, and to begin praying and fasting for them, that
they may be receptive to the invitation.
This week, let us be especially attentive to those
opportunities to invite those who have fallen away back into the flock of the
good shepherd and those ways in which the Lord challenges us to grow in
Christian perfection for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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