The image of Jesus as a shepherd is considered the most beloved and consoling image of the Lord. Among the 150 psalms of the Scriptures, the 23rd Psalm which we sang only moments ago is perhaps the most revered. On this Good Shepherd Sunday, Our Lord refers to himself not only as a shepherd of the sheep but as the “gate of the sheep.” One of the shepherd’s tasks was to gather all the sheep into a pen, usually a low stone enclosure that had an opening. As the sheep passed through the opening one by one, the shepherd would inspect them for any injuries. Once they were together, the shepherd himself would become a gate by lying across the opening as a guard to prevent predators and thieves from getting in and to prevent the sheep from getting out.
Since sheep were kept for eight or nine years for their milk and wool, the shepherd would give each of them a name. Jesus tells us, “the shepherd calls his own sheep by name…”
Here our Lord is reminding us that he knows us intimately—by name—and that he cares and protects us. Cardinal Basil Hume liked to say something we should remember when we pray: “God cannot count. Everybody is number one. God became man not for a crowd but for each one of us. God never sees crowds; he just sees individuals.” We might say that in prayer, the Lord is focused on us…we have his undivided attention!
The shepherd knows the sheep. But how do the sheep know the shepherd? The sheep know by recognizing the shepherd’s voice. They will not follow a strange voice. In fact, a stranger’s voice would frighten them.
Today, many voices clamor for our attention but not every voice is good, right, or true. In our restless, busy, and noisy culture, the voice of the Good Shepherd is easily drowned out. Like the sheep, our ears must be attuned to the one true voice of Christ. We have to possess the docility of the sheep.
Not docility in the sense of apathy, inaction, or indecision; not the docility that would have us yield to anything that comes down the road, but docility in its truest sense…to be open and receptive to the voice of the Lord that comes to us in Sacred Scripture and the Sacred Tradition of the Church.
It means allowing that voice to teach us. It’s a voice that may poke, prod, and pull just as a shepherd pokes, prods, and pulls a sheep to get it moving or pull it in to keep it from veering off into danger.
But that voice will comfort, protect, guide, and challenge us so that we might discern good from evil, right from wrong, truth from falsehood. Docility allows us to be reworked and reshaped by God. Pride is the obstacle to that work of reshaping because we often feel, I am fine and quite happy just the way I am. If we are full of ourselves, there is no room for God’s grace to work in us. This might be our prayer today:
Teach me, Good Shepherd, what I don't know. Show me which way and where to go. Alone I stumble, alone I fall, but your gentle voice leads through it all. Take my hand, light my way, Be my beacon, night and day. I am weak and sometimes low, but give me strength and make me whole. Keep me docile Shepherd true, so that I can become like new. Empty me of myself that I might live for you.
Today, let us not forget to pray for those who have been appointed shepherds of the Church, and that many more might listen and respond to the Lord’s invitation to become a shepherd in imitation of the Lord, especially within our Diocese of Trenton where the need is very great. Lord, raise up, worthy ministers of your altars and make them ardent yet gentle heralds of your Gospel. And make them docile too! Amen.
