On Good Shepherd Sunday this last Easter I reflected upon how Scripture is full of Good Shepherds: Before Abel was killed by his brother Cain, he was a good Shepherd whose work and sacrifices were pleasing to God. Abraham was a Shepherd, as was Jacob. Before he became King, David was a shepherd boy. The Old Testament psalms describe God as a shepherd leading his flock to nourishing, restful, safe places. Jesus himself describes himself as a good shepherd.
Good Shepherds feed, protect, and guide their flock. But, in our first reading Jeremiah the prophet utters a chilling condemnation of bad shepherds: “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD.”
Jeremiah was speaking to those leaders in Israel who failed to feed, protect, and guide God’s flock. King David and Solomon were pretty faithful, but the later Kings of Israel were pretty despicable people. They failed in many ways to keep God’s flock united. They allowed, and even practiced themselves, false worship; they erected temples to evil Canaanite Gods and allowed human sacrifice, prostitution, and immorality. During the time of these negligent Kings, Israel became vulnerable to her enemies, and were conquered. The holy city of Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was destroyed, the Jews were carried off into Babylonian captivity, scattered and separated from their families.
Jeremiah condemns the bad shepherds, today speaks a word of hope: Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David; as king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell in security.” Of course, Jeremiah’s prophecy is fulfilled not in an earthly king, but in Jesus Christ whose kingdom is not of this world: Jesus who is the shepherd king our hearts long for.
This longing for a good shepherd king can be seen in the Gospel today, when people were pressing upon him in great numbers; when he crossed the sea to get a way to a deserted place, the numerous crowds were there waiting for him. They were like sheep without a shepherd, St. Mark tells us.
During his time on earth, Jesus called apostles to shepherd the Church after his Ascension until his return in glory. This is why bishops, to this day, carry the crosier—the shepherds staff. From the early Church, the saints urge us to remain close to our shepherds, the bishops. St. Ignatius of Antioch in around 110 A.D. was urging priests to remain fitted to their bishop as strings are to the harp. To both clergy and laity he urged us to, “be obedient to your bishop, and contradict him in nothing.” If we are to have the unity Jesus desires for the Church, obedience to the leadership and teaching of our bishops is essential.
Now, of course, in 2000 years there have been bad shepherds in the Church, bad bishops, even bad popes. In reading Jeremiah’s words of woe to the bad shepherds, I can’t help but think of an anecdote from Church history. Napoleon Bonaparte was in a many ways a power hungry tyrant who hated the Catholic Church. And during a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.” In other words, If bad popes, power hungry bishops, immoral priests, and countless sinners in the Church hadn't succeeded in destroying the Church in 1800 years from within, neither could Napoleon.
And this is of course because of the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ promise that the gates of Hell shall never prevail against the Church. There will always be a faithful remnant of Catholics.
Not even bad popes can destroy the Church. That is not to say there are no consequences for being a bad shepherd. St. John Chrysostom said that the The floor of hell is Paved with the Skulls of Bishops. Even in the first generations of the Church there were bad shepherds who failed to preach the authentic faith. St. Paul condemned the so-called “Super Apostles” for preaching a false Gospel. In his second letter, St. John warns the laity about opening your home to false teachers. Jesus himself echoeds the words of Jeremiah the prophet when he said, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!”
Shepherds, priests and bishops, have a duty to always present the Gospel truth; when they don’t, there is division. But we all have the duty to follow the good shepherds, the ones who teach the actual Gospel—“those who, holding to the truth, hand on the Catholic and apostolic faith”.
In our present age, we have a lot of voices, a lot of competing world views. There is a lot of division in the Church caused by bishops and priests failing to present the authentic faith clearly, and also division from Catholics allowing false teachers into their homes.
St. Paul spoke of our present age, when he wrote to Timothy: “For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
We are told by the culture that we must tolerate every immorality, and condemn sound moral teaching. In a morally confused and defunct age like ours, it is not fashionable to profess the Catholic faith; we are labeled as intolerant bigots for teaching what Jesus Christ taught.
But, whether you are a pope, bishop, priest, or layman, altering sound doctrine, the revealed truth of God, is not an option.
We might be mocked for this, we might be thrown in prison, we might be beheaded for this. I think of St. John Fischer, bishop during the terrible reign of Henry VIII. When Henry declared himself head of the Church, St. John Fischer was the only bishop in England who opposed the king’s heresy. For this, he was beheaded. Could you imagine, in our own country, if every bishop but one abandoned the true faith; this is how it was in England. How would you, as a lay catholic, know which bishop to follow?
This is why every Catholic has the duty to learn the faith, to believe the faith, to proclaim the faith, in season and out of season. We must remain faithful, and the great act of love we are called upon by Jesus to practice is to share the true faith without changing it or watering it down.
But we cannot give what we don’t have, we cannot teach what we do not know. In order to share Him and preaching Him, we need to know Him, and to love Him, we need to radiate His love for us contagiously so that others will see us as sign posts pointing to Him who fills us with the joy and peace for which their hearts hunger. For us to be capable of bringing Christ to others, we need first to bring ourselves to Him, to spend time with Him, to be fed by Him so that we can in turn feed others.
Jesus himself wanting to form his apostles to be good shepherds, first taught them how to be good sheep. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile” he said in the Gospel today.
We need to follow that command every day, going to a deserted place to rest with Jesus: by reading a bit of scripture, reading a bit of church teaching, the catechism or a papal encyclical or the writing of a Church father, and prayer, and quiet prayer.
If we are going to be able to tell the good shepherds from the bad, we need to know the Good Shepherds voice and his teaching. Again, St. John urged Christians to not allow false teachers into their homes: for us that means being very careful with television and the internet. We should basically assume that every time we turn on the television or internet, some bad shepherd, some false teacher is presenting us with some moral or doctrinal error. Weigh what you hear in our culture, against what you read in the scriptures and the catechism.
May each of us, today and all days, commit to spending time with the Lord, in our own deserted place, a quiet place to rest in Him, to be taught by him, to be strengthened by Him so that we can bring others to Him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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